Alias A and I... Nine Years Later

Nine years ago, I wrote a blog post about a girl who I used to love back in high school. That was in 2011 and a lot has change as of the time I’m writing this.

Alias A and I graduated from high school and that’s when our paths separated. I can still remember our last interaction with each other.

It was only a few days before the graduation and I asked for her wallet sized graduation photo. During those times, the company handling the photography not only offers the large, full-fledged graduation portrait, but they also give several wallet sized of them to the graduates. Some keep these photos for themselves while others write small personal letters behind them for their friends to receive. Now it’s important to know that me and A are not that close. We’re not best friends, we didn’t date (torpe kasi ako), and we also didn’t talk that much. She’s just one of those people who you consider as a friend because both of you share the same classroom for more than eight hours and five times in a week (at least in our third year of high school IIRC).

I think I texted her when I asked for that graduation photo letter. She only got a limited amount of them, but I’m pretty happy that she’s willing to give one and write for me.

Probably two days or a day before the graduation, we met at the far right side of the Sta. Elena High School building. It was newly constructed back then and everything about it looked pretty. She saw me sitting on one of the steps of the side stairs and we just exchanged photos. Mine also had a personal letter behind it. We conversed for a few minutes. Talked about things that I cannot remember then exchanged our last, physical goodbyes. It was bittersweet three years later since buying plane tickets to America made me realized I will never see her in person again, at least in the near future.

Actually, some part of me right now wants to believe we took a photo together on graduation day because I think I had a photo of me and her best friend on the same day...?

Anyways... on the year 2017. We reconnected via Facebook. Well she’s been my Facebook friend for several years already, but this time we exchanged messages after the separation and years of lessons and hardships about life. We talked like regular adults. No “Hey remember the time when you used to be my crush?” There was no flirting (I’m a flirty dude), no giving hints of attractiveness... nothing.

We just talked about religion and life after living in the Philippines because she migrated to an English-speaking country almost the same time I migrated to the US. We shared our own struggles about living in something that’s foreign, we talked about our mutual friends who we haven’t talked to for years, and we also shared stories how we bled our noses by English-spokening.

I eventually studied and practiced a different faith and A was able to guide me through that process. This helped with strengthening our bond with each other and I was able to slightly build a small relationship with her sibling and best friend too (via some memes and jokes of course). From this point, I realized that my relationship with A should’ve begun with a proper friendship back in high school. She’s still that “nice, cute, smart” girl from my teen days, but now she’s more matured. From the posts that I can see from her and from the way she talks through those messages in Messenger, she puts God first. The same thing can be also said with the family surrounding her, blood or not blood-related. This makes me want to be a better person to anyone and I just can’t believe that someone I met nine years ago will continue to influence my life for the better.

Yes, I still love her, but I love her as a friend... a sister. I know our feelings with each other isn’t mutual, I know she’ll think of me as just a friend, but I’m just thankful to God that He intertwined her life with mine in 2011. I’m praying I’ll meet her again in the future and share a friendship (not only online) that was supposed to exist nine years ago.