Between Lovers And Friends

I'd rather not.

I was enjoying my strawberry gelato with a friend yesterday, and somehow the topic of conversation geared towards that of friends and lovers. Now this particular friend of mine is somewhat of the so-called ladies’ man. When I asked him on why he couldn't seem to bring himself to date one of his MANY lady friends, he enumerated several factors which he considers; bottom line: he'd rather not. One main reason he had in mind is that he's afraid to lose the friendship. "But some of the best love stories started out with friendship...”

The conversation reminded of a guy I've been good friends with since freshman year in college. He and I immediately hit it off as really good friends - we were bound to be classmates since senior year (Ours was a block section, you see.), we both live in Cavite, he was also an only child like me, we had the same circle of friends, and everyone else were saying bagay daw kami. After a few months since knowing him, I developed this huge crush on the dude, but opted to remain silent about it. Besides, he was making the moves on one of my close girlfriends so I just kept my little secret all to myself. Of course, that time it hurt like hell to see them together during lunch and vacant hours. Still I remained steadfast on being a good friend to both. A couple of years passed (And so did my feelings for the guy.) and it was senior year. For some reason it didn't work out for my girlfriend and the guy, then he had another girlfriend but eventually broke up after two years. I couldn't exactly pinpoint when and how, but somehow he and I got closer than we were ever before during the four years that we've been good friends. And so the inevitable happened - he confessed that he had fallen for me and pursued me, flowers and all. We eventually became a couple, and all our blockmates could say was "Sabi ko na nga ba dyan din yan papunta eh...” To cut the story short, while ours didn't last very long and didn't work out like we expected, I’ll always remember him as one of the sweetest guys I’ve met in this lifetime. I still have with me all the letters and memento he gave me from way back and every bit of it makes me smile with nostalgia. He's married now and has a beautiful little girl of his own. True, I've hurt him and for a while I was afraid that the hurt would consume the friendship we had. Still, it survived even through the years. We haven't seen each other for a couple of years now, but I know that if I ever bump into him one of these days, I’ll smile at seeing a good friend who I’ve missed dearly.

Moral of the story? Well, I guess friendship does not have to end where love between two people begins. I told a friend one night out of pure realization that if someone is to come along for me (In God's own time, of course.), I would want that person to be someone with whom I can be my 101% self - never needing to change who I really am, only wanting to be a much better version of me; a friend. After all, friendship is that which remains true when all else fail in spite of.