Originally posted October 9, 2006
[reposted because of this]

How ironic that I should find this in my files today, of all days. I wrote this piece more than 6 years ago. Nearly a lifetime ago, in fact. Come to think of it, I and she who wrote this are not the same person anymore. Sigh.

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Extra Baggage
June 10, 2000

One of the biggest bloopers of my life was hauling P900 worth of excess baggage to the airport last March with no more than P500 in my wallet. I wasn't traveling with anyone, save for my boyfriend's cousin whom I've met only once. The scruffy airport guy wouldn't give me back my ticket, so I couldn't possibly go look for an ATM. The blasted flight was due in less than an hour anyway, so scratch the urge to look for an ATM in the middle of Parañaque, which was uncharted territory in my book. I felt like a superstar—nay, a terrorist—as all pairs of eyes seared my back, each probably speculating about all the fuss I was causing. I cursed my stupidity with all the vehemence of a slighted heart, but I wasn't about to give anyone the benefit of seeing me cry.

I got out of my scrape by showing a leg—not. I called my Dad in Cebu, and he in turn made some calls, made arrangements to pay the required fee in Cebu. And the damsel in distress was rescued. Phew.

The reason for my big comeback couldn't have been more evident to me than in those crucial seconds when the airport guy (who wasn't so scruffy, after all) told me everything was okay. Yes, I thought, I'm someone's baby again. For a woman who for four years fought her own battles, it was a relief to finally hand the sword to someone else. Or the knife. Or the pistol. Or whatever it takes to keep my life in order that doesn't sound too phallic.

I was going back to Cebu. I was, at long last, going home. Call it retracing my roots and all that crap. I call it a reaffirmation of sorts—my own profound search for the inner child I believed I've lost. It felt right. It felt good. I was running back to Mommy and Daddy—pigtails, laces, barbie dolls and all.

For the entirety of my last semester in the university, that was all I could think of. I constantly yearned to relinquish all responsibility to my parents. For the first few weeks of my dramatic return, I reveled in childhood heaven. I took advantage of the free meals served, and gained an instant five pounds. I hoarded the remote control for an eternity, savoring free cable without worrying about pesky roommates and the electricity bill. I perpetually hogged the phone, much to the annoyance of my two younger sisters. I charged my groceries to Mom, splurged on expensive perfume and makeup from my parents' vanity table, borrowed my sisters' clothes, and used the bathroom for as long as I wanted. I even got sick—though God knows I did not intend that—and felt like a Queen for the first time in so long as my Mom waited on me hand and foot. No more avoiding medical bills by simply waiting for the flu to go away.

The best part of it all—better than not having to clean the bathroom or having to personally exterminate roaches—was the fact that I could finally live out of boxes. In my four years as a Psychology major in UP Diliman, I endured half a dozen moves. Half a dozen exhausting moves from relatives' houses, to dormitories, to boarding houses, to pseudo-pads. None were permanent, and I kept most of my treasures hidden in boxes—all packed and ready for the next move.

But in my parents' house, I could clutter my room with books, pictures, old love letters, pressed flowers, and whatnot in any way I liked. I could relax. This was permanence. This was home.

Or so I thought.

Some time between unpacking my stuff and eating my Mom's yummy kaldereta, my parents and I discovered one very painful thing—this will NOT work.

In all my rush to relive my childhood, I neglected one very obvious fact—I've grown up.

"The only reason why I enjoyed being a child so much," a sage once told me, "was simply that I was a child."

I don't know how it happened, really. Nor did I see it coming. But it could not be ignored anymore. The simple truth is that I am no better than a squeezed-out toothpaste trying to squirm its way back to the tube. I'm a lost cause. I've grown too big for the nest.

I blame it all on the addictive effects of freedom. Pure justification on my part, perhaps. But I suddenly remember Mini Driver's character in Circle of Friends. "It's like bringing me to the top of the hill and showing me everything I can have," Benny (Mini) reproached her parents in the film, "and bringing me back down to realize they're everything I can't have."

Hard as it may be for my family to accept, I have changed. For years, I had been on my own. I've partied till the wee hours of dawn and lived with the consequences. I've dated the worst scumbags and learned the hard way that men like my dear Mark are a rarity. I've been to the world of unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and emerged unscathed—thanks to the values I had been taught as a child. I still can't do everything, but I didn't turn out pretty bad.

I don't blame my parents for treating me like the incompetent and naive child they still think I am. I can't bitch about rules and restrictions. I can't complain about my 10 o'clock curfew. I can't rant about anything I consider utterly unreasonable. After all, they're just being themselves.

The thing is, I, too, have to be myself. And what I am—what I have become—is an undeniable truth that my parents still refuse to face. More so than the painful reality that I am no longer their baby.

I now wonder, with much regret, if that airport blooper could have been Fate's uncanny way of warning me. My extra baggage, I now realize, was a glaring metaphor of what I came home with.