Feeling Old and Old Feelings

Thinking about being lonely, but having family and friends around makes me think about what point in my life has been most effortlessly happy, exciting and pure. And I can only summon one image-catching dragonflies in the front yard of Lola Azon's house, and placing them in cans, and then riding the yellow jeep to go to Balulan. The cycle of garden-beach-Tita Dais' room makes me so warm and fuzzy inside, and thinking about how those memories slowly slipped from my consciousness because college rolled by makes me sad. I wish I could have spent more time there than here, because I did not really experience or witness how lola slowly lost her health, how it must have been for Tita Dais alone in the house, how everyone was trying to cling on to Lola Azon.

The memories are like jagged puzzle pieces.

The nostlagia hits as soon as the plane lands, and enters the frenzied state as the car rolls by the driveway, up to the porch. Whenever we'd go back after lola died, I noticed that the garden was unkempt, grass uncut, plants wild. The house's red paint was dull, and the house smelled wet, like wood decaying. The dogs were unfamiliar, as if they were only kept as guardians, and not as pets or companions of Tita Dais. Neighbors were also strangely unfamiliar. It was like Manapla was occupied by people unknown to us, like migrants. The old people were gone, and our playmates either moved to the city or had families already. As Tita Dais would say, "...hindi na parang dati."

If you take more time to feel the place, the original feeling comes back, somehow. Like how in the Dancing Hall, vandalism of barkada names are written all over the walls. And I don't know why Ate and I keep on doing it, but we would look for the names of our old friends, hoping that we would see someone familiar. Or how I would walk all the way to the lone tree on the far right of the sea during low tide, to look at whether the old carved heart was still visible. The memories would flood over me, and I would just walk away, extremely sad and happy at the same time.

Makes me think about the bearing of my medium-term dreams. Something inside me wants to go back to Manapla and do something. Stay there for several years, whatever. I know change will never wait for me. Tita Dais might not know me too well anymore, old friends may feel differently about me, but the mere connection with it is something that I want to feel all over again.