The quarter-life crisis

I met both Neyney and Miles 15 long years ago at what was then the Institute of Mass Communication of the UP. Looking back, I never would have imagined that they would turn out to be my oldest and best friends in the world. Rene Guevara waltzed into my Comm 100 class one morning and then never showed up again, while I had a strange dream about a major catfight with Mayleen Po, who was in my radio performance class. But somehow we all managed to hook up with a bunch of other people through a college organization and together spent an inordinate amount of time and a great part of our allowances

going through the process of growing up (which inevitably involved a lot of throwing up; but then again some things never change).

Graduation came and went, paths started to diverge, people started to drift apart. Our group managed to stick together and maintain contact for a while, but the exigencies of career and domestic responsibilities began to take their toll. Reunions started to become few and far between, foreign shores beckoned many of us, and I went to law school where I met a whole new breed of strange individuals I would eventually call my friends. Through it all, only a handful of people remained a constant in my life – the anchors that refused to set me adrift in the sea of certioraris and habeas corpuses, providing me with the unflagging

reassurance that, at least while they were in my life, I would never become a humorless, Latin-spouting, hard-accented legal automaton.

A few more years passed, and then there were three. We once had a shallow theory that ours was a friendship by default: we were the only single ones left who were ready, willing, and able to go out of town and/or get smashed at the drop of a hat. But the real depths of our relationship are not easily explained away by that least common denominator, especially since Miles is now the proud mother of our godchild Isabella. When we were first beginning to build the foundation of friendship with each other as individuals, as opposed to just being members of the same big group, we naturally gravitated towards each other. We

enjoyed each other’s company, we were able to talk to each other freely and openly, and, to this day, the complexities of adult responsibility and the presence of relatively newer friends in the circle notwithstanding, we still do. Through the last decade and a half, we literally grew up together, held each other’s hands through various romantic relationships (or lack thereof), laughed, cried, yelled, screamed with and at each other, even lived together (long story). And still we’ve remained the best of friends, a

fact that we openly recognize and appreciate especially at this stage in our lives when we start thinking about the things that are really important to us.

We share a common history that few other individuals can lay claim to. We’ve seen each other through teased Aqua Net-induced tsunami hair, Converse hi-tops and Dragonfly sneakers; through long out-of-town drives where one or the other would start throwing up in the car or shouting drunken invectives at innocent motorists; through career debacles and major upheavals in our professional lives; through girlfriends and boyfriends and everything else remotely resembling a relationship; through long, interesting conversations on life and death, love and hate; and through moments of silence where the comfort of each other’s company was enough.

We know each other’s secrets, we’ve cheered each other’s little triumphs. Miles and I were there to applaud when Neyney received a Gawad CCP award for one of his experimental films, and willingly allowed ourselves to be his guinea sea-pigs when he junked his day job to become a dive instructor. Neyney and I have been there to provide Miles with a constant supply of tissues to wipe her tears of joy and sorrow or, er, when the occasion calls for it, regurgitation, and to hold Isabella (who fortunately hasn’t regurgitated on any of us yet) should Mommy, Daddy, or Yaya be indisposed. And Miles and Neyney, even worse than my own parents, are so proud of my fortuitous standing in the 1994 Bar that, seven years later, they preface all

introductions with "This is my friend Honey, she placed ** in the Bar Exams!"

Sometimes we hit a few snags along the way, but luckily nothing major thus far. There’s even a certain degree of childish possessiveness of each other that we share and acknowledge, although we realize all too well that no matter whoever new friend or lover may come into our lives will hardly change what the three of us already have. And somehow even that creates a refreshing challenge to the relationship, because at the end of the day, just like family, we always seem to be there for each other, no matter what.

I recently heard someone say that you are judged by the people you surround yourself with, and oftentimes, you eventually become "how" if not what they are. In my last conversation with Neyney, we had a long discussion about superficial relationships you enter into in the course of daily social life, and how much more you begin to appreciate the deeper, stronger bonds you’ve maintained with the people who really know who you are and who love you just the same, warts, worst foot forward, and all. And just last night, Miles paraphrased an old adage, saying that "if I have friends like these, I might not be so bad after all." Miles and Ney took the words right out of my heart, which is not at all surprising, since they’ve occupied a major part of it for the last decade and a half. I just thought that this particular Halloween weekend, one of the few the three of us are spending apart, that they’d like to hear it.