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Back in freshman year, I had a dream friend. He was an impossible dream because it was highly unlikely that we would have mutual friends. I studied in a school where I was the only one from my highschool and probably one of the few from my province. I wanted him to become my friend because I was really impressed with his writing. I was amazed at how he writes so eloquently in Filipino, much better than the best student writers I have met when I was still a highschool campus journalist. I read his work from one of the campus publication. His work got published because he won first prize for essay writing in Filipino. His work changed my whole view of how it is to write well. Ever since I read his article, I vowed to myself to practice writing and to do it well. He was my idol. I was his fan.

Fortunately, after several months, I realized that we were organization mates. We were both members of Matanglawin, the official student publication in Filipino of the Ateneo. For my first article in Matanglawin, I was lucky to have worked with two other fellow writers and him. I thought I grabbed the opportunity to know him then but we did not become close friends because we divided the work by pairing up and I got paired with another writer. I missed the chance when I was in sophomore year but the desire within me to become friends with this guy was never lost. He was my fellow writer. I was his organization mate.

We became good friends in junior year. Friendship, it just happened. He turned out to be very approachable. I did not have to create extra efforts to befriend him as he was naturally amiable. We would hang out everyday in the publication room. We would chat online every night. We would talk on Plurk all the time. We would go on lunch and dinner together. I would sometimes accompany him to attend to his personal matters and he would do the same. We would share secrets only the two of us know. We would travel places for our organization and take it as given that we would be bus seatmates. He would invite me to watch a movie but unfortunately the plans never pushed through. Some common friends labeled our relationship as “intimate” and we did not mind. I was happy with him and I assume he also was. There was a point in my life when if I were to rank my friends from top to bottom, he would occupy the first slot. I might have not been very significant to him but he became one of the most important friends I have from college. I asked him to write my write-up for the yearbook and he did it for me. He was my friend. I was his friend.

What happened was both a personal and social achievement. I got what I wanted- friendship. However, in the middle of the intimate conversations, I fell in love. I believe it was not absurd to fall for a friend. It happens often to different people from all walks of life. I kept it to myself for quite some time but common friends came to know about it after almost a year of keeping it to myself. I did not care too much about them knowing and about him knowing because I used to think he would understand because we were friends. I used to believe he would not take it against me and things would be the same because I never expected for something more than his friendship. I was perfectly satisfied with us being friends. He was my friend. I was his lover. I was his FRIEND.

As hopeless as a hopeless romantic, romance did not go my way. My first love turned out to be unrequited love. At first I did not mind primarily because I have never really dreamed of us loving each other as a couple. However, there was a point when my love transformed into love with the slight flavor of bitterness because as time went by, I was not only experiencing unrequited love but also unrequited friendship. We never talked about it. Not-being-friends-as-how-we-used-to-be, it just happened. I used to blame myself. Perhaps, had I not fallen for him, we could have been friends, nothing more and nothing less. I remembered a friend once advised me to not be bothered because friends do not break up as lovers do. I was his friend. I was his hopeless romantic trying to kill love for his friendship.

Deep in my heart was a realization that friends do not break up but they move apart. I tried my best to arrive at rationalizations to answer my questions questioning love, questions questioning friendship. Friendship is a human relationship governed by motion, constantly moving- moving towards, moving apart, moving away. One moves towards a prospective friend. When he realized I was falling, he moved away. We moved apart. In my deepest attempt to forgive myself, to understand him, and to forget, I cannot allow it to have a broken and bitter ending. While still governed by motion, I need to move forward. It was difficult I needed to kill love to salvage a friendship when the person on the other end does not want to be saved (or does not even care).

Up to this time I wonder how and when the friendship ended. It is trivial how one could be involved and not really know what is happening. Since we both graduated as batchmates, we no longer see each other everyday as part of the same organization. However, I firmly believe we would see each other again. Why not? According to Facebook, we are sharing 72 common friends. Compared to my humble beginning of having to dream from scratch, I could still dream an old dream and have these 72 possible ways to reach him. Who knows, my old dream might take me to a mysterious path and allow me to create a 73rd means to salvage a long lost friendship? I am his friend.