In the spirit of Christmas, I suppose it’s time to just swallow my pride and spit it all out.

I never really cared much for the people in my high school barkada. They’re my friends, yes, that’s a given, but for much of my life they’ve been monuments of my not so great high school life rather than actual people I love.

Which could probably explain why I haven’t made much of an effort to see them as often as they want, only meeting them whenever it was “convenient”. I jumped in and out of their lives whenever I felt like it, each time thinking that I wasn’t really missing anything. One friend actually explained my absence to a clueless boyfriend by saying that I had been an OFW in Dubai.

Come to think of it, I barely know anything about these so-called friends of mine.

Rare meetings serve as some sort of catch-up point for me, where I receive updates of their lives thus far. The updates are always miles long because I’m never around, I’m never the friend to call – much more like a totem than an actual friend at all.

The point, though, is that I’ve never really given them much thought. They’ve always been just there. I never figured them for anything more than people from my high school that I’ve known all my life – except that I never really knew them at all.

Thus far it’s all been rather superficial. Shared memories, but nothing more.

Except that a few days ago I realized we had much more in common than I gave them credit for.

I’ve been living my life thinking that no one could understand me exactly. Hell, not even my sisters get me. At 23, I still have so much unreleased angst that I’ve taken to concealing and – at times – blogging it just to stay as sane as possible. A few hours of talking and non-stop eating, though, made me realize that I’ve had the people I needed all my life, except that I was too stupid to realize it. I was looking too far forward to realize that I didn’t have to be all ronin and that I had actual human friends.

They’ve been with me all the time, but I’ve been such an ass that it took me four years of college and two years more to get it. All along they’ve been my friends, except that I wasn’t a friend enough to see it.

Yes, sheer stupidity.

I know this isn’t much of an apology, or much of anything at all for that matter. In any case, at least I’ve grown some sort of brain this Christmas to realize that there are people I owe friendship to.

I’m not trying to be melodramatic this Christmas.

Just stating the facts, ma’am.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 at 8:34 pm and is filed under relationships, school. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.