28/05/2025
LITERARY | Ten Months Later
“It’s the first day of school,” someone said.
You were half-awake, holding onto your iced coffee like it was the last drop of motivation you had left.
And then someone joked,
“Graduation’s still ten months away.”
We laughed.
Because back then, ten months felt like forever.
We thought we had time.
Time to fix our projects, catch up on tasks, and submit that one requirement we still don’t know how we managed to pass.
Time to hang out “next time,” to finally go to that group dinner we’ve been planning since Grade 11.
Time to rest, breathe, and live a little before the real world started knocking.
But time had other plans.
Suddenly, we were swimming in deadlines, buried under drafts, juggling defenses and deliverables.
Some days, we barely even talked. Just tired nods in the hallway, sleepy smiles across the room, half-meant “kumusta?”s during breaks.
And yet, somehow, we were still here.
Still showing up.
Still together.
From hallway tambays to last-minute cramming, from low quiz scores to sky-high coffee tolerances, from tiny wins to silent breakdowns no one else saw—we went through it.
Not perfectly.
But genuinely.
And now we’re here.
Counting the days, the lasts, the almosts.
Last requirements. Last submissions. Last tambay.
The last time you’ll hear someone call you by your nickname in that classroom you always complained about but are slowly learning to miss.
And it hurts, in that quiet, lingering way.
Because now you realize, it was never just about graduating.
It was about everything in between.
The people who stayed.
The little versions of you that grew in ways you didn’t notice.
The life that happened while we were all just trying to keep up.
Ten months ago, we laughed and said, “That’s so far away.”
And now, we’re blinking, asking, “That was it?”
But maybe that’s what makes it special.
We didn’t just survive as senior high.
We made something out of it.
We made memories.
We found friendships that felt like home.
We made this year mean something.
So if your chest feels a little heavy and you don’t know why—
That’s okay.
That’s how it feels when something matters.
We’re graduating.
And it’s okay to be a little sad about that.
It means it was real.
Ten months felt long–
Until it became a memory we wish we could stay in
Just a little longer.
🖊️: Glen Axel Asis
📸: Ashton Maminta
