Foot prints

I have to admit that solo traveling is a bit challenging for me. Previously, when i travel and look back i began to think about how wonderful it is to finally see sights with someone. I daydream about how fulfilling it is to experience new places with someone special. That thought deepens with me feeling a bit lonely in the end. However, being here in cebu alone made me compare my thoughts. I still daydream about having somebody but more likely, i get to contemplate about being fulfilled as it is. The fact that you can travel, is alone a milestone. How many of us would want to travel regardless of conditions. I heard friends saying, i am okay with anything as long as i can travel. Or friends saying, "may paka sige kag travel, if naa lang ko money, i will travel, bahala dira".

Back then, i feel pride that i get to travel but when i'm at a place, the loneliness creeps its way. When i came home for good, i realized how special it was to travel. Travel because i wanted to, travel because i can easily do so.

As my means to travel decreases, my gratitude towards having the opportunity to do so previously catapulted into magnanimous appreciation.

I appreciated more that i experienced that in my 20s. I appreciated more that i was given the chance. I appreciated my family for always supporting me. I appreciated my friends for cheering me up. I appreciated myself for letting it happen. Just these little things combined together makes a great impact for who i am and what i am capable of.

In my nothingness now, i saw the bigger picture of things. In my nothingness, i am motivated to leap even higher.

Through this, i am able to reaffirm how powerful our self love should be. When we love ourselves, we are fine playing by ourselves. We became kinder to ourselves and not beat our minds trying to change who we are just to conform.

When i travel, i learn to value how great of a duty my self-preservation is. I am not easily swayed by wealth or smooth talks. I defy people who unabashedly display their worth based on the goods they wear or the money they purport to have. The True essence of a being always comes from the basics. How pure our soul is, how positive our mindset is, these are the wealth that make us more valuable.

As i travel now, i am deeply humbled. I am not in it to look for something or someone i don't have or yet. I am in it, as a being. PRESENT. LIVING IN THE MOMENT. I walk the face of the earth and put my mark, no matter how futile to leave these marks, i did it anyway. 

new waters

I’m thankful for this chance to be with my family for a longer time.

I have never been home this long for the last seven years and in those years of absence, so many things have changed. When I arrived, my youngest nephew asked Mama who I was.

Whaaaaat?! Seriously?

And within weeks, I found myself being followed everywhere by this lil munchkin. He’s always asking me whether I will sleep at their house with him. When I go to their house, he clings to me like a magnet does to metals. And seriously, it makes my heart swell with joy and love.

At home, my parents always ask me what I like to eat. They have been constant in nagging me to eat more to be healthy. Whaaaaat? What about my diet?

It makes me feel like I just went back to being high school again when I have been to different parts in the world and surpassed so many challenges alongside being alone in the overseas. It makes me laugh at times, because I have always deemed myself as a strong and independent woman but whenever I am home, I am just “Lovely”, my parents’ youngest daughter.

My sister on the other hand, makes me feel so young. I have always deemed myself “capable” … I stick to my own rules and make sound judgments, I make my own plans and execute them but to my sister, all my rules were nothing but unnecessary restrictions. It makes me laugh and frustrated at the same time, to depend my decisions over the mere issue of transportation. Why can’t I drive?

Being at home made me see so many sides of my family that I seem to underestimate.

Back in the overseas, I am the rock, the captain to my own ship while here at home, I am a constituent, a resident of bahay ni Kuya. I follow their rules. I compromise. I waver.

Ultimately, I have seen how my parents are growing old and how their worries about their old age seem to get the best of them sometimes. Growing up, I have always seen them invincible and now, the cracks are beginning to show due to time.

I realized that I need to start taking responsibility for my family. And by that comes the decision to challenge myself to come to greater heights so I can bring my family with me.

I am grateful that I have this chance. I am blessed to share this moment with less worries about myself because my goal for my family is bigger than myself.

As I stay in Davao, I have sort out the need to leap again. I have always been hesitant to trod new waters because I am leaving behind my beloved family but no matter what, they are always behind me and whatever path I choose is the path they are choosing for me. And for that, I am extremely grateful.

thoughts about staying

I want to be honest and say that coming home brings me joy but at the same time, it throws me into a pit of hopelessness.

