a love note from highschool

**
wouldja believe it took me 16 years to find out who this Mr. X and James were? Kklk. Hahaha! To this day, we’ve never spoken tho, turns out, he was actually the quietest one in the class—such a weirdo. How did I find out, you might ask? Well, I recognized the penmanship, and it had been sitting in my head for so long, but I only got the chance to ask him directly just recently. That’s when he told me that, yes, he wrote it—but it was actually for his friend. And I was just like, "Oh, that explains that incident.

I wonder how he’d react if he found out naman that my BFF then, the ‘it girl’ (pageant girl) of our school, was the one who had a crush on him, maling ghorl ang sinulatan mo boi, bakit kase yung pauper (being ze boyish and dugyot me) dapat dun ka sa hawt chick. tsk.

Tbh, I never put much weight on this kind of stuff (most especially when i was younger) because I never truly believed it. Actually, I only realized the letter was for me when a classmate found it, casually started reading it aloud like it was some morning announcement, and kept going until—bam—my name came up ( and a sudden wave of embarrassment). But let’s be real, who in their right mind would send me a letter unless they had awful taste, were being forced into it, or just had really bad eyesight? or maybe I’m just skeptical, but I just don’t think anyone would be interested or intrigued by me nman kase nohh, I never thought I was attractive, even back then, and honestly, I was just kind of… dull person ya know. 

Pero the guy went from barely speaking to me, to saying “ang ganda mo" (yep, this was the incident during our prom night, when he finally gathered the courage to ask me—apparently, only me—for a dance where he said those words.) ONCE, to writing a letter professing his love? Hindi ba sus ‘yon? Trying not to judge him, but heyyy, we’ve had zero convo!?, uhh-kay ...fyn, I think the letter came first before the prom thing situation , but still—how can you profess your so-called love to someone when you don’t even know a thing about them? I mean, does he even know my favorite color, my favorite food, or what kind of TV shows I watch? 

ugh. You get the point. Haha! Ohhhh, high school days.  Zzzzz. 

oh, that suddenly reminded me of another cousin of theirs who contacted me out of nowhere and eventually asked for my hand in marriage—just kidding! he just asked if pwede daw ba manligaw. A few days later, he came to my school to visit, but I was so busy so when I finally went down to see him, He had just left, leaving some gifts behind. sooo how weird was that?

I could probably ask for an explanation, but I don’t think I’d get a proper or appropriate one—other than maybe it was just for fun (trip lang nila). I could also ask someone who claimed to have seen him, but apparently, she passed away during the COVID-19 pandemic.

so ayun lang ang chika.