My old friend.

And we have our Summer back!

Today I reconnected with a childhood friend. Last time we had spoken was 5 years ago, but we were very close friends for more than 20 years.

We used to be neighbours and our families were very close, since we were still babies, so we grew up together like brothers, always in each other´s house. He has an uncle almost the same age and, the three of us, and a few more kids, used to be all the time together after school until dinner time - good old days, when you could just play around in the streets without any issue.

But anyway, his father left Portugal when he was quite young, moved to England and he was living with his grandparents. Since we were young, you could see that the absence of his father had a big impact in the person he was. And his mother was not around as well, both parents only visiting him once a year.

My friend used to say that he would moved in with his father soon. He actually believed that that would happen every single time his father would go on holidays, and we all believed too - it always looked like his father was having this amazing life here in the UK because, whenever he would go to Portugal, he would rent this fancy car and would take all of us, his son´s friends to the beach or even to ride horses.

The thing is, and as kids we never saw or would understand it, back then, there was this idea that all emigrants were rich just by living and working outside our country and, a lot of the emigrants, when they would go back to their home country, they would act as they were living the dream.

Time went by and, only when we were in our early twenties and my friend had finished school, was working and was more independent, he decided it was time to live with his father and get to know him better. He thought it would be easy to find a good job and have an amazing Life like his father.

But that never happened. And he ended up seeing the truth about his father, his hero, but he also chose to stay with him because, in the end, he didn´t want the great Life, he just wanted to have a father present in his Life.

He has had a difficult Life, full of step-backs, and that changes a person more than we think. And that was what I have realised today by talking to him. Nowadays, we are very different people and we don´t know each other anymore, our friendship lives on our memories from all those years ago.

However, I still know he will have my back whenever I need as I will always have his.

Good night everyone!