Welcome HUHome..?
What makes a house a home.
People say it doesn’t really matter where you are, as long as you are with the people you love...or at least related to...then you will always be home. This is generally true. I myself thought so too...up until I came home to Davao just a couple of days ago.
Coming to Manila, it is expected for one to feel like a total foreigner in a land full of strangers. It is expected for every sight, smell and sound to feel new. I got used to moving around and having to haphazardly settle down, not wanting to get too comfortable in the event that one might want to move again. Nowhere felt like home. Nowhere really felt like the perfect niche. That’s how it was in Manila. IN MANILA.
On the plane, I kept thinking back to the three months I spent in Manila dreaming about my little Davao City. It was such a surreal feeling coming home. I kept thinking, OH MY GOSH, IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING? AM I REALLY JUST AN HOUR’S FLIGHT FROM UNINTERRUPTED FULL NIGHT’S RESTS AND WARM HOMECOOKED MEALS? It was too much to bear. I couldn’t wait for touchdown.
What greeted me was..well...less than what I had hoped for.
I think I have already mentioned in previous blogs that our house in Lanang was being COMPLETELY renovated. I thought that, at least in some way or another, the new house would have some sort of semblance to the old one. What I had not expected was a completely different establishment on the lot that once held the house I spent 18 years of my life in. It was like stepping in to the twilight zone. It felt so surreal. It was the same lot. But a completely alien house.
Don’t get me wrong. The new house is like...woah. It’s awesome dude. Compared to the old one? The old one was shit! Even if you don’t compare them...the old one really WAS shit. And the new one on itself really makes all the neighboring houses look so ghetto. Hehehe. Hey hey hey! Don’t get me wrong! I’m straight up ghetto. So I don’t have anything against that. Anyway, just to make a long story short...I kind of sort of panicked. Why?
Our house...the home that I grew up in...had not changed much since I was a year old. This is where My Life happened. It meant a lot to me. Sentimental value was insurmountable. I always did believe it had magic healing powers. Whenever I felt sick or had hyperacidity outside of the house, as soon as I got home, like a miracle it would go away instantly. It had an old healing touch that even I cannot explain. I found solace in that fact.
Now, in this alien dwelling I couldn’t find that magic healing power. And I felt scared. It was not in the new shiny tiles on the floor. Not in the brightly colored walls still smelling of paint. Not in the new fixtures with the plastic still on them. Not on the ceiling, roof or attic.
This was not my home.
Yes, it was a house. Yes, it belonged to my family. But it was yet to be home.
With a heavy heart we made our way to our other house in Ecoland (we were still scheduled to move in on the 28th). I was filled with mixed emotions. I was quite happy at the result of the renovations. However, I was quite upset as well for losing the old one. It’s literally like going away for a business trip and coming home all stressed and expecting nothing but your warm comforting bed waiting for you...only to find something like Ground Zero in NYC in its place. Horrible, isn’t it? A very chilling thought indeed.
Now I am at a loss. Although my life is happy and everything seems to be progressing forward, at the speed that it’s going I tend to lose things way before I get a chance to let them go. It’s tough. I feel nowhere is home now. Have you ever been HOME-less? It’s a horrible feeling. You wake up unsure of where you are. Sometimes I wake thinking I am in my old room...but as soon as I open my eyes I am greeted by an alien surrounding. It’s sometimes scary.
I think this is good though. It is training. Already Manila has been a daunting task. What will living by myself in the United States be, right? Where I am literally thousands of miles (not to mention Pesos) away from home. I SHOULD be used to places alien to home. I should learn not too get too attached to a certain place or time. I should learn to sleep in any bed. To bathe in any shower. To eat in any kitchen. And to take a dump on any throne. Without having second-thoughts or hesitations. For when you think about it, nowhere really is home. For I think OURSELVES is the only true place that we may call HOME.
So now that I am in Davao it still feels as though I am not home. It still feels like I am on “vacation”. Although my family is here, my dogs are here...all the other things in the whole city remain the same and remain where they are...the bed that I had slept on for 18 years...the yard that I had frolicked on...the bathroom I took a crap in...gone. All gone. It is a good and a bad thing, I guess. Good—well, for a myriad reasons! And one of them is helping me to overcome homesickness whenever I am away from Davao. The only thing I really looked forward to in Davao were my old everyday routines at our old house. But now that I know I will never be able to experience the full nostalgic euphoria of those days, there is nothing really to look forward to except for friends and family. (I used to look forward to the old bars and clubs that I frequent so much in the past. I don’t look forward to them because I want to party. Once you’ve partied in Manila, Davao would never really be the same. But I want to go to the bars because I want to see the same old familiar faces that go there every night. Lol! But now, since the weather is being such a bitch, I don’t really feel like going out much at all.)
I guess what I miss the most are the familiar ROUTINES that seemed so second nature to me. We humans are very habitual creatures. This is where we find our comfort zone. Anything outside of our comfort zone...like altering a variable in a constant environment...sometimes we don’t know how to react to that anomaly. And we tend to lose that comfort zone and have to build it up from scratch all over again.
Currently, that is what I am trying to do.
As of now I still feel like I am on vacation and not really home. Vacations are okay. But we take vacations because with each day that passes spent on the beaches of Boracay or on the hills of Baguio, the more we long for the place we call HOME.
And I bet nobody, not even those who have been to Europe and other first world countries, can ever deny this.
Perhaps you think I am overacting. Perhaps you are right. But you have to excuse me. In all my life I have never moved. I have stayed and grown up in the same house for all of my life. Yes, we go on vacations. Yes, sometimes we are away for months at a time, but move? Never. So to other people who change addresses every year or so, I guess you are jaded by all of it. But to me..? Especially when you’re years attached to a certain object? Holy shite. It’s pretty depressing...
But it’s not all downhill, though. Thanks to coming home, my body’s clock is SOMEWHAT returning to normal, can you believe it?! I can sleep at NIGHT! And I can stay awake during the day! I was so so sooo thankful for that. Just today I awoke at around 10am, just like any other normal human being! How cool is that?!? MADAYAW DABAW!!! THE CURE TO SCREWED-UP INSOMNIAC EX-CALL CENTER AGENTS!!! Hehehe...
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