I'd never met anyone who understood this, who could possibly be on the same boat about this but it was always so weird to me. So when she told me her connection with him, I almost dropped everything I was holding on set. It took me a few months before I said anything. But I did eventually. Because I didn't think it was real.

"He's my best friend. He knows. I don't even have to say anything and he knows."

"So, I'd just like to tell you that C is to me what R is to you."

Soul-mates.

That's what most people call them. Two people so entirely connected that separation is not possible. Not even if they were to try.

It started at the beach last year, at Yayu's birthday. I stopped walking back to the car. My left knee was stinging with pain. I couldn't bend my knee without it. Of course, MY knees are perfectly fine. I've never had problems with them. I used to dance. I have ankle problems because I overwork them but my knees are perrrrrfect. They joked that it was because of him and I laughed but I couldn't help the thought it was true. The pain came and went, it never stayed for more than a day. But the fact that it even came was strange to me.

I woke up this morning with a burning elbow. My left elbow. And it remained for the day. And while I'm trying to study, it's quite bothersome because I like to lean my head on my hand with a propped up elbow. So:

"Hey did something happen to your elbow?"
"Why?"
"Just answer the question."
"My left elbow has always been weaker" — I had no idea of this — "It's been hurting a lot recently"
"Okay. So don't get weird but my left elbow has been hurting all day"
"How does that tie in with me?"

So I told him.

I don't know if it means anything or if I'm right because....well I'll never know. But I could believe, can't I? That the only reason my freakin' elbow is currently stinging with pain is because my best friend, who is thousands of miles away, has been having problems with his.

But I have to explain what he is to me for those who have no idea. Yes, we were together for a while — we broke up at the beginning of the year. We'd only known each other two years prior and even then, we barely spoke. Our relationship was spontaneous to say the least, and was something we both felt we had to do. As if the universe basically called for it. So it happened.

What always perplexed me about this relationship was the ability to know. I barely knew him but he knew the ins and outs of me. He could read me like a book and I could him. Now, it's easy for people to read people as long as they're literate in such a language. However, it was not that he could read me it was that he knew exactly what I was thinking without thinking it. He and I had this unspoken language that we would react to and a lot of the time, it wouldn't surface until months later. But that was the problem between the two of us: we knew each other so well and understood each other so well, we felt we didn't even need to talk about it. But of course, we needed to talk about it instead of solving the problems on our own....we should have done them together. That is where we failed and there's no way in hell we're going back to try that again.

He isn't my everything. I'm not head over heels for him. And I don't think of him before I sleep.

But he is my confidant. My go-to. The one I know I will always have, no matter what happens.

"You are my best friend forever. And the only one who I can truly say that it will stay that way"

I can't explain the phenomena in words that doesn't downplay it or make me sound like I'm crazy.

But it's not something that he would ever deny.

"We are connected. We are one. I should hurt my finger tomorrow and see what happens to you."

Mother of a son, my elbow better stop hurting when I wake up or I will be PISSED.

Z.

I'm suddenly reminded of Salvador. In about 19 hours we'll be in a theatre doing what we do best: watch an animated with Megz.

So I'm on my usual Facebook sabbatical. This time, I'm not letting Spotify get in the way. I can use it on my laptop no problem, at least my offline playlists, but I just have nothing for the road which is why I've been paying for Spotify in the first place. I might have to find an alternative way to sign in because of this.

So many things have left my brain despite my want to write down my thoughts. Laziness. Negligence of myself. Whatever the hell. And now I'm here at the end of the day, start of the day, whatever, collecting my thoughts on the last 24 hours. 24 hours ago, I was definitely asleep or about to. I believe I got home from dinner around 1130.

Everyone who matters knows how to get a hold of me without Facebook so that's not going to be a huge issue. I'm just going to assume that those who don't bother don't need me. But they all have to assume that a lack of response means #iaintgottimeforthat. Facebook is, of course, a distraction. And I don't need the extra stress right now. It's time to refresh and replenish myself and find my center. Those who matter will come forward. Those who care will not come forward with things that will stress me out. Those who love me will only come forward when they know I need them or if they need me or if they know I need to take a break.

No one will plead.

