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Once during the past few days I got reminded of the pinkie finger pact. I think it was last Saturday at Jollibee, when TJ and I were about to leave and you went out with us. Or was it the other night when we were walking along the familiar and memorized mazes of SM North? Pardon the short term memory loss. It’s a real pain in the neck. I’d probably go crazy a week before the board exams and I’ll lose all the formulas that I worked hard to memorize.

Anyway, getting back to the topic — the pinkie finger pacts. When did they first happen? My senior year — your junior year in high school? I’ve been doing something weird back then. Something to escape all the horrors and the pain brought about by another weird thing that was going on during that time. You know about that, right? And the other night you jokingly threw at me one of the most memorable hirits (memorable? di ko nga maalala eh) I told you before. You told me that it was when you were in deep shit with this other person before and you said that you were already over that person. You told me that I scoffed and said, “hah…para namang may maitatago ka sa kin…“. Neto lang, you threw that line back at me. And it had me thinking, oo nga naman… I realized that well, maybe, whatever it is that’s going on with me, I can’t really hide anything from you. It’s been our tradition, I guess. So whatever it is, you’d know and see through the well-masked and complicated alibis.

Those pinkie finger pacts, haaaay. You made me promise before that I wouldn’t do what I did before – that scary cutting thing. But hey, I suck at keeping promises. Tried so hard but I was, am and will never be strong when depression hits me. Funny it seems that I was never a masochist before senior year (okay fine, a little during my freshman year but it was all out of curiosity, not depression ). Funny it seems that a certain person could bring out the masochist and melodramatic and the brooding writer wanna-be in me. Funny it seems that it doesn’t feel so funny now.

I did it over and over again and I’ve got scars to remind me of how stupid the whole thing was. Looking back, I now can’t stop the regrets that are trying to bubble up into the surface. Now I think it was a very, very infantile thing to do but hey, once you’re addicted in doing something, you just can’t stop right? I mean, I was already hurt, my feelings ripped off me that I became numb, why on earth would I want to hurt myself more? Uhm, do I really have to answer that question? Well, a couple of years ago, I had an explanation. I told myself that i was so deep in shit and numb from the pain that I was craving for it. I wanted to feel more pain. I wanted to push myself to my limits. I wanted to simulate the pain over and over again. I wanted to know how far I could have taken it, how much more til I stopped and felt really idiotic.

It was one nasty episode that got dragged along throughout the years, like an over-sensationalized Pinoy Telenovela that virtually has no plot from the beginning but instead its plot gets invented along the way. Three to four years of stupidity and I can’t believe I really let myself get so low like that.

But then again I don’t really regret everything about it. When did we ever become friends, dude? It was because of that person right? When I think about it that way, I can’t really hold a grudge against the whole thing. Somehow I have to thank that the whole unspeakable mess transpired, not because it broke me in every way possible, but because I earned a friend in you through it. If I hadn’t been so lost because of that, if I hadn’t been weird enough to go to basketball despite that fact that I had been breaking my back training for volleyball for a couple of years, if I hadn’t let myself be so drawn to one of the people in your periphery.

Thinking back to that time, I can’t really remember why I didn’t feel any inhibition in opening up to you back then. Weeks pa lang ata tayo magkakilala sinabi ko na agad sa yo. Labo di ba? And to think I never really open up to people. I mostly keep to myself. But I guess I had a feeling back then, that feeling that you would keep whatever I say and that I could trust you with the deep dark and dirty secrets hehehe. Oh, uh, let’s not forget that you wouldn’t tell anyone naman pala, kasi I hold some of your deep dark secrets too.

Tagal na rin pala natin magkakilala no? About seven years? Astig! We went through some pretty weird stuff na rin. All through the wacky things only Fridays could bring (remember the pattern? during Fridays, when I got lucky, you would not be lucky and vice versa). But of course those crazy Fridays went haywire sometimes and we’d both get lucky (or super-malas) during the day. And who can forget the “doodle notebooks”? You got yours numbered and I got mine named hehe. Ano pa ba? The long and crazy daldalan on the phone that turns a whole lot crazier when it got late. We used to blame the seriousness of the conversations to the lateness of the night. To the wackiness with Goldine, Jof, Tiff, Lou, and the rest of the basketball team. I can still remember that day that you guys stole all the cutters I collected from my bag (because of the pinkie finger pacts) and those times that I would have four sundae cones in McDo but I wouldn’t give anyone one. And remember that day in Rizal Memorial? Sa may Wendy’s sa Taft? It was October 11, right? You were so bummed because of someone then right? And we were watching some badminton stuff in Rizal before we decided it was too boring and we went to Wendy’s? Siyempre daldalan na naman and when we got back, those frikkin’ creatures from the volleyball team hid our bags in the bushes so we would panic.

