Friends Forever!
"Friends Forever!" Page after page, person after person had written these two words in the notebook I had passed around to my batchmates days before graduation. It was an idea I had snagged from one of my upperclassmen friends a couple of years before. The idea was to get my friends leave simple notes of gratitude and recall our days of bliss together. It was just an ordinary 3×5 notebook with blank pages, Nick Carter’s headshot on the front cover and a short biography on the back. Just one look at it, you’d have an idea of how smitten I was with the guy =) Today, whenever I feel the urge to reminisce on my days as a high schooler, I pick up that notebook from my pile of old journals in a box I had covered in gift wrapper and read what my classmates have written. Many of them are my good friends, some are just acquaintances who were around when I asked someone else to write something in. I can’t really call it a scrapbook of sorts, but a number of those who graced its pages had a ball cutesying up the pages and being as creative as they could be - coloring the pages, stamping images, sticking stickers, or pasting pictures that depict friendship.
I am still saddened by the fact that it is only halfway filled and not cover to cover because I simply ran out of time. Even Ronald didn’t bother writing in it for the simple reason that he felt he was never gonna see me again. We were, afterall, going to go to the same school the next year. A number of good friends also have not written anything. It was difficult to pass the notebook around because we weren’t in the same classrooms and sometimes I feared it would get lost. My classroom was also on the other side of campus while the rest of the seniors were in the main building for seniors across the quadrangle. There were over 500 students in our graduating class, many of them I only know by name. Nevertheless, a smile is brought to my lips whenever I do get to read the messages because of the many nice things they had to say.
Some messages are written in a huff with a simple "Thanks for treating me as one of your friends" or "Stay the same," while some others take up two or more pages telling me how much our friendship means to them and reminding me of the good ole times we shared. At the end of many of these notes I read "Friends Forever." No matter how short the time we spent together, many remind me that we will remain friends forever.
As I sat on my bed one afternoon thumbing through each page, I wondered if my classmates still remembered what they had written me five years ago. I wondered if they still held in their hearts the promise of our forever friendship. I have maintained contact with a few of these same people and I am glad that we are still friends. For some, I still wonder if we were face to face, would the feeling be the same? Would we be able to relive our friendship from high school once we meet each other in the present? As we are separated by oceans and a hundred miles today, it isn’t the same; nevertheless, we catch up from time to time with the help of cyberspace.
Oftentimes, when I read these words together, Vitamin C’s song rings in my head. I remember when that song came out when I was in my Freshman year in college, I wished it had come out the year my batch graduated from high school. The chorus chants:
As we go on
We remember all the times we had together
And as our lives change, come whatever
We will still be friends forever
Even the verses mean something equally tearjerking. Whenever I hear that song, I make a silent prayer hoping that my friends from high school are safe and doing well with their lives. As cheeseballsy as that may sound, I really do remember high school with that song.
Forever. Some cynics (yes, to me they are cynics) believe nothing lasts forever. I think there is such a thing. Call me sentimentally naive, but I really believe in the concept of forever. There are things in this world (or outworldly) that can last eternally. There are those that escape all sense of time, such as friendship and love. And because I do love my friends, these two go hand in hand.
But really, how do we know when our friendship fulfills its promise? How do we know it has reached forever when we ourselves do not last forever? My grandma tells me that it is by simply keeping in touch, just keeping the communication going. If you lost touch with friends because of distance and going on separate paths, that doesn’t mean the friendship is now void. Like they say, "Friendship can stand the test of time." As long as no ill-feelings, jealousies, and fights are involved, a friendship is still a friendship. We just hope that that whenever we cross paths with these friends in the future it would be as if no years, distance, and forgetfulness has come in between.
Some things may change. We may find out we have lesser things in common, such as what I found out when I reconnected with some of my friends, or we may form a new friendship with a mere rediscovered acquaintance from years before, or they just forgot who you are completely. Either way, those "true friends" are who will remain the same - they’ll still be there for you through thick and thin, no matter how many differences you now have. And if those who promised forever have been genuine to that friendship formed years before, then you can guarantee yourself a friend forever.
