Hi guys, how are you all? 😊

So it’s a Sinulog Sunday and I did not want to go drench myself in collective sweat and noise and suffer from migraine later, so I stayed at home and slept and did some good reading & introspection. 😅

I’m sure our good God understands all our predicaments, and He would not judge my quiet celebration of one of His feast days at home, with korean food, and pizza and a few classic books to pair them with. Hehe.

I don’t know, I feel a little morose too, lately, as my anxiety has been staring at me for a few months now, & I have contemptuously engaged it to a staring contest, and boy I think I’ve been winning, hah! And of course, what I get in return for winning, is a permanent & somewhat confounded, and confused set of feelings about all this leaving thing.

There I said it. 😅

I, honestly, am not very well versed with goodbyes. I mean yes, I totally revel in cutting off toxic people and unnecessary baggage out of my life, but to leave wonderful stuff (and people) behind, and be else where is a totally different thing to ever wrap your good head around on. 🥴

But yeah, a part of me tells me, how that’s just a normal chapter in the bigger story, and plot twists are not very uncommon in well written novels. Because that is where important character developments unfold, and that is how protagonists (and villains too) learn from their own absurd circumstances. And of course, whether they die tragically or live happily ever after in the end, their story reaches out to you, and touches you, and gives you immense hope and numerous takeaways for the bleak future that we all are doomed to be facing. 😬

But hey, movement is good. And the complex and, sometimes, tedious changes that come with it are necessary for thriving. (I hope 😅).

Last January 10, I met a lot of wonderful people in a talk about mental health groups in the grassroots. We had wonderful partners too, and I got to talk about our online & on ground initiatives for MHPH.

I realized how I’ll miss this extra curricular part of my life here, plus all of the amazing new friends I’ve made in the course of the whole campaign building. It’s heartwarming to see the seeds that you’ve so (naively, yet) lovingly planted with likeminded people, grow roots and stems and buds, and eventually blossom into sweet little colorful flowers or fruits. Ahhhh, my heart. ✨🌻

Although I must admit that I’m still at odds with a lot of things right now, and I don’t know what awaits me wherever I’m heading. But I’m hopeful, and I’m dreamy, and I’m looking forward to all the new and shiny things ahead of me (and all of us).

I guess it’s fitting to be celebrating the feast of the Sto. Niño today too. You see now, at this exact point in my existence, I harbor those same childish fears I’ve had since the day I left home for college. Will I be alright without my parents? Will the world not judge and scourge me? Will fate be kind to a child?

Although I feel I’ve had more scourging in life than I’ve ever deserved or needed, and the universe had appeared to be more harsh and forbidding, and wearisome than kind to me, particularly; I still think that I had turned out alright, and had learned a handful of life lessons that school or the university would not have, in any way, been able to teach me.

I wonder, though, how many times you need to be moving from place to place to finally feel settled.

I don’t know.

Lucky is she who knows. Lucky is she who has found out how.

I just hope that this homecoming will be, for the most part of it, a sort of settling down exercise for me. At thirty, this restless soul is exhausted and I need a temporary place to rest my fears and hopes and prayers upon, so I’d be ready (and full) again when the bigger things come to call.

So yeah, Pit Señor, my dear friends! May we always be like little niños to God and one other—

— Full of life, full of joy, and overflowing with love, and trust, and childlike surrender.

Viva!✨