In the midst of this crowd, I sit. Sipping at my champagne and watching as people walk by and exchange pleasantries. The festivities did not match my melancholy mood for I felt the world was slipping from me. The laughs and smiles tore at my heart yet in a bout of hypocrisy, I join in the wild merriment, drowning the inner voice that threatened to scream at the very fact of my presence in such a mocking event.

Countless times I’ve asked myself why I am here, why I even mustered the courage to get up from the warm confines of my bed and kill myself with every passing moment. Is it not in man’s primal nature to secure his own safety before others? Has it been too long that I do not know how to deny certain things anymore? I wonder, but the reason is still unknown.

Then a certain sound made me look up, a sound I had been so familiar with that I’d recognize who it belonged to – you. Have you ever experienced hearing a laugh that made you want to smile? One that felt too joyous that you find the urge to join in the happiness? That is what you do to me.

I crane my neck in search of that one man, clad in barong Tagalog of fine Piña cloth. Your taste for these things of sentiment and sophistication had always set you apart from others. I remember back when you asked me what I’d want for my Christmas gift, and I answered a trinket for my bag would be quite nice. When everyone else was thinking of picture frames and key chains, you gave me a Swarovski crystal figurine of two dolphins, saying that it represented us. Maybe it did, for quite a time, for we were inseparable back in the days.

But now it stood in my desk, a hard symbolism of what used to be - a history that had been written on the early pages of our lives.

Our eyes find a way to meet despite the dense crowd. You were also holding a champagne glass, and in that moment you raise it to me in salutation. I return the action with a more practiced smile of mine.

I wonder how you are able to look me in the eye and not see the pain, or stand beside me and not hear the screams of my heart. I sometimes find the courage to face you and say it all out in one long, rehearsed sentence. Then it could have been better. Had I mustered my courage then, I wouldn’t have to be in pretence now. Maybe, all would have changed.

But I didn’t do it, and I’m here, being the hard-headed woman you always knew me to be. It is only fitting to withstand the torture, don’t you think?

I count the hours. It is only now that I learn of patience. My feet would be ready to spring to the door as soon as a viable excuse comes. Right now, I find the empowering desire to be anywhere but here.

Again, there is your laugh.

Memories come raging back. Our grade school days had been filled with banters from our friends, saying we would have been a match when we grow old. There was the constant matchmaking through FLAMES, when they’d cross out all letters that appear in both our names and count them through the letters of the game. Whatever they do, the answer would always turn out to be M for Married.

I remember the Valentine’s party when we won as a pair who danced the longest to David Pomeranz’s “King and Queen of Hearts”. We were both thril