MANILA, Philippines—In college I had a best friend whom we’ll call Alice. Alice was also my classmate in high school, but it was only in college that we really got to hang out.
Alice was smart and intelligent in a bookish sort of way. Her mother always got to pin on her ribbons and medals at the end of the school year, and she graduated top in our class.
Alice was street smart; she had seven older brothers and they taught her the ways of the world. Even if she was the baby of the family, she was mature for her age.
We were almost always together, and sometimes it got too close for comfort. She got jealous if I spent time with Jenny, my other friend. She would sulk and pout and ignore me. When she got herself a boyfriend for the first time, she would ask me endlessly if I liked him.
I don’t know what happened in the course of our friendship, but we drifted apart. I felt suffocated and she felt neglected, then we just didn’t talk at all.
One rainy day in January six years ago, a high school classmate called me to say that Alice was in the hospital after a failed suicide attempt. She drank muriatic acid, which burned her mouth and esophagus, and eventually her stomach. Everybody thought she would die.
We also learned that she was several months pregnant.
That was what shocked me. I thought I knew her. She wasn’t the type of person who’d end her life just because she was pregnant and no wedding was forthcoming because her boyfriend turned out to be already married.
Aside from being stupid, it was a cliché. And we hated clichés.
No right
I felt horrible. I was, after everything that’s been said and done, her friend. I had no right to judge her and what she did. Even after realizing that, I was still angry. Even as she lay in the hospital I didn’t want to visit, because I was afraid I’d smack her on the forehead and call her “stupid” over and over. Or I might also have curled up and cried beside her.
She didn’t die immediately. She died after months of suffering. Of being bed-ridden, of being fed through tubes, of looking like a living skeleton. I hated her, I hated the boyfriend, I hated everything that happened.
Everybody asked me if I was going to the funeral. I said I didn’t have the money to fly home. The truth was, I couldn’t. I couldn’t see her like that. Somehow I failed her.
I dream of her every now and then. Sometimes she’s very happy in the dream and we’re running through meadows picking flowers. But there are times when she just looks at me, very angry and not speaking. That jolts me awake.
This is for you, Alice. This might be six years too late, but it’s only now that I can say all these without something very much like guilt pricking my conscience. I hope you’re at peace now.
Editor’s Note: Names have been changed to protect the identities of the persons concerned.
