uncle van’s cabin

Remember the first time you saw me? You said I was wearing a hoodie looking somewhat lost and distracted. Well, you spotted a shy and lonely kid right away. You broke my walls. We hit it off that instant. Ours was a friendship I never expected to happen. I often saw you in the university with your skirt, bangles and piercings. Before we even met I even heard so much about you from Marvic and your other classmates. You were a campus figure, everyone seemed to just know you. I never told you this but when we started hanging out together, I was proud of myself. I was proud because I get to hang out with a COOL guy. I was an anti-social sophomore, then, trying so hard to fit in with the rest. So I’ve always thanked God for your friendship. But more than that I was proud that you valued my ideas, my thoughts, my idiosyncracies. You boosted me up and so I learned to appreciate myself, too.

You know me very well. In fact, you know me much better than my whole friends and family combined. You’ve seen it all. You’ve seen me in my painful rite of passage to adulthood. You bled and cried with me. You made fun of me but you loved me just the same. You were doing a one-man act.  You were my brother, my father, my friend, my mentor… I trusted you.

7 years. We’ve been really good friends for that long already. Ours was a symbiotic relationship, right? I’ve tried so hard to give, too. I’m sorry if I wasn’t there to listen when you had trouble with P. I was busy beating the deadlines in school. I’m sorry that I didn’t talk to you for several months already. You very well know the reason for that. I’m sorry that I sometimes cannot text back when you badly need someone to talk with. And most of all, I’m sorry that I can only give you my friendship.

I remember how well you tried to convince me to spend the New Year in your house. I know you pitied me for spending the new year by myself but you see, this is me. I take pride in my independence and freedom. You probably know just when our friendship started suffocating me. I just realized that it wasn’t healthy anymore. I felt being tied-down. You said things that are not worth repeating here. You wanted to cross the line and that’s one thing I cannot allow you to do.

I didn’t flinch when you revealed it to me. You are my friend. My best one at that. But I should have seen it coming. I should have just stopped there before it got worse.

Have I ever told you I love you? I do. I really do. But it’s not the kind of love in your definition. I know you love me too but it’s not the kind of love I can give you back.
I want to keep you as the person I’ve loved in my memory. Not the one I’ve started to dislike. No, I don’t hate you. I don’t want you to blame yourself. There’s nothing to blame.  Some things are just not worth keeping. It’s better that way.

I want you to move on. A scholarship abroad? Now, that’s something. Isn’t that what you’ve dreamed of? I’ve always admired you for just being yourself. I’ve always been your fan. I believe in you. You may not know it but I’ve learned so much from you.

I want you to keep me in your memory as that girl with the hoodie. Nothing more.
Let’s drop everything here. No need to look back. We’ve grown, we’ve loved, we’ve learned and that’s all that matters.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 10:48 pm and is filed under personally yours. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.