counseling a friend

If I were in her shoes, would I have done the same thing? Sure it is easy for me to dish out advice and to view the situation from afar. But an armchair analyst’s ruminations can never really claw at the flesh to minutely scrutinize the tendons and ligaments. It merely takes in the body as a whole and passes judgment sans the inconvenience of anxieties that could only come from personally experiencing the ordeal. It is this anxiety, however, that compels one to think hard. It is this anxiety that may salvage a life that precariously flounders in the sea like a flotsam.

Sure I have had trysts with married women before. But these were devoid of feelings, merely urges of the flesh. Can these compare to what she is going through? Am I clear-headed enough to give her a piece of my mind regarding her situation?

Would my advice be as valid as what she herself will have figured out after some serious self-introspection? Perhaps not. Perhaps she could do better. Her mind is just blurred with passion and fear. Being at the verge of jumping into an unknowable abyss, she hangs stubbornly onto the thought that her love might not be enough to cushion the fall, or to heal the wounds that she will sustain from it.

As she drank her calamansi juice across the table at Nipa Hut last night, I knew that, whatever I said would just probably be saturated with a million other feelings, thoughts, and fears that are currently tussling in her head.

I’ve done my part. I will just wait until she does hers. And we will both proceed from there.