DEAR AVAH, BY ASTERIA.

Dear, Avah.

I don't really know what to say to you here.

Especially as I'm now the one wearing the mask, now the one hiding my true feelings for you, now the one that had been pining over you silently, through the years; but it's alright. After the wedding, you had made sure to disappear from my life, only appearing when we would meet up with friends and not alone, and certainly not without that girlfriend of yours. I have too many regrets, more than my fingers could count, more than what my mind could comprehend, and almost all of it is with you, especially as we could have had a chance. We could have been together, we could have been something out of a fairytale, but fate had to remind us that fairytales don't exist.

I was too late.

I knew it from your eyes when I saw you in that restaurant, when I saw how you looked at James unlike before, when I saw how you didn't even care that he was there, and then I saw it in your eyes, how you were so in love but not with me anymore. Then I saw her. I heard how she called you, I saw how the love you once had for me, even if I knew that you lied that night of our tenth reunion, had now been gone, now all pointed to her, and it felt so wrong, so crushing to see you finally in love with someone else.

But I could see how you were happier being in love with her than how you were in love with me, I saw how I had treated you so wrongly, not even giving us a chance, and now I was so damn too late. You wish for me to be happy with him. With James, someone that I had never seen a future with, now I spend a future as husband and wife, but how can I be happy when I had already realized that my happiness would be with you? Ang gago ko, and I know that. Kasi I know that you have her, that you already have her, but I so badly want to rip her away from your life so I could replace the hole that she would leave in your midst, gusto ko magpakaselfish and tell you na akin ka lang, na you should belong with me, but no.

Hearing you say those words, hearing you tell me how you loved her in the five years you've shared with her more than me, alam ko nang wala na akong laban doon

I had fifteen years. Fifteen years of chances with you, fifteen years of plenty time to end up with you, but why did I only realize that I was in love with you all along a year after you had already fully moved on?

What a cruel fate.

Ang hirap kalaban yung taong trinato ka ng tama. Lalo na't I was the one who gave you your first heartbreak at seventeen, and then continued breaking your heart for fifteen years after that. Maybe that was the reason why I kept changing lovers; not that I'm blaming you, I'm blaming these feelings that I had not confronted because I was too busy chasing for what I thought was right, busy chasing for the truth that I had given you, busy wanting to prove that I was right, that I didn't have feelings for you.

Funny how in twenty years, kinain ko din yung mga sinabi ko. I can see how you're happy with her. How you've now accepted yourself, how you also love yourself while you're also loving her.

- Asteria, your first love.