I know, I know, I’ve gone significantly incognito—well, from this space anyway. It’s been months since I’ve had this exercise and while I’ve been meaning to sit down and write something, err, life’s been busier lately. And thank goodness too, because otherwise I’d still be munching on my fingernails, wondering what the hell I’m doing here, and forever rethinking my so-called issues.
Yep, thank goodness for busier hands: I hit the anniversary year at working full-time, and I think I now can say, mum-mey, it’ll be okaaay. I’ve waited so long to get to this place that sometimes I have to blink back hard at the moment, stunned at how things are. A time and a place for everything; with everything happening only at the right time and place. There are times I feel I don’t deserve as much.
But that is not to say there isn’t a ruffle on my skirt; life would be utterly boring I s’pose if everything around me has been laden the way I fancy—then there’d be no purpose, no meaning. A mess or two, that I’ve had, always had, I guess it’s just how life challenges us to dig deeper and thus emerge stronger. And bigger messes, I’ve spent many late nights for; the usual voices in my head arguing this and that, the crazies teasing me to let go, the sensibles praying I play the adult role a tad longer. Maybe I’ve come full circle, because mind you, of late, the mature me’s mostly prevailed.
I guess I do feel grateful to this new bunch of company I keep. I know, I know, it seems I’ve entrenched myself at work, and now have been rewarded with friendships I thoroughly enjoy and likely will keep for a long time. I missed having office girlfriends: crazy-fun ladies I’m with day in, day out that when they get to the level of knowing what’s bugging me better than my BFFs, I’m both happy and scared. Happy because thank goodness there’s someone there who gets me, and scared because I have separation anxiety issues. I invest so much in relationships that it sucks to see someone go. But as the mature me would now say: that’s just the way it is. So for now, I will just enjoy the moment.
Relish the warm hellos as we begin our day, with the usual, ‘can-you-believe-the-heat-slash-rain-slash-traffic-going-here,-have-you-eaten,-I-will-just-check-my-mail-(because-I-don’t-want-to-make-it-seem-I’m-more-excited-about-lunch),-and-then-I-will-follow’ spiel. Then, there’s lunch, and when you have good friends at work, lunch isn’t just plain lunch: lunch is a recap of the movie Emz saw last night and the other one Lau’s hoping to see this weekend and the punch line that Sam thought was funny though not quite but she giggles so infectiously that Emz and Lau and I and everyone else we’re with would laugh anyways. This is how we kick-off our day, with seemingly nonsensical but utterly integral conversations that I look forward to. I s’pose for me it provides the necessary distraction, freeing the mind a bit, opening it up that it peaks just so, and then it’s ready to zero in, and focus, as I get down to work.
And while the challenges at work—real or imagined—can put quite a stress with a capital S, it’s uhm-mazing to be in the company of girls who sorta think like me but are not be afraid to disagree with me; folks I can count on to be compassionately judgmental because they know I can hack it; ladies I can depend on work-wise, and perhaps, even beyond. Thankful, yes I am.
Ah but oh yes my thoughts again wander—are my new friends in exchange for the one I’m also losing? Of late I discovered that I have been deemed a bad friend, capable of making those close to me to feel hurt. It’s a realization that stung because I know how awful it is to face the truth, especially fundamental truths I thought I knew about myself. Here I was thinking I was great friend, that despite all my flaws, they would stick by me, inasmuch as I’ve stuck with them, but that belief has been debunked by one, two, three people who have preferred to excuse themselves from my company. There is no pride in that statement. It tastes awful, as humble pie should be.
So here I am yet again at another crossroad, with old friends whom I long to be with, whom I sorely miss, but have left me seemingly for good, and new ones, who took me in with their warm hugs and ever-patient ears, offering me both the quiet and the loud that I need. At another turn in the road, but it’s all good; good is what I kinda need right now. Please, let me just linger here for a while.
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Pictured: Barhopping in BGC
Finally Dee 