Kristin

Into our lives, now and then, come people who change us. For the dozens - hundreds, perhaps thousands -of people we meet, only a few of them leave an impression that lasts long after they have gone, and alter the shape of our lives.

I have met two of those people in Japan. One is the boy I love who broke my heart. And one is the girl I love who helped put it back together again.

"Mmm," she said half way through our first phone conversation, four months ago. It was all she had said for five minutes, and I was already convinced that - despite having met me only once - she hated me with a passion usually reserved for people who have met me lots of times.
"So what time are we meeting?"
"Uhuh."
"What time?"
"Mmahem."
"Is 7.30 okay?"
"Mmm?"
"Er, okay...Great I`ll see you there."
"Uh - erm - uhuh."

"Holly," she eventually admitted, ten days later: ten days of wrong times and wrong places and phone conversations I had started avoiding. "I need to tell you something."
"You hate me, don`t you."
"Nope. I can`t understand you, especially on the phone. Not a word. You`re harder to understand than the Irish."
"You`re kidding me. I`m harder to understand than the Irish? Is that possible? I mean, I know you`re from LA, but surely you`ve heard some accents other than American before? I`ve got a perfectly normal English accent, you know."
"Hmmm? What? No, you lost me again."

Since then, we have walked together, onsened together, eaten together, driven together: all the while, talking and sifting the world into piles. And she has been all I could hope for from a friend: she has brought me ice cream when I`m sick, she has cuddled me when I`m crying, she has cooked me dinner when I`m hungry. She has calmed me down and bolstered me up: been there, even when I asked her not to be. The few words I`ve managed to communicate in the right language have been listened to carefully, attentively and thoughtfully: with consideration, with wisdom, and with infinite patience. What`s more, she has shown a level of compassion I have rarely seen in anyone: cried when I cried, was happy when I was happy, was angry for me when I needed her to be and defensive of me when I didn`t expect it. In the process of picking up the pieces of my heart, one by one, and trying to fit them into a shape that makes sense to me again, she has been pivotal: never impatient, never cruel, never frustrated, and always with a unique perspective that comes from being thoroughly good, and thoroughly kind. From having infinite belief in people, and in love, and in hope, and in trust, that has risen above her own past and own terribly broken heart and made her one of the best, most loving, most genuine people I have ever met. A person who will stand by a friend who she has only ever seen in pieces - only met in pieces, and who had nothing much left to offer anybody - and patiently help to build her into something whole again.

"Smaley," she said last night, as she dipped her tempura into my sauce. "You are going to be so loved, one day."
"Do you honestly think so?"
"No, I know so. How could you not be loved? You are so good. You have such a good heart, Hols. Even when you`re hurting and in pain you`re good and kind and brave and honest. One day somebody is going to see that and love you so incredibly much for it, and they won`t stop or change their minds. Not ever."
"Really?" I asked her, tears springing up immediately (I`ve seen little evidence to hope for this so far). "Do you really think that?"
And then - as I started blinking as fast as I could - she promptly burst into tears.
"And," she said, "it hurts me so much that you can`t see it."

In showing me such kindness and compassion, she has made me want to be better; in seeing in me so much goodness, she has made me start seeing it too. In reminding me what loyalty and thoughtfulness and selflessness can be like, she has made me start seeing the world as a beautiful place again: in understanding my pain, and in loving me in spite of the lesser person it has made me, she has made it easier to bear and to try and hold myself straighter.

In two days, Kristin leaves Nichinan and I am on my own again. But - as much as I am going to miss her, and as lonely as I`m sure I am going to be with her gone - she is leaving me a different person to the girl she met on the doorstep, four months ago. I am still hurting, and I am still broken, but she is leaving me with more hope, and more faith, and the knowledge that there is nothing in this world more important than kindness, compassion and the dignity and grace that come with them. Because, when our hearts break and our minds stumble, it is kindness and compassion that will lift us back up: in others, and inside ourselves. It is the people who love us that will put us back together again, and - in loving us so much - teach us how to love ourselves again. And it is the people who stand by us, and pick us up when we don`t have the strength to do it ourselves - who listen to us, and cry with us, and fight for us - who make our hearts whole again and give us something to aim towards.

I don`t know when I`ll see her again, but I know that when I do I will be a stronger person and I will be a better person because of her. And - because I don`t know how to tell Kristin that in words that she will understand - I have written it down.

So that she can read how much I love her instead.