In your life, you probably have moments so potent that it becomes your landscape - a succession of pictures, each one revealing a part of you - a panorama of the person that you have become. In my life, my friends are a big part of my landscape. There are so many moments that still seem like yesterday. These are the moments of multiple attempts in finding our own space in the world by experimenting the details of life together - while we slowly discovered the person that we are & where some of our convictions were shaped.
There's nothing like girl friendship when you're 8 years old. But nothing will compare to friends who grew up together between the playground swings, the pimples & braces, the petty crushes, the bull sessions, the college days of fun & work, the boyfriends, the breaking up & a renewed pink vision of life, building a career, new friends along the way, the weddings, children & all the shebang of growing old & adulthood.
These days, it is uncommon to find friends that go all the way back to grade school & managed to stay together even when juggling the demands of work, family & motherhood simply just takes most of your time. But in true friendships that flourished through time & the many trials of life, there is a silent understanding - almost unnoticed - that in growing up, things can never remain the same. We change by not changing at all.
My friends & I are the kind of buddies where we were like fishes in a big aquarium that never bump into each other but we know that we're all there during grade school. Then there was a quiet sort of regrouping in high
school where you actually bump into the people who actually wants to venture in the same kind of goofy stuff we normally want to do in our short teenage years. We were crazy but we were responsible teenagers who never experienced failing grades (low but not failing for me) & parents invited by the principal. High school is the best time of our life because everything is simply justifiable. Different schools during college just felt like we were all in different aquariums. We evidently met new friends & the circle got bigger & bigger. We used to visit each other's colleges & we kept in close contact. Already at this time, the moments we've shared must have proven to be a profound friendship for each one of us. After the years of schooling & goofing around, comes the real world - a world bigger than us - bigger than our own little world. A ticket to freedom & responsibility. We still hang out with each other having more out of town trips when we were not in the "bilog," a cul-de-sac of a friend's house where we come to meet even without plans or phonecalls & invitations. But after, we simply get caught with the real world & real issues we naturally have to go through alone, each on the path one eventually chose. It is like the moment when you followed together the decade of the new wave, then into rock, into grunge & in the end, you have decided to stop following the charts & choose the kind of music you really like.
I have seen my friends change from girls to women. From being crazy to being a wife & a mother. I have seen a part of their success in the life they chose. But adulthood, the choices we make & moving on comes with change. Amidst our little corners, the drifting apart & falling out, with the very few moments we touch base with each other, we still see the pictures - the panorama. We can still see it in our eyes & say, "Hey, I know you. We've seen each other grow!" You are all still - and will be - the person that they have always come to know so long ago. And sometimes - in a random moment - you just pick up where you left off.
I miss you guys. I promise when we visit next time, I hope I'll still have the chance to make it up to you & finally free myself of guilt. Especially to the two of them whom I had a big falling out.
