Beach House

I would be on the beach on a sunny day with a hut to chill and sleep. When caught in cloudy or emo-mad weather, I can delay leaving and maybe hit the cold water for a skinny dip. I would thrive with anything there because the view is all for me, and the sand against my toe is therapy. It is the ultimate escape.

That same landscape never fails to remind me how small my worries are, especially in the face of the endless horizon and the voices of others already screaming into it.

In my twenties, I am lucky to have known people who ground me back just when my thoughts start to fly me away. They receive me despite the most random, warmest, or depressing news. Dealing with the sting of the breakup, knowing I had them to run to, was bearable. I was capable of navigating through all its madness, but my friends were ready on the side, filling me up with dopamine when I cried out all my supply. 

Art has been my best friend since grade school. We saw each other grow and take interest and ambitions in life from grade school in Dulag, a rural community in Butuan where we spent our formative years up to high school, then college and the employment world. Despite not seeing each other for almost 5 years, as I finished college in Leyte, we remained committed to the friendship, high or low times, and especially when what we only wanted was as simple as a 20-peso ice cream at 7-Eleven, chilling out the disappointment of young adulthood.  

He taught me how to drive a motorcycle before I mastered it in Siargao and pushed me to cook—convinced that even my blandest dishes could improve with practice and critique. He knows most of the nitty-gritty of my romances. Importantly, he can slap a piece of advice to my face, sharp enough for my awakening.

The local and senatorial election is tomorrow. Last night, he arrived in Butuan from Davao, where he is based for work, before travelling to Malimono this morning to vote. Around 8 last night, we toured the food bazaar at the riverside boardwalk in time for the Balangay Festival. We enjoyed the place and the simple food. But I enjoyed his company more because I always felt quite confident with him, like a high schooler: young and less conscious about understanding everything, just eating ice cream. 

While finishing the meal during breakfast earlier, we talked about deleting photos of the ex. His opinion is to save them because someday I might look at them again and gauge how far I have moved on based on gratitude for the experience. That was never my plan, which involved archiving all the traces in a folder named “Delete When Ready.” But I might consider that. It's been nine months. Compared to the early days, we only talk about the ache randomly now. If we do, the theme is more on what I gained from the connection that stopped breathing one day.

With Art, I could strip my maturity cloak and be my most emotional self. With my other friends, Kuya Porce and Mel, I balance the tendency to seek advice and make it less about me. We talk about social issues, business ventures, and the yin and yang of work and life over coffee or food for our random monthly/quarterly meetings. 

Kuya Porce and Mel are among the first few people I told when my relationship started hitting the rocks in June last year. Kuya Porce probably saw it in my demeanor that weekend because he asked me what was wrong outright. I was fresh from the first fallout. Sporting my favorite powder blue polo shirt for some power did not conceal what weighed me down. 

We seek people who are good listeners. But we also want to talk to those who have experienced and survived what currently haunts us. Kuya Porce was that person. He shared a similar experience for me to understand that feeling perplexed by the situation was normal as the night giving way to daylight.

Kuya has a clever sense of humor. But he is serious to the core and does not hide pain when it needs telling in a big brother voice, always. His major breakup stung him for years, he shared. But he has moved on with life. That was a big hope for me.

Mel, completing our trio, is the most reserved and serious. He starts the list of the kindest people I know, if I had to make one. Extending help is Mel's sixth sense. He speaks with a natural, wise tone, similar to Kuya Porce. But he neutralizes our tendency to take absurd routes, especially in business plans. 

We thrive as good friends because we pick up our introverted spirits and ride along when we all hit our peak ambiversion. As the youngest in the group, I take it as a privilege to have found brothers in the two, who know more about life beyond textbooks than I do. 

I have a long list of “I used to believe” and for this instance it is, I used to believe that I would not rely much on other people for comfort and emotional recovery. But on the side of the same beach lot I run to mentally when my emotions hunt me, there is a house that I still cannot afford but afforded by my core friends. That beach house has been my second home.

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Excerpt from Passion Project II