Where had Snail Mail Gone?

I went over my friend's place awhile ago because it's her birthday and we (me and my other friends) kind of surprised her, although she wasn't that surprised because I kind of gave it away. My lying power was down to low when I told her that I had this big project coming up that required her photoshop skills. Nonetheless, we had great fun. It has been a long time since we last saw each other...About a month, I guess. That is a long time for people who used to spend ten hours with each other every single day. I missed them. I miss those days.

As usual, we went up to her room to hang out. We were like nine-year-olds, sorting through jewelry and putting on nail polish. All we needed was a tea set and we'd have a kiddie tea party. Haha! We were deprived as kids. Tsk. Anyway, we stumbled upon her stash of letters in this big circular box (sort of like a hat box). These were letters from us and all our other friends, some dating back to eight years ago. Eight years! That's how long we've been together. I can't even remember how I lived before I met them. Less crazy, I guess. :)

Anyway, when we were around twelve, life took a turn to Dramaland. With that, we also had an abundant supply of stationeries, colored pens, and stuff to talk about. We all saw each other at school everyday, and yet we write each other - EVERY SINGLE DAY. It was only that year that we did that religiously. It's as if we don't talk to each other, but we do. A LOT! We even get scolded by teachers for talking too much. Still, we had enough to say to fill a couple of pages of stationery. It's weird yet amazing. We sorted through the pile and picked out random letters and read it. We especially picked out letters from a certain person because: a.) we're not really friends with that person anymore b.) her letters really are full of drama, kind of like script for The OC.

At the time most of those letters were written, yes, we were all friends, but we kind of hung out in different groups. So that certain person I'm talking about was part of my friend's group at that time (I'm in a different group, but I was still friends with my birthday celebrant friend because we've already been besties for a year at that time...still with me so far?). So initially, a year before, we were this group that I'll call Group A so it won't be confusing. There were three of us here, three girls. And a couple of boys. So okay, five of us. A year later, and I couldn't believe a summer would make that much difference, the five of us got split into several groups. The boys started to hang out with boys, so that'll be Group B. My one friend hung out with girls from her section, so that's Group C, and my other friend hung out with this other group of girls, so that's Group D. I was kind of...left alone. (Yes, as I said, Dramaland!) So anyway, I kind of just floated around then. Yeah, it was sad, but I kind of got thrown in the middle of all the groups. Now, Group B doesn't have that much drama. They're just boys acting as boys. Whatever. Group C, however, was a bit...well, okay. I'll explain.

We were divided in sections. Your classmates (or section-mates, if you will) are the people you're with for the whole day. We don't change classrooms. We stay put in one classroom, a.k.a. our section, and we sort of make that our home. The teachers are the ones who go around from section to section. After breaks, we go back to our section. So there's not much chaos looking for which room you're in for the next subject. It's just that one section. You'll be stuck for the whole day with the same people for a year. Seatmates can differ every quarter or so. Sections get shuffled every year, but sometimes you end up with the same people. So there, I've established the section.

So in Group A, the four of us were in a section, and the other was in a different section. So we only got to be together during breaks and dismissal. And of course, phone all night. The year after, that is, the drama year, this other friend of ours said that she wanted to hang out with the people in her section (the sections didn't get shuffled that schoolyear, which was odd, so we still ended up with the same people, which wasn't all bad). I think she said that she wanted to give the people in her section a chance because she's been hanging out with us all the time that she doesn't have real friends in her section, which is not that good, as they were the people she spend ten hours of her time with every day. So there. She left.

The boys of Group A, duh, became boys, and hung out with Group B. That's inevitable. My other girl friend in Group A hung out with other girls, who are in the same section as us so they became Group D. Whatever whatever, I was blissfully (?) ignorant at this time of the former Group A members at this time. I was floating around with no specific group. I was making other friends though. Same section still. Whatever happened, I'm not that sure, but Group D had some kind of meltdown. Backstabbing galore, you see. And it's all because of this certain person I'm talking about. (I thank God that she doesn't blog so she prolly won't read this).

So here's where the letters come in. Through all of the group changes, we consistently wrote letters to each other. Most of them just, you know, stuff about boybands and crushes, the usual pre-teen things. I don't know where we got all those ideas from. I guess because we're in different groups already that's why we just write each other because we don't get tohang out a lot anymore. But I had this close friend at that time (wasn't part of Group A) and we chatted on the phone all the time but still we wrote kilometric letters to each other. Ha. Inspiration to read those letters just struck me.

So yeah, blah blah blah, the backstabbing began. And they were all in the letters. If two pages is impossibly long for me to write, then this certain person was superwriter. She wrote like, five pages a letter to my friend in Group C. That certain person was part of Group C. At first they looked like the popular group because all of them were pretty girls. Then, I don't know what happened. The longer the letters became, the deeper the backstabbing occurred. My friend admitted to us awhile ago that she didn't even bother to read the thick letters that certain person wrote to her. What she didn't know was that that person was already angry with her in those letters. It was funny, really, when we read her letters awhile ago. Fine, letters are private, but this one was like, seven years old, and that friendship was already severed. And everything in those letters were just twisted truths. That certain person raelly knew how to twist one's word. I say, she's a master. At twelve, she could do that kind of damage to someone's reputation, someone she called her friend and whose letters she even put BFF on. If you ask me now, I think she's the nuclear bomb of all truth twisters and backstabbers.

So after all that twisted history and exposure of my life, I just want to focus on the letters. I love to write (hence the blog), and I really miss the excitement of recieving letters in the morning, and reading them, and replying right away using pretty stationery and colored pens. From time to time, I go out of my way to snail mail some letters to my friends as a simple surprise. The effort is obvious, unlike sending a text message or an IM or an email. They're more special and more sincere, and they never fail to bring a smile to someone's face.