Nobody warns you about the love that saves you before romance ever gets the chance.

We talk about romantic love like it’s the only love that saves you. But nobody warns you about the other kind, the one that shows up at 2am, that sits with you in your mess without understanding it, that waits for you even when you’ve been gone for years. The love of friendship. The kind that, when you finally let yourself feel it, makes you cry — not from sadness, but because you can’t believe you actually deserved it.

I want to talk about that love.

I grew up in a home full of it, which is maybe why I recognized it when I found it outside my family. My parents were generous people, not just with us, but with strangers. They opened our home, gave people warmth, even paid for others’ schooling. I learned early that love wasn’t something you hoarded. You gave it, and somehow it came back to you.

Still, making friends didn’t come naturally to me. I was ten years old when my dad quietly asked me why I didn’t have any. That question planted a seed. Years later, I picked up Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and something clicked. It wasn’t about being someone you’re not. It was about being genuinely curious about people, showing up, making them feel seen. I took that seriously. I started reaching out, joining groups, actually talking to people instead of waiting for them to come to me. And slowly, I learned that the love I grew up watching –  that wide, generous, no-conditions kind was something I could build outside of home too.

My highschool & college friends were my first proof of that.

We met in high school and stayed close through college, even as life pulled us in different directions. There were sleepovers spent overanalyzing crushes, sitting through heartbreak until it hurt a little less. Birthdays that felt like proof someone was keeping track of you. Panic-finished assignments side by side, pooled canteen tokens, small rituals that meant more than we realized at the time.

It was in college that I met her –  my best friend, my freshman classmate. The first thing we ever talked about was UAAP. Two people who loved basketball, finding each other in a sea of new faces. She started coming by the dorm after class, and for someone like me, an introvert who went straight home, who never really hung around that meant everything. She never pushed. She just showed up, again and again, until I felt safe enough to let her in. She gave me some of the best years of my college life without ever making it feel like a grand gesture. She just stayed. And that was everything.

When I hit depression at 25, none of them fully understood what was happening to me. It didn’t matter. Their presence was the message: you are not alone in this. That was enough.

In 2018, I chose myself.

I needed space to unravel, to grow, to figure out who I was outside of everything familiar. But choosing myself meant stepping away from them. I missed birthdays, milestones, moments I can never get back. When I reached out again in 2021, I wasn’t sure I still had the right to. I expected distance. Maybe resentment.

There was no anger. No silence. Just questions: genuine ones, the kind that meant they actually wanted to know.

I still can’t fully explain what that felt like. When I think of them, I think of our youth. The particular lightness of that era, the specific smile of it. It is one of the most beautiful places I can return to in my memory.

My Singapore friends are a different kind of miracle.

I arrived in that city not knowing anyone. I didn’t know then that the people I was about to meet would become some of the most important of my life, that they would see me at my worst, stay through it, and somehow love me into becoming someone better.

Unhurried hawker nights and reluctant early workouts. An ever-growing list of nature parks we were convinced we had to conquer. Board games that went on too long, drinks that turned into conversations that turned into something we didn’t expect. Holidays together. Getting lost somewhere mid-travel and figuring it out anyway. Late nights that felt less like hanging out and more like, just being home. They were my second home, really. The kind of place you don’t have to explain yourself to walk into.

They witnessed things in me I hadn’t named yet. Open wounds I didn’t even know I was carrying. There were moments I couldn’t understand myself, and they understood me anyway.

The pandemic cracked me open again. I thought I was past the depression, and then I wasn’t.

I picked fights over nothing. It was easier to walk away than risk being seen. If I left first, at least I was the one in control. I told myself it was strength. It wasn’t.

And still, they stayed.

They kept showing up in my inbox, in my calendar, in my life even when I was deliberately unreachable. They didn’t force my silence into explanations. They didn’t make me pay for disappearing. They stayed long enough for me to stop proving I could survive alone.

That kind of love is disarming. It leaves you with fewer excuses.

That love saved me. The road back was long and I couldn’t always find my footing, but their kindness gathered up the pieces I had lost, the ones I didn’t even know were missing. I’m still emotional writing that. I mean it completely.

And then there were my girlfriends,  the ones who found me at 31 and somehow gave me back the joy of being 22.

There’s something about those hours between 4 and 6am that felt like stolen time, the world asleep, and us just there, cross-legged somewhere near Clarke Quay, too full of stories to go home. We’d wait for the first MRT to run because we’d had too good a night to end it prematurely. Sitting on benches, on curbs, on wherever — still laughing, still mid-sentence, singing in the underpass like why?? just waiting for the city to catch up with us.

And somewhere in all of it, without anyone saying it, the feeling would settle in, life is good. Not perfect. But good.

I didn’t always know how to receive that. But they made it easy.

I carry that season with me everywhere. They showed me what it looks like to be fully alive. They showed me how to live lightly, how to enjoy the moment without gripping it too hard.

This chapter didn’t just give me memories. It helped shape who I am now.

When I came back to the Philippines, I found friendship in unexpected places,  colleagues who became constants in my life.

It started with hallway conversations about work frustrations, the kind where you lower your voice but laugh anyway. It grew into “quick” mall runs that turned into long detours through makeup counters, swatching shades on our wrists and convincing each other we needed one more lipstick.

There were Poblacion nights, off-key concert screaming, and group trips that felt less like curated vacations and more like continuing the same jokes somewhere with better scenery.

But the real proof of friendship wasn’t in the fun.

It was in the helping hands during chaotic weeks. The unglamorous days when someone stayed late so you didn’t have to carry everything alone. The quiet check-ins. The consistency.

And it wasn’t always easy.

There were moments I hurt people. Moments I was hurt. Conversations avoided. Distance that felt heavier than it should have. Relationships that went quiet and then, slowly, found their way back.

We’re still figuring each other out.

I’m learning that this, too, is friendship, the kind that survives honesty. That survives distance. That survives the versions of you that weren’t your best.

Friendship isn’t flawless. It’s resilient.

Friendship is so quietly underrated.

We spend so much energy searching for romantic love, chasing the version that movies told us would complete us. But some of the most transformative love of my life has come from friends who chose to stay not because they had to, but because they wanted to.

If I’m honest, I don’t think I would have made it through certain seasons of my life without my friends.

They loved me in the in-between moments — when I was confused, shrinking, or trying too hard to be chosen. Before I knew how to love myself well, they showed me what steady, honest love looked like.

I used to think self-love was something you figured out alone. But I’m starting to believe we learn it in relationship –  in loving others, and in being loved well.

And in more ways than they probably realize, that kind of love saved me.

If you have friends like that, tell them. If you’re still looking , keep your heart open. It exists. And when it finds you, you’ll cry too.

Not from sadness. From the disbelief that you were always worth it.

To everyone who saved me — you know who you are. Thank you.

Love,

Maria