I’m writing this piece in the hope that the exercise will relieve me of the suffocating whirlwind of emotions that has beset me since I got back from our 2-week sojourn to Manila. I have said goodbye to Manila – to family and friends – 4 times in the past. I have fooled myself into thinking that I’m going to get used to it; that it was bound to get easier and easier to leave. Here I am again: dazed, crying, feeling restless, grasping for air, looking for distractions, awaiting relief from these feelings. Last time it took me about a week to recover but that was probably due to the fact that we went to the Philippines for Christmas which is really the best time of the year to be home.
The Philippines is the place many of us want to leave only to find that it is the only place we ever longed for. We have a surplus of reasons for why we left. We left because of necessity, of need. We left because of a challenge, of a dream. We left because we wanted to, we had to. However, to many of us who have strong ties to the land, who have strong bond to the blood, who have history with friends and neighbors and officemates, going back for a vacation can be a very dangerous thing. Dangerous if you had loads of fun like we had. Dangerous if you spent good quality time with love ones. Dangerous if you’ve never felt this good in a while. The experience sucks you in and has the tendency to overload you. It’s hard going back to the norm after. It’s tough when the bliss subsides.
And it’s just not me. Faye is experiencing her own mix of emotions. She took notes of all the places we went to. We are reliving those right now. Rakesh obviously misses his cousins. He said he was happier there and he wants to go back. We can’t blame him. He connected and he had fun. He was sobbing all the way to NAIA.
All these add to the weight in the heart. We have to extricate ourselves from this or we’ll go crazy. At least the four of us are together here. I feel for those who are facing this alone. Faye shared something she read with me: Don’t cry because it ended; Smile because it happened. I’m clinging on to those words and I’m thinking the glass half full….We’ll be back home next year.
