Thank you, Denise
After all that's been said and done on this blog, Denise and I are really very, very good friends. That I can now say with the utmost conviction.
I tried calling her last Sunday on her cellphone, and I asked her if she wanted to have dinner sometime this week. She agreed, so I made plans to get off work early tonight.
Braving the Friday night traffic, I swung by her Makati office and picked her up. It was so great seeing her again after so long. We proceeded to the Old Spaghetti House along Valero St. and in seconds we were talking like the long lost friends we were.
Like me, she's also in IT now, having quit from her old job at a major medical goods manufacturer, and like me she's also enjoying the company of her coworkers. We shared stories about supertyphoon Milenyo, homey houses and personal lives over eggplant parmigiana and spaghetti aglio olio.
It felt so refreshing to be as open as I could be with someone who already knew me very well. There was none of the frustrating repression I felt for the last couple of weeks. Here she was instead, laughing along with me, unafraid of being misunderstood because we knew we wouldn't be. We were mired in traffic when we left for her house, but we kept chatting and singing away to jazz songs.
After so many years, it was tonight that I finally realized had we ended up together in college, we wouldn't have agreed to see each other like this post-graduation. I realized just how valuable our friendship is to her and how she wanted to keep it this way, without undue stress.
I missed Denise a lot, and she missed me as well. I am so glad and grateful we had this chance to reconnect.
We should do this again, Den. If you need me, you know where to find me.
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