Busto: Another sad story

ONLY into my second week of classes, I have already logged a number of kilometer runs, several push-ups and sit-ups for the physical requirements of my course that runs for 15 weeks more. I feel like a prisoner who counts by stick each passing day and week of the course. One of the consolations that I get from the course (as I am really not very fond of running) is seeing familiar faces that I have not seen in a long time.

Among the faces I have not seen was another female colleague whom I have heard a lot about, having participated in a national TV reality show last year. Before our course, I knew only handful of things about her. I knew her because she came two classes after ours. And that when she was still an applicant, she was known as the colegiala from an exclusive school in Makati known to be among the enclaves of rich and sosyal female college students.

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At the time of her application, that was news as applicants would usually come from poor to average families whose primary goal aside from becoming pilots was to help their families live comfortable lives. Besides, the rudiments of training for the applicants and later, trainees, were a far cry from the cloistered and comfortable life she had in her college school days and with her family as well.

She is beautiful, poised and has good bearing, being the taekwondo black-belter that she was. But she gave the training a try and successfully completed it no matter how rigorous it was. I should know as I also experienced it myself two years ahead of her. After graduation, she pursued a career in the service and became an instructor to would-be pilots. She told me that she finds so much happiness in flying. She would later fall in love and have two children with her fellow classmate (with whom I am also familiar with) in training. More than anything, they became a couple who really looked good together, both foremost having good looks.

In between our class breaks, I would regularly talk with her, her being my seatmate. It was then that I learned that she does not lead the charmed and envious life as the media and klieg lights would probably suggest.

Her confession all started when she told me she was a bit apprehensive with our course because she could not write with ease like some students would. So I told her to instead ask her husband to help her because he was done with the course after taking the same last year. Clueless that I always was, she asked me if I had not heard of the news that had been going around that they had separated. I told her I did not hear about it and that I heard it only for the first time then and from her at that.

It has been two years, she said, that she leads her own life, single handedly raising her two children who are now being taken cared of by her mother for the duration of our four-month course.

It is a sad life she narrated to me and was the reason why she was into so many things like marathons, mountaineering and recently last year, joining the reality show.

As she was telling me the sad story of her life, I found tears rolling down my cheeks as she also told me how her children are taking their life now that they do not have a complete family. She said her daughter asked her if she was going to also leave them like her father did to them. She hugged her ten-year-old daughter and told her: never.

And for all the brave front that my colleague is putting up, becoming the superwoman that she is now, I have nothing but praises for her, no matter how sad her story is.