the man i met met a man

I met a man today. He told me that he met a man. The man he met used to be my man. Oh man…no man. I could have just as easily said oh sh*t, no sh*t, but that would disrupt the pattern I am trying to establish.

Patterns, I hate them. But what can I say, we are ruled by patterns. They make the world we live in less chaotic, but not less simple. See, it could have been simpler to say simpler, but there goes pattern… sometimes we don’t want them, but we surely need them.

I remember a text message I received years ago, quoting the book about a boy, it says: surely all men are islands, but some are island chains, underneath, they are connected. Well, I for sure would want to believe that all men are island chains. I would want to believe that we thrive because we meet people, we share our interests, and after all those, we respect our differences. But these are all rhetoric. I don’t want to be rhetorical. I want to be precise.

So, I’ll be precise.

I choose my friends. And my reason for choosing them varies. Sometimes because I like how they think, at other times because they like how I think. But point is I start with the basic assumption that there must be some form of common ground. After all who would want to celebrate birthdays with a bunch of warm bodies that would not know how many candles in the cake you’re blowing out, or who would want to drink a bottle or two of beer with parched mouths who do not speak the language you understand. I would not want to watch a movie I pay so dearly for only to be asked in the middle of a comedy whether we could have enjoyed it better watching a mushy and tragic sci-fi movie, if there is such a thing. Oh wait, star wars is a hit. There is such a thing.

It hurts badly therefore when your carefully hand picked friends still leave you. The goodbyes send you to brain busting, life changing searches. You search for reasons, meanings, and then later on scrap the answers and search again. You sometimes get lost in the process and wake up loosing yourself. Problem is, after the quality controlled, vacuum sealed, sterilized search for people who you want to share your life with, every once in a while you come across a mutant. More problems arise when you suddenly realized that the mutant that sprouted from your carefully controlled search is a mutant you have mutated with. A mutant you have learned to love. Every one loves a friend. If you do not love your friend, then you are no friends with that friend and you should simply save your time and close this window. Call the friend-you-do-not-love some other name. But don’t call that person friend. And stop reading this already!

Those of you, who have ever loved a friend and loose that friend, stay with me. We understand each other, and afterwards, call me, if we are not yet friends, we could build on this.

There are so many pains one encounters. You get bitten by a dog, it hurts. You tripped while you’re going to the canteen, the laughter from the spectators smarts, even more than the searing pain in your ankle. You love a friend, he dumps you. You think you’d die. It hurts more knowing you survived to feel the pain. You love a friend and leave him later on; you just don’t hurt, alone. You hurt the other too. That is pain multiplied. And anything that is related to math e.g. multiplication, division, etc, is just excruciating.

In the end, I can not say what friendship really is. I can say how painful it is to loose a friend though. And the pain is enough to make me understand that friendships are nourished, every day.

I am older now. I would want to hope not by age, but by experience. Sometimes however, hopes are just hopes. And as I look back on hopefully experiences, and not years, I see so many people that came and went and stayed. I see them, I see myself. I am marked by all the people I met, I came across with, I stumbled upon, I tripped, I obstructed. Everyone I embraced. The kid who steps inside a jeepney wiping shoes and begging for alms, the woman breastfeeding her child in the middle of a market, the grand dad bringing his apo to school, the father who teaches his child to cross the street, the teenager who buys a stick of Marlboro lights. But few I kept and walked with. They are my friends. I realized it doesn’t matter anymore if they said goodbye.