How far one should go to lose what has been found, and to find what has been lost.
I have always loved travelling since I had my first backpack back in the first grade. I have loved my father’s stories about his adventures in Southern Mindanao every time he goes home from his missions and assignments. My weekends, back in my elementary years, were filled with trips to Camp Aguinaldo Club House, Nasugbu Beaches, or 8-hour long drive stretches to Pangasinan (what TPLEX?) and La Union. So then, growing up and harnessing my unconditional love for travel, I planned things a lot. I ensured everything was in place – that everything so accounted for – so nothing will be missed.
As I thrived through my schooling, I was consumed by putting other’s needs first ahead of mine. I was the group leader, the head hunter, the printer, the editor-in-chief, the only one who had yellow paper, the first presenter, the “okay-send-it-to-me-I-will-finalize-it” person, and the busiest for others, but never for myself. Years passed and I grew up comfortable with setting aside my needs, that I was better off in putting up a facade of a good go-to person for my friends and block mates. But now that I realize it, they did not require it from me, I set it for myself. The standard where everyone feels cared for, and that everyone’s needs are either met or have exceeded their expectations. And so the planning lived on.
It was all okay until one day, I finally accepted defeat when I acknowledged that I fell in love. Everyone’s needs were set aside and I became too focused on someone’s happiness and how I can sustain that with all the might I have within. But I fell in love with someone who is not on his time yet to grow up. I fell in love at a very wrong time, so bad that everything else fell apart when I thought it was true enough to not to fail – because it broadly did. I fell in love with a Peter Pan at the most crucial point when he had to man up and have the humanity to face me and tell me what have I done wrong. I was young. I was on a deep abyss of being broken. I was hopeless and was aimlessly just drifting so then I can say to seemingly judging people then that I am moving. I put up the pretence of a forerunner to create a make-believe of how I can handle matters with utmost preciseness and still keep my focus amidst what I have been carrying. But it was never easy. Moments were dulled and colours were of only grey and blue. At the lowest pitch black point of it all, I saw an old planner full of bucket lists and places I wanted to go to ever since I disembarked at his Neverland. It somehow refreshed my memory on how good I was before he came along, and how better I should be now that I have seen that we do not actually fit together. That is when I knew I had to travel. I had to go someplace else and it did not matter how long it took me, just so I can arrive and go back home to the same feeling I lost a long time ago.
And so I travelled.
I mustered the courage to go back to places where we went and done the very same things we did when I thought what we had was genuine affection and pure candor. I went to Liwasang Bonifacio to see the variety of people every afternoon, since we were always rushing our way home and failed to notice how diverse Manila afternoons were. I watched movies at SM City Manila, and made sure I get the 25-peso tickets right before my next class starts and turns out, they were good movies too. I went to museums and amusement parks, and rode the theme park rides he was too afraid to traverse into. I rode the LRT2 from Santolan to Recto and made stops at every train station since he never made me tried doing them just because I want to experience it. I travelled to see sunsets by myself and I was finally able to fill my planner then of essays on how some things end to pave means for a new beginning, a new chapter, and a new outlook on how such horizons of acceptance and self-love meet. I went overseas and took refuge from my family’s unrequited and vocal love, whom I never spent a lot of time with before. I saw what I was missing through doing things for and by myself, and that journey I never planned myself to be into transformed into one of the greatest trips that I could ever make an itinerary for.
When I look back, I saw travelling as my way of picking up the pieces of my once so-called “innocent self”. Innocent of the heartaches, of the lies, of the false promises, and all the other notions of finding the right one. Travelling rescued me when all I did was to take back everything I offered to the world and just keep it to myself when everybody else was finding their way to redemption and acceptance. Now, I travel with a great squad and with the right person. We get to experience unplanned detours, and not everything goes out as how we planned them to be. But no matter how it turns out, we will always have the best summer. Because bruises made me stronger. My own two feet gave me wings. And my new planner pages only reveal great travels and unconditional memories.
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