I walked halfway from my place to work this morning. It was still early, the morning breeze was cool, there were not much people yet on the road, and the sun quietly rests only on peak of the taller buildings along Ayala Avenue. It was a perfect time to enjoy some moments of solitude and think about years gone by. I remembered old friends.
There was this informal group I constantly attended around nine years ago. It started as a regular coffee session among friends to share their life stories, air gripes at work and relationships, get updates on what and who's the hottest in town, and to solicit and offer advises to each other mostly on love. The initial group started to invite close friends who afterwards invited their friends and friends of friends until we had a hard time remembering names. The group swelled we had difficulty getting comfortably accommodated in Mike's flat where the sessions were held. The weekly forum had a loose format. A topic is up for discussion and somebody is assigned to facilitate. A usually very lively sharing sessions follow. And then the socials come next. Some would bring food, others would prefer to do hush-hush chats in the corner, a few would request to be introduced formally to the newcomers, several would sometimes run to the pizza parlor at the corner for more privacy, while the rest would serve as gracious hosts. It was a weekly dose of learning new things, knowing more people, gaining additional friends, and the endless possibility of bumping into someone romantically.
I miss those friends. They have made my initial working life in the city endurable. I have to credit them for helping me sort some personal issues in the past and for making it easier for me to see the world so to speak. Some of the nicest people I know I met in that group.
Unfortunately, I don't see much of them anymore. M. has been assigned in Bangkok for several years already which is good because his partner is from there. F. has remained single eversince he broke up with A., who has since migrated to the US and is flying Southwest as its first Filipino cabin crew. M. has moved back to his island province of Marinduque like S. who gave up a budding media career in the city in favor of less stressful work in his hometown. R. is still with the same bank like N. who's still with the same work. Im sad that the few of us regular attendees who are still here in Manila have completely lost touch with each other. Except for a few whom I still see albeit very seldom.
Getting near 30 is like hitting red in a traffic light. We do a quick check on the
how fast we're driving, probe left and right, feel the brakes, then stop. It's somehow similar when most of us get past this stage. We stop all of a sudden and look around ourselves trying to find out if we really have friends or, if we do, to determine what kind of friends we keep and the depths of relationships we have with them.
I'm deeply envious of people my age who have friends they have managed to keep from way back, sometimes even from kindergarten. I wonder how it feels.
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