Written by Kiara Tay
Illustrated by Hanya Chua
Female friendships are often dogged on in the media for their superfluous and overdramatic nature, and I’m happy to inform you that they were all that and more in my all girls’ secondary school — Raffles Girls’ School. You would think you walked in a bird enclosure with how we shrieked when we saw a friend from another class. “OMG! Hiiii!” We’d run to each other from across the room and hug, even if we had just seen each other the day before. The thing is, we never thought it was too much. How could we? This was normal for us, and there were no judgemental boys to point out how ‘oh-so-dramatic’ we were being.
A good example of our particular brand of expressing love would be Galentine’s, an affectionate portmanteau of girl and Valentine’s. Galentine’s was a huge event in Raffles, not because of romantic declarations of love (even as there were some), but because of how it was the best day to express your appreciation for your friends. A typical Galentine’s would go like this.
You’d enter through the school gates, where there would be a prefect/ student councillor passing out different types of flowers. After some consideration, you’d take a rose (the red one at the back, please!). Shrieks commence as you bump into some friends on your way to class. You discuss your exciting plans for lunch later that day. “I heard there’s a 2-1 promotion at that bubble tea place!” You get to class, where there are two pieces of chocolate on your table, and a written poem waiting for you.
You open it: “Roses are red, violets are blue, you’re annoying sometimes, but I still love you.” One of your friends had paid some school student-interest group a few bucks to send you a cute snack and a message. You see another friend peering out the door. “Psst!” You notice a bunch of cards in her hand. You collect your card, and it’s cut out in the shape of a heart. You can see how her words trail off at the end of the card, following the curve of the heart and she tries to squeeze in as much as she can in small handwriting. It ends, barely legible. “I hope we’ll be friends forever!” You laugh; you had ended your card to her in the same way.
You look around the room. The walls of your classroom are less grey than usual. Everyone had cut different-coloured hearts the night before and now, the classroom looked like a Love Island set. Almost every table has some sort of gift on it. You take out your own pack of cards from your bag and place them on each table; you had stayed up writing one for everyone the day before.
As classmates pile into the classroom, they grin as they read their respective cards. Your ‘deskie’ pats you on the shoulder, as she reminds you to take a group photo before recess in front of the heart decorations. “We need to post something cute for Instagram!” Everyone links arms instinctively, smiling brightly. There are pink ribbons in our hair — a splash of colour only allowed on special occasions. You discuss for around thirty minutes on which photo to post, and pass it around for everyone’s approval. Within ten minutes of posting, 10 comments appear in your notifications. All of them have hearts in them.
Your bag gets lighter as you make your delivery rounds around the classrooms, making sure to find every one of your friends to pass them their gifts. But somehow, after various giggles and exchanges, your bag ends up heavier than when you arrived.
You can’t imagine your heart being fuller than it is now, and you are sure that you are loved.
Maybe this is why my standard for a romantic relationship is so high. I had found love within the walls of my old, musty classroom, with girls who understood me to my core, who knew who I was before I knew it, and always pushed me to be my best self. And as much as I miss my school, I know I carry it with me: every birthday, every conversation, every fight. It taught me how to be a supportive friend, to speak my mind, and to love generously.
Whenever I see old friends from Raffles for lunch, I can hear those same familiar shrieks, except this time, it’s seeing each other after a year rather than after a week. We’d tell the same old stories and savour the same old memories. “Do you remember how …?” “Do you remember when …?” And the answer is always yes. Of course I remember. Before we know it, we’ve talked past our self-imposed 5pm cutoff. As day creeps into night, our words get more hurried as we try to compress everything on our chests into a single evening.
There’s something so familiar about how we can never end our conversations on time and how we cling onto our shared memories. I think of that clumsily-ended heart-shaped card from seven years ago, and how, even now, our love for one another is bigger than any cutoff can contain.
And it’s times like this, when we are reminiscing about the past, when I realise we never truly left our girls’ school selves behind. We are still those same bright-eyed girls, who giggled together at the back of classrooms, who wrote each other cards and letters ‘just because’, who learned to love loudly and honestly within the yellowed walls of Raffles Girls’ School.
