At that corner right there was where I used to work. A thriving three-storey building used to sit behind that green wall. Now it’s nothing but a bleak pile of smashed bricks and debris buried in the frenzy of Makati.
Taga-lamon ng calls. That’s why they used to call us.
I’d known the news of the company going bankrupt and closing down for some time already, although I didn’t get that far into employment. I resigned 4 days before my wedding in ’09, as plying the Bulacan-Makati route on a daily basis, with the bimonthly one-week graveyard shift including holidays – and sometimes on-call – wasn’t a plausible option anymore. It was a choice that broke my heart.
The many posts we reside in.
The memories are still crisp: morning walks to the organic market in Salcedo after an intoxicating 11-8 shift, being fetched by Jigs at the side of the road on Sundays, stories lost among cigarettes and vendo machine cups, forbidden sleep at 3am, buying merienda at the nearby jollijeep, Ministop chicken with my sister and her friends at 2am.
Lifetime friends at work and beyond.
Looking at the place where I spent a year-and-a-half with colleagues who turned out to be some of my best friends in the world, having so many good memories in it no matter how politics sucked at work, there was that strange, pricking sensation of melancholy knowing that there are no familiar walls anymore to remind what was once there; no more doors to open; only those that are kept in the well of one’s memory.
What I had there was not merely work. It was a place that I once considered home.
Ah, closure. Leaves a sting, doesn’t it?
