In November 2009 I walked into a sunlit, barely furnished room, sat on a hard, wooden, dark brown chair and said to the person sitting opposite me: "I have no friends. I only have acquaintances, people that come and go through my life without touching me".
It was a very challenging period for me both physically and psychologically. I was just out of a three week rehabilitation programme after a lower back operation and a stomach bleeding that almost killed me. I could not bend my back, sit for more than 15 minutes, eat raw, fried, or roasted food without getting a stomach ache, and had to do intense physiotherapy twice everyday.
It sounds tragic? It was for me and for my close family. I was irritable, miserable and plainly helpless to do anything by myself. Clearly, I was in no mood to meet new people, and new people would run away immediately after they met me! Who wants a crying, miserable and bitter person in their lives?
Maja was the physiotherapist who was assigned to my case. I saw her everyday at 10:30am. I started slowly 15 minutes the first week, 20 minutes the second, half an hour the third and so on and so forth. Our relationship evolved, grew deeper as the time of our sessions grew longer. I ended up staying in the gym for 2 hours everyday and I was able to start exercising like a "normal person" in 6 months time!!!
In June 2010, I walked into a sunlit, barely furnished room, sat on a hard, wooden, dark brown chair and said to the person sitting opposite me: "I have a friend".
That friend is Maja. Every time we meet each other the time flows like water. We can talk for hours about everything and anything. I forget myself in the time warp that our friendship has created!
