I was there

…when my friend would sneak out of the hotel room we were billeted for a training we were documenting to meet him downstairs. His excuse was that he could not sleep… he had to see her…

…when she would cut off a rendezvous with friends who are home for the holidays just because he had already arrived to whisk her away…

…on a number of occasions as she pointed out to me the “portrait” of them he made which he labeled, “soulmates.” I even reluctantly pose for another “portrait” since he told me he wanted to transform his front yard into her “playground” bearing some of the “portraits” of the persons she loved…

…to share her happiness as she relates how he would come by her house in the middle of the night just because he could not bear sleeping without her…

…as she struggled with the difficulty of being apart with him as well. Of having to sneak back to her parents’ house in the middle of the night and risking a good scolding in the morning. I was one of the few persons she texted when she finally made the decision to move out of her parents’ house just to move in with him.

…there when she finally gave birth to their daughter…

They were not some love-struck, do-not-know-any-better, naive teen-agers then. They were both twenty-seven years old. Probably not old enough to know everything about relationships but not too young either to not know what they were getting themselves into…

So it hurts me now to have some third person label the relationship as just some “f****ng frenzy.” I would very much like to believe it was much deeper than that…

I am not angry at the person who dismissed the relationship as just that. I just thought she does not know any better. But I am definitely angry… Because I know somewhere along the way a “story” have been told in such a manner that made her view the relationship as such I am most angry at the very person whom my friend have entrusted a big part of her life to.

Because you see, I was there too when he started to change… I was there when he treated her badly while she was still pregnant… I was there when she had to struggle to pick up the pieces again and start her life anew… I was there as she struggle to continue establishing some semblance of relationship with him just for the sake of their daughter… I may not have been really there for the most part but I was there and have seen enough and felt enough…

And she’s struggling even now… and it pains me to have other women dismiss other women’s experiences as some kind of folly… we are women…. And by that we should have known any better… not to make any judgment… not to make rash statements about someone else’s experiences… I know there was probably no malice when the thing was said… but words have energy you see… they have meanings that no amount of subtlety could ever change what they mean…

I felt the pain for my friend, even shed a tear for her. I felt myself shaken to the very core, and was even shaking physically because of it. I was that affected. I asked myself why did I have to be there to hear all of that? What for? Am I suppose to help her out in some way? Is she asking for clarity now, for some definition of sorts and I had to hear all of that just to gain another person’s perspective?

I am never one for meddling with other person’s affairs. I have enough troubles of my own. And besides, what wisdom could I possibly offer when I am just an outsider looking in and not the very one involved? That is why I am also very careful about giving in my opinion or volunteering my views on anything. Because I feel I am never in the position to do so… unless if it concerns my own affairs… my own concerns…

Ah friend, I feel for you. If I am this hurt, I could only imagine how it must have been for you… Ah… all is well… no matter how it may seem differently at times…..