Yesterday I had a little spat with Yayu. Hey, that happens with siblings right? Brothers and sisters fight. But brother, you've tainted your name. It's time for baby sister to come to terms with the fact that she'll never get a big brother. So I'll stop searching now. I love you but you're not supposed to be anything like my real family. And brother, I'm sorry. Don't beat yourself up. Don't believe that you've done anything wrong. Don't believe you need to change. It really isn't you, it's me. I can't handle our friendship. So no, you can't have your friend back.

I'm growing and I'm moving forward and I've said before that the saddest part of moving forward is the people you leave behind. Frankly, I don't believe you can catch up. You seem to be stagnant, in a rut. And I don't have the means nor time to help you get out of it. You have to find that within yourself. I apologize. Because I know already that I am a very bad friend.

People use people. I am no different. And I used you to help keep me sane, keep me stable. We have had a symbiotic sort of relationship. But it seems that we've reached a point in which you have nothing to offer me but stressful situations and a longing for a time when we used to have it good. But if you can't even be complacent with where you are right now, then you will never be happy when you get to the place that it IS good. It is a shallow happiness. Fake. Nonexistent.

To add, you are the single person who has ever uttered the words to me "I just want to have my friend back". That insults me. That insults you. No excuses. Natural selection, buddy. Survival of the fittest. And you claim to be "surviving" but I don't think you are. Because survival insinuates not needing much to move forward. But you seem to be lying on the ground letting the elements keep you alive as they come to you, rather than being resourceful enough to push. Which is sad because you're resourceful enough to do that.

I can't help you. I can barely help myself. Stop relying on my return to keep yourself alive and becoming happy. No one else is doing that. They miss me, I know. I know that by the way Ed showed up at my house during a cancelled tea time, and Ferzan texts and tweets me "PENIS" on a random occasion and Ren comes out to me and tells me that he's taken Thursday every day off for two months so he will have the time when I finally do. But no one else is begging for my return. And this is not the kind of begging I'm keen on.

So I don't expect to hear from you while I'm on sabbatical, nor am I sure that I even care to hear from you. The very thought stresses me out.

I'm sorry that I'm not sorry.

Z.

"Good job. I didn't hate it."
"I did. Or well. Just that ending though."
"You just don't like open endings."
"No, I don't"
"I love that shit."

At the start of our summer film, I remember detailing to two of the crew members about the one week period during the summer when I didn't sleep and just reread and rewrote the scripts that I had written since middle school. Something that stuck out to me as I was doing this was the fact that every character based on me ended up alone for some reason. It wasn't always that something had gone bad, it was just that for some reason things wouldn't work out. Initially, there was much panic. As if I was looking to end up alone at the end of my life, as if I didn't want to eventually settle down. But I know myself. While I am unafraid of walking the rest of my life without a husband, I want to eventually marry and have the thousand kids I long for.

It took me a couple of hours, and by the time I told the crew about this I had figured it out, to realize it: I like open endings. Maybe at the end of each piece things fall apart (not just romantically), but the end is still open. It insinuates that anything could happen at that point. The end of each story is really just a beginning. It recognizes that there is more to the story than what is. I never know the ending to any story so I never write one.

It's not necessarily that I don't like happy endings. It's that I feel like happy endings aren't realistic. Or. Not necessarily that they aren't realistic but implies that that is the end of the story. There is never coverage of what happens AFTER the happy ever after. It implies "this is it, everything is perfect, nothing more to see here" but really there is ALWAYS something more to see. A happy ending is much too black and white while there is an entire universe of complexities waiting.

Happy endings leave people happy, sure, but it leaves them all chasing after that nonexistent happy ending. No one realizes that there will still be hardship after that second of complete happiness and just don't want to take on the hardship. That's why people end up believing they will never be happy — because they just don't know how to find happiness in what is rather than what isn't. That's how we have so many people unhappy. This is why I would prefer a sad ending versus a happy ending: after a happy ending, we all assume the story ends there, but after a sad ending we are still left with the hope and belief that everything will get better.

Really, anything that ends with "we'll see what happens next" has a good ending in my book. As long as the premise is tasteful, of course. Because the reality is, that the story never really ends.

The reality is as the lovely Mitch Albom puts it is that "all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time..."

And really, your story is never really just your own. "...each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one"

Z.