Just say goodnight to yourself

My retreat’s next Monday already, and everybody in my batch is quite pissed that it isn’t in Baguio or at least a week-long. I think I’m the only one who is happy with the arrangement, because I want the entire damn thing over and done with already. I don’t really like retreats much; if there’s one thing I hate, it’s to be told to shut up and pray or meditate all day. Not that I mind praying or anything but when I pray, it has to come from me, not because some priest told me to do so. I don’t like other people messing around with my spiritual life unless I ask them to; I’m only going to the retreat because the school requires it. Not only that, I’m gonna be stuck with my batchmates for an entire 72 hours! But at least it’s not gonna be for entire week. I bet they’re going to spend at least two hours weeping and sobbing about how much they’re all gonna miss each other after graduation. I honestly don’t understand why they’re so upset. I mean, I know I’ll miss my friends, but it’s not like we’re never going to see each other after high school. We can always meet up somewhere to have lunch or something. And besides, we’re all gonna meet tons of people at college–I doubt think we’ll even give our high school friends more than a fleeting thought.

I gotta write tons of letters to my friends. I guess the only thing about retreats that I like are writing palanca letters to people. Basically, you just write whatever you think about that person in a palanca letter. I’m gonna make more of those letters this year, since it’s our last year of high school anyway and I’ve got some stuff to say to certain people. Like Dina, for example. I need to apologize to her for being such a bitch in sophomore year. I swear, I’m such a bad judge of character. That’s one of the many things that are wrong with me I guess. In case you haven’t read about it, Dina and I were best friends during the start of sophomore year. But everyone–I mean everyone–kept telling me that she’ll just use me and when she’s through with me she’ll just ignore me and pretend like we were never friends. Since it was more than one person who was telling me that, I ended up believing all of them. I mean what can I do? Even though I told them all that Dina wasn’t like that–she’s very nice and sweet–they all said she’s like that at the beginning, before she starts using you. I guess I was also partially pressured into doing so. I knew nothing about non-conformity and “not giving a rat’s ass about what you think” back then. Anyhow, I kind of avoided her and she became depressed for awhile. We made up eventually, but we spent less and less time with each other until finally, we stopped talking to each other. She’s Glyka’s best friend now, which is good because she’s a lot more like Dina anyhow. But I still feel kind of bad about it, and that’s why I’ve included her in my list of the people I need to write letters to.

Human beings confuse me, I swear.