To My Breakfast Club
One thing I noticed during our farewells was that we shared the habit of engaging in speculations about visiting one another again. At the time, when I chose to befriend you, I made it clear that I was an exchange student. It has always been clear to you that no matter how close we became I was leaving on the sixth of January, and it was clear to me that in a few months the twenty minutes I took to commute from where I lived in Corstorphine to Princes Street will expand to sixteen hours of flying from Singapore, and it rapidly became clear that our days together were numbered. But the peculiar beauty of these farewells, to every exchange student, originates from these speculations:
You should come back to the UK, I’d love to show you around the Netherlands.
If you really return to Edinburgh for post-grad, you should tell me! I’ll check if there’s a room in my flat!
You totally should come to Korea! … You should learn Korean! There’s lots of literature you can read!
It was easier to say that we should, but harder to say with resolute confirmation that we will meet again in a few years. Entertaining these possibilities gave farewells the illusion of balance – the satisfying conclusion of a worthwhile exchange and the promising prospect of enduring friendships across borders made farewells bearable. I know this because ever since I left Thailand after eighteen months of working as a paramedic, my colleagues never contacted me again, owing to the insurmountable language barrier, or the recognition that we were only colleagues. I am not telling you that they were not close to me. I constantly prepared for life-threatening emergencies, and tirelessly maintained the medical clinic’s commitment to excellent healthcare with them. Despite all that we still lost touch, and I never attempted to reach out to them.
I no longer believe in the beauty of these types of farewells. Saying should made conclusions less final but reunions sounded less definite. I am writing this not to sound perverse nor to discount what you have confided in me. I am writing this for the uncertainty I imagine in saying should leaves too much doubt; while what you told me, that I should return, comforts me momentarily, it also engages with the painful possibility of never meeting again. I suppose that there is no substitute for you in Singapore and I am compelled to consider the lifetime of luck I have consumed to have crossed paths with you. In mid-August I arrived in Edinburgh knowing no one. Without knowing, in these four and a half months, I found kindred spirits that would accompany me to Stockbridge village to admire architecture, and browse the shelves of Rare Birds Books and Golden Hare Books. I discovered that you can and were willing to match my intense sarcasm with your stunning wit, and am surprised that though younger than me you are more formidable in your personal pursuits.
Entertaining these possibilities attempts to alleviate the sharp apprehension that comes from the real chance of not seeing each other again. I no longer feel comforted by these suggestions. Because during our farewells some of you have detected a shimmer in my eyes, how jarringly I silent I was for I feared that if I spoke, I did not appear as eloquent as I usually was. Because after every goodbye I still tear up, as though to mourn a passing, either after I have walked a distance away or in your arms. We made assurances during our time in Edinburgh but I failed to honor them: I failed to go through with a pinkie promise to head to the Scottish highlands with one of you, and I failed to bring two of you to an improv comedy show at the Bedlam Theatre albeit my semester-long insistence. There is a sharp apprehension because if these smaller promises were not kept even when we were together, the promise to see you again appears laughably improbable.
~
In the last two weeks before I departed from Edinburgh a scene from The Breakfast Club replays in my mind if I idled:
Brian asks the other four students in detention, “What’s going to happen on Monday? […] I consider you guys my friends. I’m not wrong, am I? So on Monday, what happens?”
“Are we still friends, you mean? If we’re friends now, that is,” Molly struggles to look Brian in the eyes.
“Yea.”
“You want the truth?”
“Yea I want the truth.”
“I don’t think so.”
Ever since middle school asking the question, “are you my friend”,became increasingly frowned upon not because there was no necessity to affirm the relationship, but because it signaled shameful vulnerability from the enquirer. Brian, when asking that question, seemed to others weak; his utterance of “friends” was barely audible and the other four did not meet his tearful gaze. This scene replays in my mind because after our respective farewells, our face-to-face interactions have ended and will, at best, be replaced by video calls in which we cannot see every expression, each twitch of the muscle, each gesture; in between every sentence there will be an unnatural protracted pause to ensure that the speaker has indeed completed what they wanted to utter. I fear the natural intimacy, that comes from physical proximity, will erode. In the last two weeks it seemed to me that this infantile want to hear your infectious laughs, to see your smiles, had to be concealed because the desire was unspeakably childish and unbecoming of a proper adult. But what was shameful about wanting this happiness? What was so wrong about wanting that simple joy, wanting to be in the company of compassionate friends, that you know, with reassurance, to be your friends?
