Best friend

I opened my Facebook to check out what memory I have for today. Actually when my brain is not in the mood to think about a particular topic to share, I check either my gallery of photos or my memories on Facebook. However I do not have much photos on my phone right now which I can talk about so I am left with the latter option. When I opened my Facebook, I instantly saw a short clip from my brother's wedding from 8 years ago where my girl friends and I were posing for a photo book. You have read that right. It was for a photo flip book and not a photo booth. In photo booths we just get a single copy with 3 or 4 shots while in photo book, it is like a mini booklet that had captured everything that you did in less than 10 seconds. I knew right away what the post was about but I still decided to click "See more memories". For this day I had 2 posts, the first one was from 6 years ago and the other was from 3 years ago. Both posts were about "national best friend day". This is just a brief introduction or somewhat appreciation post for my friends. I would understand if you will not read it.

June 8 is national best friend day and because Philippines is ahead of few hours in United States my posts were posted during June 9. Do you have a best friend? Since when have you been friends? Honestly I do not know whether the people whom I consider as my best friends also think of me as their best friend. All I know is that we have been friends for almost 2 decades (except for my friend A because we have been friends for 3 decades). We have shared a lot of laughters and tears. We have been through each ones ups and downs. We have supported each other through the years. We have shared a lot of achievements and secrets together but we never called each other "bes", "best", "besh", "beshies" or even "BFFs" because honestly we do not really like those terms. Whether they consider me as their best friend or not, I know that we are true to each other and that our friendship will still remain until our hair turns into grey, bones become brittle and our youthful skin fades.

I do not know if I have told the story about my high school friends in my part 1 or part 2 Friends article. We are 10 in our group but only 4 of us have been close even when we separated after high school. My brother even called us JAMP which are the first letter of our names because we were always together every weekend. Me together with A and P just live few kmeters away from each other while M is the sister of my brother's girlfriend who is my sister-in-law now. And that is how the 4 of us became super close.

When A and I were already working, one of our friends contacted us and would join us whenever the four of us would get together but after years of bonding together, she migrated to Canada. I think it was only in 2014 when we got to reunite with 2 of our other high school friends and we have been constantly keeping in touch by seeing every month and random calls and texts to each other. From 4 we became 6 and our friend who is a flight attendant would sometimes join us if her schedule is free. As for the remaining 3, 2 of them are already living abroad however I do not have any updates with 1 of our friends.

Our friendship is not perfect as we also experienced having petty fights before but I am just happy that we have passed all of those and that our friendship has been built with a lot of trust, love, appreciation and care. I cannot say that there would not be any misunderstandings between all of us in the future but I just hope that we will get through with whatever it is. Honestly, I am drafting an article about nation friendship day but I have not greeted my friends yet or vice versa. LOL. But I know that we all have busy lives and we have already surpassed that being clingy, being childish and even being jealous type of a friend. We have matured over the years and what matters is that we know in our hearts that we are all special to each other.

If there is one bonding that I wish we would do as a group, I would like all of us to travel even in 1 country outside the Philippines. They say that you will most certainly get to know the person more if you have already travelled with them outside your country of residence. I do not if it is true or how it is related with friendship but it is one thing that we have not really tried. Have you travelled with your friend/s? How was the experience?

Having a friend whom I can share my life with is like having a sister or a brother. I have always wanted to have a sister with whom I can share anything especially when it comes to the problems of the heart. I cannot share it with my mom because of her high standards when it comes to having a boyfriend. I also cannot share it with my brother because we do not have that kind of closeness. We are close but we do not talk about our love life. I am just thankful that I have my high school and college friends, friends from work and my new found virtual friends with whom I can share some of my dramas. Happy national best friend day to you and your best friends!

Be grateful for friends who always have your back. Do not let your insecurities ruin a good friendship.