at long last, have you no decency?

I feel like the gum beneath your shoe, the turd scraped unevenly across a sidewalk, a bloody shard of broken glass left unseen beneath a bar. I suppose my life could be worse. Maybe if I'd been raped by a horse, or if I had willingly raped one. But, these probable scenarios prove to be cold comfort against this mammoth of sadness and dejection lodged into the major arteries of my shrivelled heart. Like butter. Or bacon fat. Only sad.

Full disclosure: I bailed on friends' birthday festivities to chat with my ex-boyfriend. For five hours. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Especially if, within minutes of your playful banter, your ex-boyfriend happily volunteers the information that he is dating someone else. This shouldn't have surprised me, really. That we'd ended things was unequivocal. No gray areas, nothing left unsaid that could feed into some godforsaken delusion that we could pick up where we left off. It helps that our geographical circumstances are just as unambiguous. The gulf between Ottawa and Metro Manila isn't really the stuff of enduring romance. But, whatever.


It kind of all boils down to certain things that I've done my utmost best to avoid since I moved back to the Philippines. This struggle to find things familiar, this deliberate struggle to find place. It isn't working out very well. I've had two options, really. Either (1) find a new place, a clean slate with which to start over; or (2) reinhabit the hole I had left behind and, over time, chip away at the grooves and cavities that no longer fit.

What's slowly becoming clear is this: that if I'd found all this so unbearable five years ago, that I'd decided (haphazardly, superciliously) to leave, then it's only gotten worse.

So little has changed. Sure, people are more upwardly mobile, more attuned to some overarching transnational sense of community (and the socio-cultural and -economic aspirations thereof). Things have also changed cosmetically: more commercial developments, more public infrastructure (if these new bridges and shit actually constitute improvements is another story), more green spaces (highly contested, but at least the effort's there). But, the heart of it is the same. The deep-seated class prejudice, the remorseless sexism (that allows men to justify the physical abuse of women as a logical response to infidelity, and the sexual exploitation of women as a logical manifestation of masculinity), the homophobia (seriously, the homophobia), the stifling religiosity that pervades and continually shapes all acceptable notions of right and wrong. I hate this shit. Add to this that thick, viscous sense of hopelessness that government leaders bring about, and Vancouver is looking incredibly cushy. Incredibly cushy. And, add to this the fact that my mother's moved back here, and I find myself habitually checking the impulse to look for cheap flights out of dodge.

Whenever I'm stuck in traffic, suffering the grievous injury of getting cut off by shit-for-brains motorists and bus drivers (EDSA bus drivers should be castrated), I always find myself stewing in my car and reciting in my head everything I hate about the Philippines. (But, seriously, I don't understand how people think it's acceptable to add an extra lane to a 3-lane road. And, when that road narrows, because there's no fucking way it won't, everyone cuts everyone off, and I'm left cursing at the heavens, like a heart attack on a stick.)

But, I gave the decision to move back home more thought and care than I'd given to the decision to leave it. It was a conscious and deliberate decision, one that I made after a disgusting amount of soul-searching. (Although, I realize now that the prurient romance of wandering about Central & Eastern Europe certainly colored things.) A part of me (that part that isn't heartsick and tired of all this shit) would like to see this through.

But, another part of me (that part that I've come to like) is currently in Amsterdam, biking alongside a canal, dreaming of pannenkoeken and nice fat spliffs, and thinking of grandiose ideas meant to save humanity, but are, in reality, too obscure to do much of anything.

And, maybe, just to counter all this negative mojo, I should take the time to think about all the things I love about the Philippines and about being home. Maybe.

And, now, I should probably go home and apologize to my father, before my mom convinces him to disown me. It's what I deserve to be sure, but I'd rather that he won't all the same.

(Baby steps, Lia. Baby steps. The future will be there regardless.)