22

        22 is my favorite age. I see it as my middle ground. Being 22 makes me feel as though I’m old enough to decide how to run my life and yet still young to be considerably understood when I screw up. I’m old enough to know what I want, but still young to be baffled and more so clueless on how to get it. I’m old enough to have my fair share of responsibilities but too young to be saddled with all of them.  I’m old enough to distinguish reality from make believe, and still young to get confused between them. In life, I’m old enough to gamble to have more but too young to settle for less. I’m old enough to fall in love but too young to fully give myself to someone. I’m old enough to chase after my dreams and certainly too young not to stand up every time I trip over. In a couple of days I’ll be turning 23 … I know I’m too young to be scared for turning just a year older…  But I figured that I’ll be also too old for some other things and that what frightens me.

diary entry 16: first few days

      Sometimes you know things that you don’t allow yourself to know that you know them. These are the things that you think be better off placed at the backseat. But no matter how much you pretend that they aren’t there, they have their way of coming out and bite you. There is so much to write about what happened in the month that had passed…and even though I don’t want to reminisce about them just yet… I have to get them out of my system… or else I would end up self-destructed…

 

     It’s been more than a week since I got from my vacation. It was a great thing that I had to back the very next day after my flight… At the very least I could divert my attention to something else. True enough, majonda flooded me with tons of work, work that as if hasn’t been done for a month…weekend came; of course, I went to church on Friday. I went home earlier than usual. I finished the service but left right away. I spent my two-day off mostly lying in my bed while having a FRIENDS-DVD marathon. I didn’t even unpack my stuff. I just wanted to sleep and sleep and sleep all day long…  Maybe it was jetlag or something. But I felt really exhausted. It felt like that my muscles were too tired to even make subtle movements. I knew I was sad but even my brain was too tired to process the thought of sadness. I just wanted to get some sleep.

ofw’s better life

Millions of Filipinos have gone abroad, leaving the country, their loved ones and job in pursuit of a better life.  They say that lack of opportunities back home is what pushes them leave… they say for greener pastures, for a better life. Most of my countrymen would grab any opportunity to work abroad. But who can blame them?  If our country could only provide for the needs of our people, probably no one would ever think of leaving and working abroad … maybe Filipinos could have better lives in their own land.

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         I wonder what attributes a life should comprise for it to be called better… I’ve heard lots of stories about OFWs’ lives. There are lots success stories, but of course there also not so success ones. And even those success stories have downsides underneath them. OFWs may be scattered in different places but they experience same things such as homesickness, depression, anxiety, discrimination so on so forth. There have been countless of stories about broken homes… misguided children…unfaithful spouses… compromised values… abandoned dreams for reality of need for money. They may have become well-off, but the price they had to pay for it is unquantifiable.

recount

 

     Lots of things happened in a short period of time … I’ve been meaning to write about them here but I can’t get myself to do so…I can’t even sort my thoughts and put them into words. Maybe I just can’t believe I’m already here…

      Time fly so fast when you’re having… true, in deed. My one month vacation passed effortlessly. And now I’m back in Dubai, working my butt off. Just the other day I was walking on the noisy, polluted streets of manila while rain pouring heavily… And now… here I am, back at my office writing… 

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