Full Circle

It's Halloween again.

Around this time last year, I was trekking up Mt. Banahaw with my friend Maan, trying my very best not to slip on the rocks. I remember how I almost drowned in a batis there because I didn't know how to swim.

There, I became friends with W., one of the co-owners of Kinabuhayan Cafe, where Maan and I stayed during the All Saints' Day holidays. He was a smart, funny, bald mountain man who was almost 30 years my senior. There was a tattoo of a dragon sprawled on his back, and when he walked around barefoot in his cafe, wearing nothing but his malong, he radiated spiritual strength and virility. At the time, he liked to smoke (though he swore he'd quit by the beginning of 2005, and as far as I know, he still hasn't been able to kick the habit). He was full of stories, of his 20 years in Sweden, his 5 years in Paris, and his psychotically jealous ex-wife. By the time we got back to Manila, I thought I was utterly, completely in love with him. The delirium passed after a week, thankfully, when I met another boy, O., a young, passionate violinist (who would eventually break my heart again and again, but that is another story). W. and I are still good friends, and that is why I am going back again this year.

I've come full circle. Last year, when we went there, Maan was still doing call center work, I was only writing freelance, and I was still hung up on another pseudo-relationship I'd had with some loser whose face I now shudder to remember.

Now, things have totally changed: Maan is in UP Law, I love my meaningful, prestigious work with the National Book Store Foundation, Inc., I'm finally writing my book, and I'm learning how to love myself again.

Friends, all we really need is time.

And love, love, love.