Why I Hid You on Facebook

You can win me back anytime. But I refuse to yield.

No, I will never remove you from my hidden friends list on Facebook. I wouldn't want to see your name tagged in a mutual friend's photo nor a post you liked just 20 seconds ago. I've been working on dismissing thoughts of you for a long time now, and I cannot let a green bubble beside your name on the chat sidebar ruin my fighting determination just so easily. 

Because to know that you are online and a chat away means you and I still exist. That until now, although we are not the "us" we used to be, you and I still share the same space and breathe the same air. That you are there and I am here does not mean there will be no chance we will bump each other someday. It only means not yet. 

As soon as you graduate, you might decide to set aside your public service ambitions in the meantime and venture into the corporate world. You will be in a freshly minted polo barong, driving the car your father bought you. You might work in a petroleum company or a news agency in Makati. At lunch, officemates will tag along for a filling meal at Amici and a cup of coffee for takeaway from a nearby Starbucks. Then at night, you change into a shirt and a pair of shorts and head for the gym you've enrolled in only last weekend. You'd be sweating that treadmill and killing those weights. You have other things - a whole lot more - to think about when you take over you father's poultry business. But for now, those lovehandles got to go and fast! 

I will not be in any of these daily routines you will develop for yourself. Only a status update will let me know.

As much as I wished I will be driving you to work, sit across you in the coffeeshop or pack your clothes you'd wear in the gym, these thoughts will only remind me of the more youthful moments we used to enjoy when we were still together years ago. You know I really liked pinching those flabs. I actually liked the way you looked.

I wish I will have the courage to sneek through your profile to see what's been happening in your life right now. And I will see you have moved on. Probably with someone definitely (should be!) more compatible than I was with you.

I'm okay. No, it doesn't hurt anymore. I'm healed. I'm actually with someone now. He's the same age as you are I think. And he's as thoughtful.

Don't worry, your name does not appear in my news feed. I made sure it doesn't. This is the only wall I have to shelter my sanctuary after you happened. But you know we're still friends, right?