On my last night in my home country, I suggested that we walk around after dinner. I was with my sister and my former manager who somehow became my adoptive father. His wife also became my adoptive mother in my country. On our walk, we spotted a typical live band. We decided to sit on the bench to watch them play. A couple of songs later, they sang a classic favourite whose title directly translates to: “even though my hair is white”. It’s about growing old together as a couple. I teased our old man that it was his song. He sang it with his guitar a few weeks ago at the homecoming party he and his wife threw for me. The song is in Tagalog and he is American.
On that tropical night when the air was cool with a gentle breeze, I was serenaded in my own language. The moment reminded me of who I was and who I still am. The people who chose to be with me and I were wrapped by the night sky where the stars arranged themselves in a particular way for this place and time alone. Then I thought about where you were in all this. You who do not have the same night sky as mine. Would you even understand the lyrics in Tagalog? Do you have the capacity to learn a few words of my language? You have the capability because you speak four languages. But would you? Would you know a few important words about love in my language? I have in yours and I have advanced more than enough to get through the day-to-day, granted I live in your home country.
It makes me wonder if the language that I grew up in, if that language which has words for love along with a thousand poems and songs that speak those words, has been erased from me for choosing to love you.
It was one of the most romantic nights of my life. I was falling in love again with the place I grew up in. That means something for someone who has complicated emotions about their home country. Meanwhile you were also in Asia at this time, a 5-hour flight away from me. You chose it. We agreed. Because you have a history of getting sick in my country when you used to visit with me. With all the traffic and chaos, why would I push you to like my capital? Why does it always have to be a fight to share my origins and my people when I embraced yours? There are deep political problems which led me to turn my back on my country, this much I know. But I wonder if part of the reason why I tried erasing my home country was so that it is easier to not see you in it. You who refuse to share my night sky because it’s inconvenient.
I told you about my experience over the phone, because the phone has increasingly replaced seeing ourselves eye to eye in the last couple of years. I was not asked how it was like to centre a marriage literally on someone’s world, much less asked how it was like to put someone’s comfort at the cost of the other’s disappearance. But this is how it looks like for the one who despite all that remains sovereign. Falling in love with places without you as a witness. You staying outside the frame of the magical moments that form my best memories. Your own disappearance.
I said to myself the next time I fall in love, I will be known wholly and deeply–my language, my culture, my beginnings, my history. I will be asked while riding the car, how a city shaped me, instead of becoming upset by the traffic. Did I take part in peaceful revolutions and march the streets of–what was it called again–Mendiola? I will be asked where I studied and we would walk the university grounds together, the same ground that molded my early principles. Did I surround myself with college friends who still show up for me to this day? I will be asked which song reminds me of my roots and what it was like to belong to this culture. Could I play it on the piano? Did my heart break when I left?
The next time I fall in love, I will be seen for who I was and who I am. I will be seen for all that I am.
Less than two days later, I came home to the other side of the world, the place I call home for the last thirteen years, whose language I speak fluently and confidently, whose few songs I also began to like. Like they say, I have wonderfully integrated. Or was it temporary self-erasure to make myself palatable to a set of people with different eyes than mine? Either way, I came home to an empty apartment with noone waiting. That night, I felt an ache I tried to ignore. Because it was just one of the many nights when I would come home to the apartment, that place I gave up my old life for, the life I knew from the other side of the world, only to open this door knowing noone was waiting for me.
You called to check in on me. Because that was easy. How was the flight, how was my day, how was the weather. Every day, a call. Over the phone has increasingly replaced seeing ourselves deeply eye to eye in the last couple of years. We will not to talk about the fracture this way, we said. The calls became flat, hollow, empty until there was nothing left to say. Days passed and your absence grew until it engulfed the space around me in darkness, swallowed me whole and then left me transformed. I said to myself, the next time I come home to an empty apartment, it will be on my terms. The next time I come home to a place where noone is waiting for me, it is because I choose to be alone.