I happen to stay at home the whole day and just surveyed my surroundings.

I just think that the place I am in is no longer the same place I once lived. Rather than getting good energy, I felt like I needed to get out of here.

It makes me desperate to change not only my life but our lives as a family.

It makes me want to do more and with that, I am encouraged to work harder than before.

If there’s any consolation, it brings me to a new perspective. It grounded me to see the reality. It made me want to try harder at life because I don’t want to remain the same.

Call me ambitious but there’s no other way but to move forward, stronger, braver and ultimately, smarter.

I came home because I wanted to see for myself how my family is doing. And needless to say, I am mixed emotions. I planned on staying for good but I don’t think this is the right time. Rather than staying for good, I’d like to take this chance to restore my mental health, get past my anxiety and throw my insomnia away. I want to attain my sense of balance so that, wherever I am in, I would survive because I have remained focused.

laban Labli

I’m home for good.

Or not?

It has been barely a week and I feel like things have changed. To be honest, it does not feel home to me NOW.

I have shaken the feeling of wanting to move out because I want to strengthen my idea that a Home is not a place but people with whom you feel most secured about. For days, I have been trying to cope that my house is the same home that I grew up in. It’s a lot dirtier, narrower, few of the words I can only describe without me feeling sorry about how it ended up while I was living my life overseas but REALLY, I can consider the place being stuffy and less pleasing but not the people that live in it.

It saddens me to the core that as my parents grew older, they also grew distant. With each other. My mom blames my dad and my dad, no matter how he wronged, feels defiant. This cycle goes on and on and I can only sigh in retrospect.  

In fact, I really can’t exactly describe what this kind of relationship is. They are okay but not Okay. I’ve never been in relationships so I really don’t know the dynamics BUT one thing’s for sure, if ever I’d marry, I wouldn’t want it to be like this.

Growing up, I have witnessed minimal fights and breakdowns and it shaped me to be as happy as I can be. But at this age and time, what happened? I want to laugh at this irony. My parents are fighting like they have mastered Lao Tzu’s Act of War. I’m sure they can even write a book about psychological warfare.

So I have asked few of my friends and they told me that they too, are in the same boat. I can only laugh at this predicament. Perhaps it pays that when I was younger I haven’t really had problems with them this big that my future could be at stake like those kids who ran away to escape the hell of the home they belonged in. If there’s any consolation, I appreciate that I am at this age and I am capable of sustaining my own. I can even fly out to any place with no qualms.

But… because I am at this age, I want to be adamant to face problems head on and not escape them. Yes, I do own a travel blog named PREXCAPES and the idea of escaping being the pivoting point of travels--- in this case, it does not apply.

Family problems are common and my family is not an exception. As much as it makes me real burdened as the main reason is just TOO UNTIMELY, as part of this family, I feel the need to step up and instead of siding either of my parents, I want to be that pole that stands in neutral.

I have been emotional when I dealt this problem year ago and yeah, it affected my mental state. I started having insomnia, anxiety and depression but because this problem is recurring, I don’t know what else is there for me to pursue.

I pride myself as the rational, the less emotional, the less affected and I want to claim back that level of rationality and calmness that I have been tagged with when I was younger. While here, I want to just listen what each one has to say and from there, get the course of action they want to pursue.

I have come across MARRIAGE GRADUATION and although it seems unreal to me, my parents may have been into this phase. Being in love, being married for too long, then to getting tired of each other… I don’t know, should marriage be like that?

I will never understand the how’s and whys of marriage because I have never been in one, but one thing’s for sure, there is no glory in hurting each other.

The irony of life.

Few years from now, I’d look back to this memory and I don’t want to taste the bitterness in my mouth but the triumph of overcoming family problems. More than anything I pray for people to change and they change for the better.

I don’t know how long I am staying, and it definitely makes me lonely to live alone in the overseas but while here, I realized I am still on my own. I need to swim through my 30s thinking positively that this is nothing but temporary and someday, when the Lord permits, everything will be alright.

Laban Labli! :D