Dear Friends,
The story that I’m going to tell you is based on a friend of mine who will later be known as a pathological liar.
Let me introduce the main characters of this story: My friend and I. My name is Jane, of course it’s an alias. I studied economics at a top university in Thailand but I wasn’t as good as my friend, Lena. Lena by that time was chubby and had acne scars on her pinkish cheeks. She was the smartest student in our class. She’s fluent in English because she’s from an international school in Bangkok while I’m from the countryside. I consider my English to be poor. We both stayed in the university dorm because our university is far from Bangkok. While I stayed at the dorm throughout the semester, Lena would go back home every weekend. We became close friends as freshmen because we shared classes and activities together. That changed when we turned sophomores because we were in different majors and rarely had a chance to talk anymore. As far as I know, she got first class honor when she graduated. Then we lost complete contact after that.
For those who don’t know what a pathological liar is, I have a short explanation here. Pathological liars are people who continually lie or make up stories that never exist in their lives. Their lying tends to be their normal manner or habit. You can find more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_lying . Anyway, after 7 years I graduated in 2015. Thanks (or maybe no thanks) to Facebook, I finally met Lena again. I added her as a Facebook friend and according to her profile it seems like she’s changed a lot from when I knew her during our freshman year at the university. Lena is slimmer! There are not many pictures of her on Facebook. As I can tell from her pictures on Facebook, Lena seemed to be so shy. I can’t see her face clearly. I only remember her long, light, beautiful, brown hair as she always dyed it when she was at the university. She also seemed to have a luxurious life. She always checked in at hi-class restaurants, posting food pictures. Dozens of likes and comments about her life and food are always common as she had over 300 friends on Facebook; “I’m so jealous”, “I want to go to that restaurant”, “You are so beautiful”. As for me, I can only afford one of those luxurious dinners a month or less because my mortgage already takes out one third of my salary.
One day, while I was walking in a city center department store, I noticed that Lena checked in at the same department store as I was. I spontaneously texted her on Facebook messenger: Hey Lena, I saw you check in, I’m at Paragon (the department store) too! She replied, “Nice, wanna meet up? I’m at Mandarin Oriental Shop B floor with my boyfriend and his parents” (oooh, that's a very luxurious shop). She offered “I can go out and meet you at the food court for a minute”. I spontaneously replied “Nope, it’s ok. Thanks for asking. You’re with your bf's parents. I don’t think you should leave them. We can meet later. I won’t’ bother you. Enjoy dinner! Here’s my number and line ID, we can talk via line." Note to reader: In Thailand, Line is the most popular messenger app. You can also create a group chat and so on.
That night Lena sent me line message. Hey Jane. I’m so sorry for today. I wanna meet you! How is life? I saw you on Facebook. What are you doing? Lots of questions, lots of updates came in that night and days after. Lena told me her story about her family, boyfriend and friends. Her family business sells tractors and luxurious cars. Lena wants to open a coffee shop chain in a new (being built) department store but her father asked that she do more research before investing in this business.
Lena has a boyfriend, Tim, who owns a tour company. They’ve been dating for 1 year. She has a close friend named Jonathan, aka Jonno. Lena told me that she does’t have many friends and Jonno is the closest one. The reason why they are so close is because Jonno is a friend and also an employee to Lena’s father who's hired him to take care of her almost 24/7 with a salary of 5K (Me: what the…!!!). Since Jonno is gay, her father trusts him to do this job (taking care of her like a nanny).
One day we manage to meet for dinner. Finally, an in-person meeting! I met Lena at a restaurant. When she walked into the restaurant Lena looked so gorgeous. Lena is so slim now. She’s prettier than she was at the university. Lena explained that the reason she is so slim is because she got brokenhearted by her ex who is a consul. They lived far apart. They rarely met. She also told me that her current boyfriend is so boring. They had bad SEX! (Me: Oyyoiyoi! She was telling me her private life!). We caught up a lot and she said she will introduce Jonno to me later when we meet again. Oh my! I became closer to her after the first meeting. (to be continued)