Something has to be said about dark, snowy Sunday afternoons spent principally in one's room. With weepy, Icelandic music sleekly slithering out of audio speakers; blithely seeping out in blue trickles, hovering in the air made heavy and lethargic by the efforts of heaters and humidifiers.
I want to go home for Christmas. Home. Manila will always be home, it seems. I want to feel that rush. That inexplicable rush of giddy happiness when my plane touches NAIA tarmac. That rush that makes me smile like a fool when the plane starts its descent, and the miniature landscape becomes bigger, greyer, more and more marked by the scars and incoherent poetry of Metro Manila. And disembarking from the plane, walking through the decaying hallways of NAIA, waiting in line, hearing that colourful mess of verbalised homecoming. The excitement, the headiness of being home again. Collecting my luggage, impatient to escape the airport's suspended time. Being blasted with the dusty tropical heat, the sticky humidity, the first half-second after I sweep through those glass doors. Exuberant, bereft of a heavy heart, suffused with something so indescribable that it's almost excruciating to endure. And home. Even if it is 31 floors up and not exactly carved out of traditional concepts of home. The lobby, the cheerful guards, who somehow always recognize me even though I never think to greet them with anything beyond a quick smile. The front desk people, their "good afternoon/evening ma'am" sweeping past me as I walk through the lobby and to the elevator doors. The smell of my bed, the feel of my pillows smashed against my face. My bed, my pillows. And friends. Joyous friends. Getting together, trying to soak up lost time and lost experiences, drowning ourselves in conversations and unwitting memories, creating new ones, making old ones golden. Everything steeped in glorious familiarity, everything slightly haunted by the ghosts of my childhood and adolescence, the ghosts of history and hardship and blood-deep similitude.
The only thing that might make this Christmas remotely bearable is tequila. And seeing my dad again. And, ok, my brother and sister, too. Even though they can be such unconscionable gits. And my mom, too, of course. Even though she makes me want to gouge my eyes out and inundate myself with rainbow-coloured hallucinogenics. And maybe an Xbox.
Home for Christmas. Wow.
I want to go home for Christmas. Home. Manila will always be home, it seems. I want to feel that rush. That inexplicable rush of giddy happiness when my plane touches NAIA tarmac. That rush that makes me smile like a fool when the plane starts its descent, and the miniature landscape becomes bigger, greyer, more and more marked by the scars and incoherent poetry of Metro Manila. And disembarking from the plane, walking through the decaying hallways of NAIA, waiting in line, hearing that colourful mess of verbalised homecoming. The excitement, the headiness of being home again. Collecting my luggage, impatient to escape the airport's suspended time. Being blasted with the dusty tropical heat, the sticky humidity, the first half-second after I sweep through those glass doors. Exuberant, bereft of a heavy heart, suffused with something so indescribable that it's almost excruciating to endure. And home. Even if it is 31 floors up and not exactly carved out of traditional concepts of home. The lobby, the cheerful guards, who somehow always recognize me even though I never think to greet them with anything beyond a quick smile. The front desk people, their "good afternoon/evening ma'am" sweeping past me as I walk through the lobby and to the elevator doors. The smell of my bed, the feel of my pillows smashed against my face. My bed, my pillows. And friends. Joyous friends. Getting together, trying to soak up lost time and lost experiences, drowning ourselves in conversations and unwitting memories, creating new ones, making old ones golden. Everything steeped in glorious familiarity, everything slightly haunted by the ghosts of my childhood and adolescence, the ghosts of history and hardship and blood-deep similitude.
The only thing that might make this Christmas remotely bearable is tequila. And seeing my dad again. And, ok, my brother and sister, too. Even though they can be such unconscionable gits. And my mom, too, of course. Even though she makes me want to gouge my eyes out and inundate myself with rainbow-coloured hallucinogenics. And maybe an Xbox.
Home for Christmas. Wow.
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