Kumusta ka na? Last tayo nag-usap, kakapasa ko ng boards, tapos nagtanong ka ng second opinion for your condition. You'd told me that all the doctors you've seen had brushed you off, and no solution seemed to have been reached. After that, radio silence.
We were never close, and you were just an acquaintance who happened to be someone I went to school with both in elementary and high school, but the news hit me like a train wreck yesterday. How is it that I find out na wala ka na in passing? In a minor detail during someone else's life update, and that it occurred YEARS before now, during the pandemic? Akala ko dahil sa sakit, na lumala yung condition mo at hindi ka na nakahanap ng akmang doktor for you. But to hear that you decided to close your life story with your own hands, due to circumstances you couldn't escape - ang sakit.
Andami naming kina-counsel na psychosocial cases sa clinic sa work ko ngayon. And as we grew older, mas naging aware ako sa mga kwento ng dilim na kinailangang harapin ng mga batchmates natin even before high school, from places that were supposed to keep them safe - you included.
The realizations about these got me thinking of possibly taking up Psychiatry eventually. And with the journals and books I read in between community health work, with the added knowledge of what happened to you - napaisip ako na baka yung chronic fatigue mo was not a syndrome in itself, but the unfortunate consequence of things you couldn't tell me about. In my line of work, I hear about and meet a lot of people who hurt themselves, some we can save, some with fates we've failed to follow-up.
Hindi ko alam if sobrang desensitized ko na sa death, but it seems every long post I've had lately since graduating, I've written about people we've lost. Like you. And just two, three weeks back, we had 2 more deaths - one a suicide, another from an unfortunate surgical case addressed too late. Earlier this year, a fellow doctor's death also shook us. The circumstances may have been different, but losses deeply felt all the same.
I don't know if our thoughts ever reach the dead, but I hope you aren't hurting anymore, wherever you are. Or if reincarnation is a thing, your next life is kinder, happier and with better circumstances. We'll keep doing our best to hold the line here, to create a better world, so people don't need to follow through with the pain the way you did.
But for now, I hope you rest to make up for all the times you couldn't, and get to do all the things you wanted that you were prevented from doing! And when we see each other again, you'll have the smile you've always deserved to have.
Good night. Until we meet again.