Sometime around January 25 2003

Last night I was awakened by my cellphone ringing. It was this 17 year old girl named Yani who I knew very little about. Of the little I knew, the most stunning and remarkable was that she was most of the time depressed. She told me that her boyfriend had died last year while they were in Tagaytay. He was stabbed 21 times in front of her eyes by a group of young men intent on "getting to know her." What happened after that is a mystery. From then on, she said she had become "wild". It was something she shared openly, and of which seemed truly proud. And it was true. She barely studied and frequently took drugs

I answered the phone only to be hung up on. It was typical of her to ring me in the middle of the night for no reason at all. I called her up only to be hung up on again to my obvious irritation. I sent her a message asking what was up with her only to be answered by her cousin who said that she was gone("..la na cya eh."). And so I asked where she had gone and when she would be coming back, thinking that she might have gone to the states or to Germany, her father's home country. To my dismay her cousin told me she had died the previous Sunday, just 5 days earlier. She had died in her sleep.

She had overdosed on some ecstacy pills. If it was an accident or an action taken out of her own free will no one knows but what I do know is that she could have been perfectly capable of taking her own life. I wasn't surprised at all. It was almost inevitable, merely a matter of time. She had talked about it frequently, about taking her life and she had all the signs of a suicidal person. She had attempted many times before. It was just a matter of everything falling into place. The right time, the right amount of drugs, the perfect solitude and just the right amount of angst and depression and initiative.

Often I greeted her by asking if she was still depressed.

It was odd how her cousin acted so nonchalantly. She said she was using Yani's phone because she was the one who had paid for the credits. How pragmatic of her. She also said that they used to be the best of cousins before Yani went wild. Odder still. She apologized for not having told me earlier. How could she. She never even knew me. Unfortunately the burial was over and I could do nothing more. Come to think of it, I was as nonchalant about it as her cousin. My sisters and I even joked about Yani actually being the one who rang my phone that night. No wonder she never replied to my messages.

So someone dies and I don't care. Do you? Here I am mesmerized by my own problems, succumbed to avarice, blissfully unaware and gleefully ignorant, pretending that I have problems more mature, deeper than a 17 year old's and yet my problems are not as fatal.

How could that be possible. Here we are thinking that we have problems much more mature than when we had graduated and problems much more challenging - problems more phiilosophical even. And this girl has problems about losing a loved one and who knows what else. And she takes her life.

When I learned about her death, all I could say was "what a waste."

What a waste indeed.

===

My bestfriend eagerly replied to this one when I emailed it to her.

She said:

hi ton! read your email about this girl yani. it was
indeed a sad sorry. i really the way you write, very
organized, very clear, very direct to the point, but
not boring. There's a bit of formality in the way you
write, but at the same time, make it sound personal
(cuz it is i guess) hehehe.

kawawa naman...you're right, "what a waste."
but didn't you think you could have helped her? in any
way? the fact the you knew she was depressed, didn't
that call you to some responsibility? at least make
her feel that she has you as a friend? make her feel
that you care? i read your email and i didn't feel
like there was emotion from your part, i guess that's
why it made it sound so formal...personal but at the
same time impersonal. your email sounded just a story
of some girl, somebody unrelated to you.... not
connected to you. you look at it as if it's something
to analyze, not something to do something about. what
does this experience call you to do? getting
acquainted to her and knowing her problem, what did
this call you to do? :)

la lang. i guess her story made me sad. did you even
try to make her feel loved? (hehehehe...here i go
again, with my love love stuff. hehehe)..pero talaga
kasi, to be loved is the first thing we need.... the
one thing that gives us the strenght and the hope....a
child who was give abundant love by her parents grows
up sharing that love to otehrs....and our purpose
everyday is life is to learn to be more loving....
what's my point? i'll get back to you. gotta get back
to work! mmmwah! God bless you!

===

interesting arguments i must say. :)