No Permanent Address

The weary traveler has lived in 8 different apartments in 8 different streets for the past 10 years, not to mention her 10-month community immersion in Vitas, Tondo (and other immersions). She had stayed in Mapagkawanggawa St, Maamo St, Matiwasay St, Mahusay St, Interville Subdivision, Matimtiman St, Malumanay St, and for now, Matahimik St. All in Quezon City.

With the people she lived/s with in each apartment, she tried/s to make a home away from home. But her home is always in Caingget, Booy, Tagbilaran City, Bohol.

More than 300 miles away.

For the past ten years, she has always been homesick. And torn between two places.

She has become quite neurotic about this:

Everytime she packs her bags, her stomach feels queasy. When she's leaving Manila, she feels that she's leaving something behind -- perhaps an unfinished work, her stuff (she doesn't have stuff in Bohol!), her friends, her Sweet. And when she's leaving Bohol, her heart gets left behind.

She still cries when the plane leaves Bohol. Even when she has flown away from home more than a dozen times already.

She envies friends who go home to their families at the end of the day. But then she values her independence and her abiity to cope in being all on her own.

When she has the luxury of time to think about it, she realizes that her source of stress is that she is in-between homes. Her heart is caught longing for her family in Caingget, getting comfortable in her present temporary domicile, and dreaming about her future home with her future family (where it is going to be is still subject for discussion, though she has an idea of who she wants to share her home with, hehehe).

Now, the weary traveler in a journey of a thousand miles, tries to look back, and look ahead, but home is just too far away. She welcomes a brief stay in an inn. And sets out again on the road the next day, for she knows she is meant to be somewhere else.

Then she consoles herself that though she may not have a "permanent" address for now, she carries her home in her heart. So wherever she is, she is always home.

Sigh. I'm going back to Manila in a week. And I am already feeling homesick.

(Photo above: Me, wearing dad's cowboy hat at our vacation house in Trinidad.
Suggested audio companion: Disney's "Go The Distance". hehehe )