Limits in Friendship: Is there such a thing?

My friend Rochelle is planning to run as the Student Council Secretary next year. I'm biased of course, but it'll still depend on how they (the candidates) deliver their platforms and campaign for votes. As for now I'm keeping in mind the positive traits in Rochelle that I've learned to love.

1. She's very firm when it comes to what she believes in, to the point that you'd (if you're as nonconfrontational as I am) feel you've lost all together.
2. She's far from being shy on telling how she feels. (This may lead her to being overly frank, but that's just how she is. I'd rather have her that backstabbers any day.)
3. She may be small for her age (19), but she lives big.
4. She's honest, brutally at times.
5. She knows when to be a friend, when to console and when to say sorry. I know this for a fact.

Many people wouldn't like her, but many would respect her too. Now I see Rochelle as a person that I can never be like. For one, even if I'm trying (and so far had been successful) in forgetting what other people may be thinking of me, it still hurts to know that I have only a few friends who'd truly miss me if I die today. (God forbid! I still have four more prelims to take... and I've yet to pay my prelim fees. Yikes!)

Rochelle is also an epitomy of the person I wish I had been way before. Someone who knows herself enough not to mind how society, or a class filled with backstabbers and plastics, want her to be.

But all these traits that make Chelle unique and lovable are being undermined by her desire to have power in the student body. Reevan talked to her after our debate training (while Bry and I are at the xerox counter) about her unconscious manner of forcing her insights on the topic regarding our Lit101 class. I was the one who first started this issue. It's basically a question of competency and value of education here in UST, in connection to their refernce materials for the offered course of World Literature. (I'm not sure what it is for, since all courses in UST are prerequisites to other courses. But I digress. I love lit. Too bad it's so undervalued here. First time I regret being a Thomasian.)

Basically, our instructor told us that the reference materials used in our class was actually a compilation made my Engineering students as a project.

TALK ABOUT UNDERVALUE!

Chelle being frank and all, got all hyped up in ranting on this insulting behavior. I myself told my prof that its not only an insult to us, but to her as an instructor (and not a very good one at that, sorry). How can she, as an educator, manage to use a non-academic text as an academic text and rely on it from the start to end of the semester, without feeling subjugated? If she had any professional self- respect, she would not tolerate such a thing?

Chelle had other points however, and because it was already the end of the period, almost, I wasn't fully listening. It wasn't all new to me to hear her get carried away. I know her to be very vocal, which makes us good friends because I tend to keep my mouth shut on certain topics. (Except if I'm speaking to Mimi or Ai, two people I know I can trust with anything).

Reevan told Rochelle to be careful in her manner of presenting her points, given her desire to run. I think Reevan was just trying to help, but in the process, he had put Chelle in the ugly position of questioning herself, her every move.

I sure know how that feels.

Warp back to high school: Angeli and I were on our way out of UST. I walked her home so I wouldn't be bored, and so she wouldn't be harrassed by the passing tambays of Espana. Anyhow, Angeli told me pointblank, what Kathleen (his girlfriend at that time) told her: that she (Kath) hated my existence.

Imagine my shock when I heard that, when all along I had been walking hollow and soulless in the dark walls of EHS, hurt and alone. It was like a huge sword has been stuck into my heart, ending my battle for high school acceptance.

Up to now am not sure why Angeli told me what she told me. I can't clearly remember. When bad memories like high school and losing a dad haunt your everyday existence, you just can't help but obliterate them completely from your long term memory.

Now, I am asking: Is there such a limit in friendship? Was Reevan right in his manner of telling Chelle on being more diplomatic while not diminishing her identity? Is it even possible to be anything than who you are and still be happy?

The last question I can answer: NO. Because even if you create thousands of masks, your real face will still be tear-streaked and crumpled underneath, and as one by one the masks fall off, your true face will be revealed.

And then you just might be able to smile. (Because there'll be no more rubberbands pulling on your ears...)