Memoir Monday: Hugging Strangers

            I don’t talk to my friends in Guatemala as much as I used to. I’m horrible in the concept of keeping in touch. And it’s not that my friends in Guatemala and me weren’t close, no. A lot of the time I wish I was still back in Guatemala being ridiculous with my friends there. And even though there is a lack of communication that I wish there wasn’t, I still think about them constantly. They haunt my mind, reminding me that I miss them.

            I feel like they haunt me even at the mall, all the way over here in Panama. Yesterday as I walked out of the movie theater I stopped in my steps as I saw what looked like my friend, Alex.
            Alex is the kind of friend that smiles at every moment of the day. Everyone has that friend that is constantly joking and in a cheerful mood ,well , that was Alex. And other than our names being the same, she and I were like the same person.

So my initial reaction was to run up to her and hug her. But again, like I said before, it was what LOOKED like my friend Alex. But when you see a stranger on the street that looks EXACTLY like someone you really want to hug, your initial reaction is to do exactly that, hug them. Of course if it ISNT that person, you might go through a series of awkward minutes trying to explain why you hugged a complete stranger.
            Luckily I didn’t have to go through those awkward minutes. But that girl, she looked so much like Alex that I just wanted to hug her for that fact. Just for looking like Alex.
When you find yourself wanting to run up to a complete stranger and hugging them, you know you might be a little crazy. But it made me realize, if I was willing to hug a complete stranger just because she looked like my friend, I probably miss Alex more than I thought I did. I wanted to give that complete stranger the type of hug you give your best friend the first day of school after summer. Those type of hugs that start with you walking towards each other but then transforms into a light jog because you are so anxious to see them after 2 months.
      Oh God, imagine if I would have given her that hug. Probably would have thought I was trying to choke her.
            But back to my initial point; I do miss Alex. I miss staying in the art room to turn the music up to the limit, I miss laughing to what nobody thought was funny, I miss making weird faces across the room.

I remember the first time I noticed that Alex might be equally as odd as me. It was in the middle of class as we laughed silently to ourselves, on either side of the room, about a word that had sparked a whole train of inner jokes. Sometimes I still wish I could share those moments with Alex. Sometimes I wish she was here or I was there, just so we could laugh on either side of the room, silently, to ourselves. One of my best friends, and one of the strangest.