There was the sound of a parade going down the street earlier today. The music, though faint, opened up a flood of emotions, memories: it felt like fiestas while I was growing up in Pateros or perhaps, those Holy Week summers in Paete, I’m not sure. It brought inside me a sense of, what’s the word, hiraeth? It’s a Welsh word that is equivalent to a being homesick for lost places of one’s past.
It made me wonder how life has changed for me in the last decade. In 2007, I was feeling on top of the world: I worked side by side with R at one of the neatest boutique agencies in town, closing multi-million deals for the company. My daughter was on her way to 1st grade, and her toothy grin was enough to lift my spirits at the end of each work day. We hosted Friday night drinks at our place and almost everyone that mattered showed up, and it was undoubtedly one of the best years of my life.
But then again it stopped being peachy after that year. CKD in ’08 had been a huge blow, the 7-year itch at work made us crave for something new and creating our startup wasn’t exactly something we were prepared for, plus our work issues went to bed with us whenever we retired for the night. I know life isn’t easy for anyone, but year on year after that, it felt like nothing was falling into place, and the optimist that I had been went away.
I know I can never go back to that place, and as always I can’t determine which juncture in the road it had been that made me go from there to here. Perhaps it was just a small step each time, but at every turn, it drew me farther away from that era, that lifetime. I never imagined then that someday I’ll be on my own, in a tiny apartment on the East side of town, struggling to regain happiness as I’ve defined it before.
I look around my place and realize all these little things that I’ve surrounded myself with I’ve only acquired in the last two years, when I started living on my own. Every piece of furniture, every piece of decor, my little knick knacks, things I now hold dear, wasn’t even in my consciousness 10 years ago. Of all of my worldly possessions, I think I only have 2% from that life. And when I really think about it, being the nostalgic, sentimental person that I am, I realize I’m totally fine with that. So much have changed indeed. And if looking towards the next decade that would still hold true, I wonder what I would become once I hit my golden years–what would matter to me in the future?
These thoughts make me both hopeful, but also sad. Hopeful, because I know whatever that future will be, oughta be exciting. And sad, because I realize what I have now, may disappear within my not-so-far-off future.
I look around my apartment and now wanna commit to memory how it looks like, how it feels like: the warm glow of my tiny IKEA lamp, the memory of the night breeze through my window, the smell of peppermint oil, soft thuds from my next door neighbor’s, this feeling of being solitary but not lonely. I wanna remember, because I know that years from now I know there will be hiraeth, a longing, for this wonderful, quiet time.
***
Pictured: Knick-knacks at my tiny apartment
Finally Dee 