Hug your loved ones. Quick.

From a rosy pink outlook on the beginning of today, came the bleak news that a friend died. It wasn’t sudden, we knew she was sick, and we saw her last month before she went home to Bacolod to be amongst family after her stage 4 cancer needed really expensive, scary radiation treatment she didn’t want to go through. We had made plans to go visit her this month with another of my sister’s friends and make a trip out of it, but unfortunately, we didn’t go early enough.

She was Ate Sheila and she was such a nice person. We weren’t super close, I knew her from my sister who worked with her at her last office job. She was always sweet and I remember her being the one who introduced us to Calea in Bacolod, because she hand carried whole cakes for us when she went home. I will keep remembering her voice, which was always soothing and calm, and around her I felt calm, which, for people who know me, know this is not the case for a lot of the time.

She is in a better place now and I am grateful she is no longer in pain, but to know she’s no longer with us just well, sucks.

Death has been around us lately and it hasn’t been sunshine and rainbows. A close friend’s dad passed away, one of my mom’s best friends, a cousin’s husband. Nobody went gentle into the good night. Strokes, an accident, a terminal illness, none of these are easy ways to go, and it’s even harder for the people that are left behind. I feel the pain resonating from the people we’ve been with lately and sometimes you just want to absorb all that pain they’re going through for them. But all we can do is be there for them.

Life isn’t fair and good people get hurt and sick and sometimes, there are just bad f**king days. It comes with the cost of living. We have to deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly. And sometimes all you need is a hug and that hug never comes.

So maybe I shouldn’t be writing in this mood but hey, I figure I’d be more honest about me this time around and that there are days that you just want to crawl into bed and forget the world. I’m dealing with it, and letting the pain, the hurt, and everything else be felt.

So how’s your Friday going?