Coming-of-age is a Vantage column where staffers share their opinions on a specific beat. From in-depth analyses of TV series to miscellaneous musings in music (and everything in between), this monthly column is an avenue to spread and inspire thought-provoking ideas.

In this column, Associate Editor Andrea Mikaela Llanes navigates the lessons on love and loss that they picked up from their time in Katipunan.

In the few years that I got to experience on-site college life, I mapped out a lifetime’s worth of memories along the stretch of Katipunan Avenue. Each establishment holds some echo of a person. Every street corner witnessed my highs and lows.

To make sense of what I must soon leave behind, I’ve been trying to retrace my steps. I suppose I wanted to remember what it was like to live in the present—to exist in a time where my biggest problems were passing Spanish and what to have for dinner.

I was there. I had to be. This is the proof.

Figure 1. Shakey’s and the unreciprocated (September 2018)

I’ve found that I’m usually oblivious to matters of the heart. Unless someone directly tells me what they think of me, I will err on the side of not assuming anything. Instead, I am a victim of hindsight.

Lunch at Shakey’s was one of those instances. I didn’t know what to make of being invited out on a meal at a family restaurant, so I chose to willfully ignore anything and everything it might have meant. We talked about philosophy and pop punk music in a booth near the entrance and I kept thinking, This is such a nice place to be with a friend.

There are a myriad of other instances that went right over my head: How he would walk me back to my dorm, how he always tried to foot bill, how he gifted me a book I once offhandedly mentioned I’d been wanting for six years. None of these occurred to me as anything beyond platonic. I was unsuspecting in Shakey’s, too, where he grilled me on my type and asked me about my previous relationships.

Months later, once he’d moved on from his feelings, he would bring it up to me. “It was obvious to everyone else,” he pointed out. He had thought that his crush on me was as clear as the blinding red and orange fixtures of the corner pizza parlor.

When I told him that it truly wasn’t, it occurred to us both that “show, don’t tell” can ever truly apply to so little. Some truths only matter as much as they are said out loud.

Figure 2. Reservations, red lights, and Taco Joe’s (November 2018)

Everyone has their preferences when it comes to drinking spots. Some enjoy the chill ambiance of Lan Kwai, while some prefer the thrum of life at Pop-Up. Personally, I’ve been a Taco Joe’s girl through and through.

The drinks were consistent, the music was never bad, and at one point my friends and I were on “bro” basis with the owner. At least once a week, we would make our pilgrimage after our long days at school and order a tower of their truly traitorous weng weng.

Unlike the other bars, Taco Joe’s kept their lights mostly off save for some neon red bulbs. Think of it as plausible deniability; what happens in Taco Joe’s, stays in Taco Joe’s. And now that it’s closed down, our stories of debauchery will die with it.

Except for this one. On a particularly lively evening where the DJ had blasted show tunes and the bartenders had given us a pitcher on the house, I felt invincible. I turned to the guy who had held my hand under the table the whole time and asked him, “So, what is this?”

The silence I got in return sobered me up faster than any glass of water might have. He dropped my hand and didn’t look at me for the rest of the night. When our group set out, he made it a point to walk three steps ahead of me at all times.

There are loves that don’t work when you bring them to the light. And in the same way, you can only stay in the dark for so long.

Figure 3.1. On preemptive endings: KFC, first floor (December 2018)

The EnLit crush is a quintessential freshman experience defined by its delicious fleetingness. Very rarely does one end up with the smart seatmate that catches their eye, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

And try we did, then, while sitting on KFC’s low black and red stools. He was coming home from a drunken night with friends. I had dropped by to treat him to the cheapest snack combo available. The perpetually present “Caution Wet Floor” sign stood at my side as he stared intently at me and told me about how badly he had actually wanted to see me.

I laughed in his face and told him to book his damn Grab already. With his phone in hand, he asked me in all seriousness: “Do you really want me to leave?”

For reasons I no longer remember, I said yes.

I told him to text me when he got home. He shook his head and smiled. “I think we’re past that,” he said, half-joking. “You’ve lost your chance.”

In the end, I suppose we both did. All those annotated readings on romance only to learn—over a greasy chicken burger—that sometimes, it is best to let a good thing die.

Figure 3.2. On overdue endings: KFC, second floor (December 2019)

Then there are times when you might beg and bargain everything to make sure that one good thing doesn’t die. For me, the ending I was hoping to ignore happened on a quiet evening after a Ben & Ben concert.

Not wanting to break up in a place we both frequented, we gravitated to the second floor of KFC. We sat at a table near the floor-to-ceiling windows and spoke in hushed tones. I remember looking out on to the street between the restaurant and Regis Center only to notice that the pavement was slick with rain. How cliche, I thought.

“I’ve felt like this since October,” he would admit a little later on. It was already December. How cruel.

The fluorescent lights above us did not flicker. The cars below us just roared straight past. The world kept turning on, ignorant to my earth-shattering realization that to want is easy, to have is hard, and to lose is unimaginable.

I have not been back to KFC Katipunan since then.

Figure 4. A 14th floor (re)view at Xanland (December 2019)

Picture this: It is December 1, 2019. “Unang araw ng huling buwan ng dekada (The first day of the decade’s last month),” one of my friends chimes in as we return to his condominium after leeching off of McDonald’s free WiFi.

It had been a long school year. Having people at my side made it bearable, which is why I spent money on overpriced coffee and weekends at Xanland instead of back at home.

Before we went back to writing our papers and preparing for our presentations, we lazed around on mattresses that had no bed frame. One of us pulled out an acoustic guitar and started singing Christmas songs. The other launched an Instagram live, joking with his three viewers that we were accepting song requests.

For a moment, all I could do was watch them. In some ways, I was already writing about my friends in my head. That’s how I spent much of my college years—sitting from the sidelines, fitting people into poetry and prose.

Then they started belting Christmas In Our Hearts and I realized it would have been a crime to not sing along. It turns out that proving you were present takes more than immortalizing the best and the worst on paper. Often, it means taking a memory for all it was instead of for what it could have been, and saying with full conviction: “I was there.”

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