Karen
I met Karen when we were high school freshmen. Our group of friends lunched together daily, communicated between classes through a shared logbook/group journal filled with code names, funny stuff and musings, spent hours on the telephone talking about everything and nothing, went to each other's houses, and went out together after quarterly exams. They were my anchors after my dad died, amidst feeling unmoored in the middle of the sea of the shared struggle that is navigating adolescence in a private Catholic girls' school.
In the summers, Karen and I spent even more time together: we took the summer acting workshop in Shangri-La, and in the following year, tennis lessons. We bonded over MTV, My So-Called Life, Mad Magazine, and alternative rock, but she had her Smashing Pumpkins and I had my Weezer.
After high school, we went on to the same college, albeit taking different courses. Those years were a blur to me, but she cast me in her film thesis project before she graduated.
We lined up for films and peoplewatched at Cine Europa and other filmfests. She got into the local indiepop scene, took me to Buzz Nights at Mayric's, and introduced me to the friends she made there. This time, our music was Colour Contest, Belle and Sebastian, Girlfrendo, and Stars. I in turn introduced her to my group of IRC friends, and my closest buddy became her first boyfriend, who visited Manila and stayed with her. We both also became active in PinoyExchange, LiveJournal, and all sorts of early iterations of online presences before she went on to throw herself into blogging and social media.
Our lives were entwined until they weren't. Nagkatampuhan. Nagkasakitan. 💔
We didn't talk for nearly two decades. It feels like a lifetime ago. We only got back in touch recently, though I would hear about her from time to time through mutual friends.
Karen has always been fierce, opinionated, outspoken, and brave. I was the timorous one and admired her for keenly knowing how she felt and openly expressing it. She thought she was socially awkward, but she always had a knack of making friends with interesting people. She easily developed crushes and declared them boldly. She had a thing for fashion and her outfits were always on point and well-suited to her personality and physicality. She laughed long and hard at things that amused her, and she was surprisingly easily amused. But she had a very low tolerance for bullshit, and didn't take anything sitting down. She could be brash, but it both hid and revealed a sensitive and vulnerable side to her. And while I didn't know if I could be close to her again after our falling out, I was glad that we still independently grew to have shared interests in board games and horror, and that she seemed to have found her tribe: people who genuinely cared for her and loved her, and certainly people who appreciated her for who she was. Is.
It feels bittersweet that in our last conversation, she said that I always was a friend even though we were apart. I'm glad I at least got to tell her then that I was grateful for her friendship throughout our younger years, and how good of a friend she was when she helped me deal with my depression despite also struggling with her own.
They say that friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I thought that we were friends for a season and that was that, but connecting again after so long felt like we were maybe on track for that latter category after all. I just didn't think that your lifetime would be so short, my friend. It's too soon.
Paalam, Karen. I hope you are in a better place, free of pain and full of light and love