Our performance will not show it but, thirty-five years out of high school, our bones are creakier and many of us consider Arcoxia as our friend. Every Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays of the past two months have become a mini reunion of sorts for the AC 88 Infinitas class, with a potluck buffet that—in the extreme—found a lechon from Cebu flown in and dropped in the Student Commons Room of AC San Lorenzo. Of course, there’s the occasional cakes, pasta, lumpia, siomai, pancit, mechado, kare-kare, turon, and so much more that have found their pride of place on long tables during the thrice-a-week reunions that are intense workouts culminating in the Old Girls’ Day weekend that is the Velada. In our workout clothes, we don’t recognize the doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, homemakers, and professionals among us. In our minds, we’re still plaid-wearing students chatting and laughing with each other, and it’s as if it’s high school 1984-1988 again.

But everything has changed. The changes in our bodies would be the most noticeable: we have more gray hairs, more lines on our faces, but that we’ve grown more comfortable in our skin is the biggest change of all. The years have seen us raise families, achieve personal milestones, go through terrible heartbreaks—and live through these joys and pains with (we hope) grace and acceptance. It is inevitable that thirty-five years would reveal to us who we are, while showing us glimpses of who we may still become—but perhaps the hardest lesson learned over the years is having the courage to accept ourselves.