Another city. Another world. Another box to call "home". Another front door to knock on. Another set of keys to hold. Another view outside the window. Another sound to familiar myself with.
We are moving. Yet again. No surprise there.
I've only been in our current abode for less than a month. We've only started furnishing it with desks and paintings and little motivational signs. My parents call it our "pad". It's a tiny shoe box of an apartment with a bathroom and a single bedroom for my sister and I to stay in. The place is so small that, if properly furnished, it can only comfortable house two people. Four is definitely too much. So my folks live in a similar apartment two doors down. They have all the house fixtures there: kitchen supplies, dining room settings, living room appliances. So our place is like a studio for students. We need to peace and privacy to get our work done, and with our crazy studying hours, we can do it without disturbing our folks.
I was just starting to like it here. We're in the province so it's nice to take a breather from all the hustle and bustle in the city. The long, expensive commute is a pain but I don't mind it all that much. Plus, with our own little place, it feels like we're slowly getting a grip on the whole independent living thing. My sister and I have our own personal desks/corners in the living room area which we organized and decorated to our liking. The words "Dream. Focus. Achieve. Inspire" and stuck to the bedroom door. There are painting and pictures of New York and Paris around the place which makes us feel like productive, goal-setting, honor roll kids. It's a good place, one that I was just starting to get used to calling my own.
But the Fates had other plans. Fate, and my parents. But let's start from the beginning, shall we?
My siblings and I were all born in Manila. When I was three years old, my dad got hired by a company based in Cebu. A few months later, we all packed our lives up in suitcases and moving boxes. That's the first our our long, on-going exodus.
First is an old wooden house with a leaky roof at the center of Cebu. It was near our schools and near a Church and had lots of little kids who made the language barrier a little better for us. I honestly don't remember it much. We only stayed there for a year.
Second is a bungalow with marble floors in the south side. It was in a compound with loads of kids our age. We stayed there for seven years. We grew up there. I made friends with the girls next door and they usually came over to play on our computer. That was back when computers were just starting to be a big deal, internet was still dial up. We felt pretty special because other kids didn't have those yet. I learned to ride my bike there, and scarred my skinny legs multiple times whenever i would fall on the rocky pathway or the steep concrete ramp at the opening of the compound. I arrived at that place a skinny four year old coming out of kindergarten. I left as a fat kid about to start the sixth grade.
Third is an old, large two-storey house in the north side. It had a big front lawn with a mango tree that the kids from the neighbors would climb for mangoes, a tiled front porch, a detached kitchen that was big enough to be an apartment, a basement that was like a storage house, a laundry area, a water tank and loads of space all around. It was just a HUGE property. There were three rooms - one for my parents, one for my sister and I to share, one for our nanny. Our nanny's room should have been my brother's but he opted to stay i the basement. He usually went out at nights, and he would invite friends over most of the time so he just wanted to be out f our way. For the most part, it was very considerate of him to do that. It had a dark, narrow entrance that my parents would call it "The Bat Cave". It was pretty hidden from sight. We stayed there for four years and it was probably my favorite house of all. The place provided a lot of peace and quiet, with the sunlight streaming in and birds chirping during the morning, shade from the mango tree in the afternoon and soothing air at night. The space gave us all privacy, not that any of our neighbors were nosy anyway. But aside from all that, it was the place I grew up the most. I entered that house as a lost, confused, highly-dependent child who learned to drink and smoke because of peer pressure. I left as a driven, ambitious and moral teenager who had a plan and strong sense of right and wrong.
Fourth is a moderately sized, two-storey townhouse in the heart of Cebu, just a block away from our first house, during the summer coming into my senior year in high school. My sister returned to Manila for college, my brother would be working soon, and my parents realized that in a year's time, I would be gone too. A big house was no longer needed. It was a good place, where I both grew up and grew older. But I also grew tired. I didn't want to move and I gave little to no input on the place when my parents checked it out. This was the place I established who I was a person. With a room all to myself, I decorated the walls with pictures of places where i wanted to go, my desk was littered with reminders of my achievements and my bed was never made. That was where I studied, actually studied for the first time, got my first dog, signed my college applications, had my first heart break, met my cousin, Michael, for the first time, dressed up for my graduation and my graduation ball, laughed with my friends and said goodbye to them too. That was where I found out that my dreams came true, that my life changed forever. I didn't like it at first, but I will always love that place. The memory of it is still fresh in my mind, but I will probably never see it again.
Fifth is my dad's ancestral home. My sister and I stayed with my grandparents, my aunt and their helper. I only stayed there for a few months but my sister lived there for a nearly three years. My sister and I once again shared a tiny room together, squashed in with clothes, gadgets and little things that we called our own. It was far from our school, but my parents figured that a long commute was a small price to pay for free lodging, security and moral support. That was the place I adjusted and adapted to the new world I dived into. Sometimes, I cried over it all. I didn't like being away from everything I knew, I had second thoughts about paying the price for dreams and my grandmother was malnourished us. But that was where I transitioned from who i was to who I am and started learning who I wanted to be. That was where I learned to grow up, where I learned the ropes of college and where I grasped the real world. It wasn't the best of places, but it was good to me.
Sixth is a tiny apartment in the rural hills of Luzon. My father was hired by a company in Batangas just a few months before I started college and now, he's living in Laguna. My sister and I used to come down here during the weekends when we didn't have much to do or when we were bored. But in the months before we officially moved out here, my sister was tired of my grandparents suffocating her and took every chance she could to get out of there. Eventually, she moved out, nearly for good, and it was just me there most of the time. I didn't mind, I liked the privacy and the independence. My mom's request to be transferred was approved, and she moved out here December of 2012. With my mom's arrival, my sister and I officially moved out of our grandparents place. It's out of the way and the commute inconveniences my mom, my sister and I but at least we're together. That brings us to the present day, the present moment, the start of this blog.
But before we could even begin to settle down and write a story here, the seventh part of our journey is showing itself. It's a condominium across the street from our university and a few kilometers from my mom's working place. My dad owns the car, he doesn't mind the long drive to and from work. It looks like a good place; I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited for it. With all the amenities and conveniences, it looks like a slice of the good life. With the school just across the street, I can bade goodbye to the crack-of-dawn wake-up calls, long commute, hassles of project-makings and activities in school and worries of money, food and time.
But I am honestly exhausted. I am tired of packing boxes, of furnishing a place I know won't last. It's sad to think that I can never tell my kids and little nieces and nephews "This is where we grew up! This is where we fell down and got a scar! This is where we did this and did that!" because I would have to cross oceans for that.
I don't blame anyone for this. I'm not even angry at my parents for all this. We've talked about all the moving before, we know it's for the best. And deep down, I know that we're doing this for us, for me and my sister to excel in school and cater to our needs better. Every move has been for us. My parents, in one way or another, always compromise so that we don't have to. But I'm tired, and I know they are too.
I know they say that it is people who make the home, but after a while, no place feels like home anymore.
