Chie-Chay

I sit here now with a heavy heart knowing I've set aside doing something really important again... What was the excuse? I was busy preparing for a training at work... I was overtaken by "familial obligations" yet again... Both "excuses" sound plausible enough to me... They are after all equally important. And yet, why do I feel so empty at the moment? Why do I feel as if I did not try my best hard enough to do that which needed to be done?

An old friend is on her way to the airport... to seek out greener pastures... perhaps to go chase her dreams and to find herself...

Luchie is a dear, old "kababata." We practically grew up together. I couldn't count the Christmases and the New Years we've spent crouching at their veranda or by their doorstep exchanging gifts and catching up on things. There were a few years of that spent lamenting about our old loves haha! At that time we were both trying our best to get over our...err... first loves :) We were so young then, so naive. We thought childhood flames are meant to last forever. What do we know about relationships then? Oh well, but they were "great" loves... so pure and innocent... Something that hinges on "magic" and "happily-ever-afters..."

Over the years, I guess we slowly drifted apart... We pursued different careers and each were equally time consuming. There were times we'd missed each other by mere days. I'll be in Manila just when she's about to go back to Davao. Or that she'd be in Iloilo or Cebu three weeks ahead of my own schedule... Yet, somehow, we have managed to keep in touch every now and then. Sometimes out of the blue, we'll text each other and arrange to do our "grocerying" together, or have both our hair done as we both share a hairdresser.

There was a time when I managed to tag her along during a weekend trip to Tudaya. It was a very tiring trek and something she is not used to doing at all -- riding on a truck loaded with vegetables, trudging through mud, even almost falling off a cliff (I still thank God and our angels for sparing her that fall upto now) -- but she gamely did all the things that my friends and I did.

I guess we really just stopped seeing each other that often when I had given birth to Baby. I rarely had enough time to go out then. And I suspect she had been busy with a "new" relationship at that time as well. I let her be... I could very well understand that part. I had also been real "preoccupied" during my three-year long relationship with Bolo.

When I learned that she is leaving, I had fully intended to spend some time with her if only to catch up a little and to give her the "Traveler's Prayer Book" I have been eying for some time at a local bookstore... I just felt that she needed it, although we haven't really had the chance to talk about how she is lately. Yet again, work and other things intervened... or so I try to tell myself to quell the heavy feeling I feel inside...

I know Luchie well, even if we don't get to talk that much lately. Without her detailing to me everything, I know from the little bits she told me, what she must have been going through the past year. And my heart reaches out to her. Right now I'm longing for the times when we were both so young and so idealistic, discussing about how life and relationships should be. I missed the times we would spend hours dissecting the works of Anne Rice and eventually that of Paolo Coelho... Life was so much simpler then, much less complicated...

So long Chichay :) I'm sure during those times we've spent talking we've never really realized that life would turn out to be the way it had now... Yet looking back, it wasn't really that bad huh? We turn out pretty okay... You and I had to beat some odds through college. I've seen how you worked so hard even if the demands of your work had started to become unbearable... So I'm sure there is nothing left but for you to reap on all the returns that is due you :) So never lose faith. I'm sure the best is yet to come. Good luck, friend. Am praying for you.