It’s cool in the mornings where I live. I go on walks with my mom around the neighborhood before the sun rises to its full height. I like to keep my eyes on the road, a habit I formed as a child from hearing rumors of snake sightings in the village. Besides that, we live in a rural area, outside of NCR; I’m anxious I’ll step on a bug or a critter if I’m not paying attention. These are the thoughts that run through my head as we circle the neighborhood, as we walk laps, my mind runs. In the brief moments I don’t have my eyes on the road, my eyes catch a glint of the white bill of a cap directed upwards, the body attached to it walking in tandem with me. My mom always looks to the trees when we walk, and she never steps on a worm.
The summer before we started our college applications, it was like a starting pistol fired and I was the only one who didn’t hear it. It was the next step, inevitable for me, I knew. But how quickly one stage in your life transitions to another can catch you by surprise. We never talk about the transitions. The awkward chrysalis phase where we’re cramped and covered in fluids, we’re not ready to burst out until right at the end. What did I want? I looked to my left to see what others were looking at; looked to my right. What did I want? Adults started asking me while I passed them the soy sauce at family gatherings. I swirled my chopsticks around my plate, trying to pick up an answer. Something in the liberal arts, I said. I’m open to all options. Pass the hakaw please. You feel tense when you give answers you don’t have faith in, but that was not something that felt appropriate to discuss in the middle of Jade Garden.
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Applying for colleges did not start for me until the twelfth grade. If you lived a life like mine up to that point, you would not bat an eye at that. But there’s a world I was not made aware of until I was 17, a world of IB and AP and SATs and IELTSs other people knew about six grades before I did and were much ahead. The moment I began my applications to colleges abroad I was immediately several steps behind everyone else I knew.
Inside the Ateneo campus | Photo by Hannah Manuel
As a child of a stewardess the interior of the airplane was a safe haven for me, the airport a family friend. But my mother had two children. And when my brother got into UC Berkeley, the question left for me was where I would go. Stanford. NYU. UCLA. California. Massachusetts. New York. It was the epitome of success for every high-achieving Filipino high school student (apparently), and I fit the bill. What is it like to want something for yourself? What separates the dream I should want from the dream I do want? All that went away. When my brother flew away, what he left behind was a standard for me to meet.
He didn’t mean to of course. If I had anyone on my team, it would be my brother. I shared everything with him. He was my best friend. I actually did have dreams for the future, which I confided in him. What I loved was humanity, I told my kuya. How we had evolved to be these thinking, feeling, and loving beings with an innate good in us. I wanted to study Anthropology. No. Something like that. I wanted to study people. But back to reality. I could study humanities, others would tell me. There was a great program for it in Melbourne. But if you wanted to take Communications that would be perfect in NYU. These people, all whom I loved so dearly, would pitch in and support the dream I must have since my brother left the country too. It was all good-natured, and maybe not so presumptuous of what I wanted. I could want to study abroad. I ought to try.
There are butterflies in our village. Small, white, with round wings. I caught one in my hand once, after trying again and again. It was beautiful and settled on the pads of my fingers after a while.
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Inside an Ateneo classroom | Photo by Hannah Manuel
First came the IELTS. It was a diagnostic test required for international students to take to prove one’s English skills were adequate to study in the US. As an English speaker all my life, it proved no fuss to me. I took the test and failed horribly. I stumbled over my words while introducing my home in Santa Rosa, Barangay Santo Domingo. My favorite thing to eat was too exotic of a word, and had to take an awkward pause to mull over the word “butterscotch” instead. Then came the application to each college. The question stared back at me: “Why should you be a part of this school?” I stared back. And drew a blank for each.
I admired the butterfly, sitting on the pads of my fingers. And after a while, I let it fly away. It lingered for a little, but was all ready to take off after a while.
The thing about flying is that you always return home. Traveling the world brought me to beautiful places I saw as a vacation destination. But that was it. I knew my place, and in all these countries my love for home grew fonder. It cemented my love for the country. I found myself speaking the best Filipino I could muster in coffee shops in Europe, conspiring with my kuya in hushed Tagalog.
I decided I needed to take a walk, and think about what I really wanted. My mom, chattering joyfully next to me, as alwayscasinolandia, had her eyes turned away from the road. I turned to her, I don’t think I want to go abroad, I said. We stop walking. That’s fine. I want to do well, but I don’t want to go abroad. “Why would it matter how well you do on your applications if you don’t want to go?” I bring up my brother, I bring up hakaw, I bring up hopes and dreams that are not mine. “They aren’t yours. That’s right.” Beat. A worm walks by my foot. Mom closes the distance and gives me a hug. “What do you want? Do you remember?”. I look up to the sky. It’s white and blue. I tilt my head back down to the road. On that walk, I wrote the first words of my essay to Ateneo.