Part II: 8 years as best of friends

Our friendship have survived a lot of trials. Here are some that I remember and [probably] the major ones:

1. Big question mark- 'mag- bestfriend sila???? Duh!' many have raised their eyebrows on us and gossiped behind our back. I didn't know how we survived it. Maybe the 'overwhelming school activities' plus the emergence of intimate relationships helped take away their eyes on us.

2. His exes- This was one of the major challenges we had. All of his ex- girlfriends since junior high were our major headache. It wasn't a new scenario that a girlfriend gets jealous of her boyfriend's girl- best friend. My policy was never to be attached to any of his girls because I knew that later on they would just use me as a 'bridge' or an arbiter in their fights. I wanted his relationships to be his own thing. It was alright with me to give him advice whenever he wanted it. That was the only role I wanted to play in his love life. Period. My policy caused a huge misinterpretation on the part of his exes. It was not surprising if they hated me. Our best friend- relationship has caused them so much jealousy that became the root of their major fights and caused us to abstain ourselves from hanging out together (even talking to each other) to please his girlfriend[s].

3. I left him- for college. For four years, I stayed and studied in Manila. He studied in U.P. Diliman. We were in different cities and one hell of a big traffic away from each other. He managed to visit me a couple of times though, amidst the traffic and his paranoid girlfriend. As the years passed, our meeting became infrequent. Phone calls and text messages became fewer and fewer. We still tried to be there for each other but those times were the times we knew no one will better understood the situation than us. I must admit I made a lot of friends in college whom I have shared a lot of things I wasn't able to share with him. Maybe that was also his case. We drifted apart but we never forget.

4. He was the one who broke my heart. It was first year college. One night he gave me a call in the dorm. He just told me my long time M.U. was in love with someone else and that someone was his girlfriend (she was also a friend of mine before). The news itself cut down deep. How he said it made it more painful. He was harsh and cold. Until this moment, I do not know where he's coming from at that point. Forgiving him was not easy. It took a while before I finally find it in my heart to let go of that