During the college years we had and still have those “sessions” – a few hours that would drag on and on because we really like to ramble about whatever crazy thing it is that’s currently happening to us. When something happens, you’d go “oi, session tayo!” or when I go crazy (which happens most of the time), I’d tell you “dude, kelangan ko ng session!“. Those sessions could happen just anywhere. Even on a bench in front of the Eng’g steps, inside the Eng’g canteen, at the coffee thing in the basement of SM Annex. We could yap along nonstop and we wouldn’t be aware of how much time had passed and that the rest of the world continues on moving on around us. What mattered is that we discussed whatever it is that is needed to be discussed – whether it is the latest edition of your kamokmokan or my current woes of immaturity and confusion. We could talk a lot that we would wonder if we haven’t talked in such a long time.

But dude, lately, I’ve been really thinking (wow, I can think?) about what has transpired throughout this month. I suddenly woke up to the realization that I might not be having those talks with you in the future anymore. That our sessions will be limited and that during some times that I will need to talk to you, you won’t be available anymore. Because let’s face it, you have a life to live on your own, right? And I guess, after eons of being dormant with your perpetually sloooooooowwww pace, something’s up. Wala lang, naisip ko lang. But it’s not really an impossibility right? It’s not impossible and that’s what makes it so scary.

But scary it might be, you have to do whatever it is that you have to do. You have to live your life and you have to grab your chance to be happy. Alam mo kasi, no one deserves to be happy more than you. You’ve spent the last years in quiet kamokmokan and nothing ever happens. Kaya when you get the chance, grab it. It doesn’t matter what other people might say. What matters is what your guts tell you. And what you have to say on the matter. It’s your life eh and you alone can decide on what to do with it. Basta ingat ka lang… take care of yourself and don’t let yourself get so lost that even you can’t find you.

But even if the sessions will be lessened and you’d be totally caught up with other things, I’ll still be here, I’ll still have something to yap about, I’ll still listen to your ramblings and other whatnots, I’ll still go to Toy Kingdom in Megamall, buy some finger skates, have them wrapped up as gifts and exchange those gifts with you, I’ll still drop by your tambayan whenever I’m in UP (granted that you’re still there), I’ll still call you when I feel like my life is slipping through my fingers. I’ll still be passing you the ball even if you aren’t in my team…for the friendship haha ayaw aminin na turnover eh.

And well, sooner or later, the outside world will finally win over the battle that I’m waging against it. I won’t be forever ensconced in the safety and comfort of school. And when that happens, I’m afraid that we’ll be drifting apart soon. I’ll be working and you’ll be in school. If I’m lucky, it’s just Makati or Ortigas or Eastwood. I could be in Alabang, and if I’m really unlucky I’d be in Laguna, Batangas or Cavite (why do all the hardware companies build their plants outside the metro?). You’ll be spending time with other people, doing other things, bother yourself with some more crazy stuff. And soon we find ourselves not talking that much anymore.

Call me crazy but those things happen. But I just don’t want what happened to my other friends be the case with us. See, even with some of other close friends in high school, I never really exerted any effort in maintaining the friendship. When I knew that we would be drifting apart, I was all like c’est la vie, move on, get it over and done with.

I don’t want that to happen with you. You’ve become such a big part of my life that I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t around. You are my partner in crime, my walking diary, kasama sa lahat ng kalokohan, the one whose pinkie finger pacts I should never ever break. You’re one of the three people that know almost everything about me and that I trust most with my life. You are such a gigantic piece to the Tinats puzzle that said puzzle would never be complete without you (nax).

So yeah. Yun lang naman. Salamat. Maraming salamat. Sana the sessions continue pa rin.