I wish Deichan would scold me again...

While rummaging through my old books last night, I came across my old and nearly tattered diary which I used to carry around when I was in high school. It was a pink hard-bound one, with the image of Barbie in different poses on the front and back cover. And on its first page was written, "To know the pain of too much tenderness." It was taken from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

I was hesitant to read the contents because for some odd reason, I find it embarrassing to read my own experiences. So what I did was scan through the entries until I found myself laughing hard. Some of the entries were really shallow, and really funny. I couldn't believe I've done such things but I wouldn't want to regret doing them anyway. So I continued reading and reading until I came to a page where I wrote the entry in red ink.

02 26 06

... Deyza asked me to count the persons who told me the same thing. She's one, then there was Chezka. Then there were three people more.

"Kailangan pa bang maka-anim para ma-realize mo?!" Dei told me. "Kaya mo naman, labag lang sa kalooban mo..."

I stared at those phrases, reading and reading them all over again. It has been a long time, hasn't it? And everything went by without me realizing that a lot of time had already passed, and that a lot of things have happened already.

And here I am, still stuck at those days similar to the entries of my diary. They were distant, and most of all they were over.

But just like the words written in a piercing red ink that couldn't be erased, I also cannot forget how it felt back then...