In these last two weeks I walked around Edinburgh until my heels bled, and bled over previous clots for I was, and am, still unaccustomed to snow boots. I returned completed and uncompleted books to the library, donated suits to charity shops and thanked indie booksellers and settled other unsettled affairs. With the presentiment of loss I began imagining things while going past familiar sights: I pass by the Chaplaincy Center expecting that you, Claire and John, will be there preparing for a Wednesday tea session; I stop by Typewrongers Books but choose not to enter, hoping that you, Elaine, will be awaiting my advice for which books to purchase. I look wistfully through the windows of Franco’s, remembering Andrew’s expert negotiation for a deep-fried Mars bar at a place that does not sell a deep-fried Mars bar; Allison, I gaze at the cobwebs which hang haphazardly on the railings of McKenzie bridge, anticipating that you will somehow appear on my left, asking for a lesson on photography again. I recall all these in embarrassing nostalgia and I wished I told you, in person, that I wanted to do these things again and not just replay them in my mind. I want the real thing.
~
Farewells, when they arrive, turn out to be nothing we expect. We anticipate ourselves to mutter loosely prepared words, anticipate ourselves to give one last hug, and a wave goodbye. We do not predict the mess of emotions, or at least I was in that mess, unable to remember in completion what you have said to me in those farewells. We expect sadness, some displays of longing. Yet I did not expect to be inconsolable and debilitated with grief. I did not foresee myself to say, with a feeble tone which I hate, “I will miss you dearly,” nor did I foresee myself to write on a wine bottle without my typical neatness – With some master stroke of luck I shall find myself, by your side, at McKenzie Bridge again.
Will you write to me?
Will we ever meet again?
Will you answer my calls?
Will you call me on my next birthday?
I have no answers to that.
I have no inkling of what will occur.
I believe it is not a good idea to envisage a certain outcome immediately after a farewell, for such grand expectations breed immeasurable disappointment.
~
I decided to go through with interviewing all of you to write journalistic profiles. An unintentional side-effect was that during these conversations we were closer, and the farewells consequently developed into something more dreadfully painful. I suppose this was my attempt to, as what Allison in a heartfelt letter to me refers to, memorialize and appreciate you.
Let me tell you why I interview and write: had you not been as intriguing as you have presented yourself naturally I would never have possessed the curiosity to learn about you and your personal history, and, much less, have needed to befriend you. I do not know what the impact these profiles I am going to write will have on you and our friendships. I do not know whether our friendships will persist or perish. I do not know but I want to cling onto the possibility that by having spoken to each of you in a formal interview, by writing about you, I somehow managed to imprint, to gift you something of value so that you will, at the very least, keep me in your heart for a while.
In one of my dreams I had during Freshers’ Week, five faceless people were seated around the dining table of my apartment. They chatted and laughed while enjoying my considerately brewed tea.
As a reader of Freudian psychology I place undue significance onto my dreams and their interpretations. To me this dream appeared easy to manifest and henceforth I aimed to break bread with each of you. Ever since those meals I have begun noticing each of you replacing these faceless people in my dining room, and for the first time my dreams had a comforting warmth that lingered past the mornings I had them. For this, and other opportunities you have afforded me in Edinburgh, I am, and will continue to be, eternally grateful to you, My Breakfast Club.
~
I accept the fact that you had to sacrifice time for tolerating my mischief during the many interactions I enjoyed with you. I believe you are crazy to have engaged them but because of your sacrifices I have learned more about you than who you appeared to be. Through wee walks around Stockbridge village, I found out I could befriend an Assassins’ Creed fanatic. A bearded birder. A cheery conservationist. A barrister-to-be. An eccentric romantic. During our farewells we made promises though you remained doubtful about how I will honor them, how I will return to Edinburgh, how I will stay connected. In the course of our interviews I observed that the typical interview-subject relationship, without fail, transforms into a mesmerizing dance of dialogue. I never expected myself to laugh, play and cry to that extent.
Do our interviews and my letters answer your questions?
Sincerely yours,
Wei An
16 January 2023
Acknowledgements
To me traveling is not at all about seeing new places but about meeting new people. Unlike the exchange students I know, I can never travel to different cities after exploring one for a few days mainly because I become incredibly invested in how people interact with one another and with the physical space in each new destination I visit. I am truly thankful that I have met My Breakfast Club of Edinburgh – Claire, John, Elaine, Andrew and Allison. Without them I would never have enjoyed the Auld Reekie, and all it could offer, as much as I already have.
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