there's a girl crying in the airport parking lot!

The longest, and toughest ride is dropping off your family at the airport. Especially after spending four (almost five) months of your summer with them. Before this, I just couldn’t wait to get rid of them. My space and independence was gonna be mine again! Hooray!

I went back home to Manila, Philippines, for about four months; around Asia too, then my family followed me to Auckland for graduation. A tumultuous time. Visiting home, after the phenomena of moving out, is always so odd. I can never explain it, but there’s always a limit to my patience for being home, but also an ease it brings. The bed always feels too comfortable or too small, but it’s nice. It’s familiar. The same bathroom mirror you had growing up, now, shows you a different reflection… But you look at her, and you’re not sure if she’s changed. She still gets annoyed when her parents joke, “cleaning your room? I’ve heard that before!”. A knee-slapper of a joke. It’s true. I was always cleaning my room growing up… nothing ever changed. I had a hard time throwing away memorabilia. Everything was too precious! But after the wreckage that was 2020-2022, I threw away 80% of this so-called ‘memorabilia’. 

I’m twenty-three. I look at the same shit I cared about when I was seventeen, wondering why I ever kept it. I had a striped, black and white, neoprene shirt I always wore; almost every Friday at school. I thought it was cute! Very blocky, shapeless, and chic! So French. But now, I can admit it was just a shirt I kept around for comfort; “comfort” being my inability to accept my body. It covered my arms (which I felt were HUGE! Quite a remark to make, since the age of twelve!), my torso, my gut, my shoulders, everything that practically threw me off. It gave me control! No one can say anything about my body because they don’t know what it actually looks like; but they still did. I like the temple I’m in now, and God, I hate this shirt. It’s ugly. So, consider it chucked.

Amongst other chucked things, I opened a pile of letters. Boxes of them. Photographs. A piece of paper that a crush of mine touched. Books I had in High School (I kept for the sole reason: “I struggled two years in IB, if I threw all these away, everything I struggled for would have meant nothing, if I don’t enjoy them, leisurely. Yes, this piece of academia. For leisure. For the sake of possibly learning more or proving that I am an inquirer. A thinker. Or whatever IB learner profile I had to be). I had a chunk of letters from a few people I don’t talk to anymore, but I kept some really good ones. Even if we don’t say much to each other anymore, I’m glad I still have a piece of them. They’re great people. I kept some photographs too; but safe to say, though, the ‘crush-paper’ and IB books were tossed. 

It’s not just the room that you’ve outgrown too —  which by the way my dad has turned it into his “office”. It’s more like a man cave, you’ve got two exercise machines, a TV, and a sauna. I had no bed in my own room, so I slept in my little siblings’ room. It was fun! Sleepovers every night! Until you’re back being the eldest daughter again and it’s not fun. 

Being alone, in University, spending my own money that I got from my own job that I earned, it felt good. That freedom felt great. Especially, coming home to your own flat, with no curfew or having to care that there are people at home who care about your safety. It was so fucking fun; unlike that time I was back home for the summer. I had to climb through the kitchen window — by the sink, on my birthday — because no one was answering the door. My parents never gave me a key to the house, and it was 3AM. I just turned twenty-two so of course I would get drunk out of my wits. Enjoy my youth! The whole shabang. It was funny, when everyone woke up to a bunch of soil on the kitchen counter and a muddy sink. I truly am a character, and gave my parents a good story to tell, unlucky for them though, I told it first. 

Since I moved out at nineteen, going back home was always weird. I knew my threshold was at three weeks. Which meant, If I was home for longer than that, I would have just exploded, and probably expired; so when I was home for a month, I’d dissociate for the last week; “not my house, not my sofa, siblings are irritating, but after a few weeks they’re not my problem” I’d think to myself.

Yet, after all these complaints, I still find myself as the girl crying in the airport parking lot (picture below for proof).

Going back home this year was different. Outlandish, even. I realised that life moves for everybody, and for my case, you all just happen to be in different places as it moves. Visualise two parallel lines, they both travel in the same direction but not necessarily towards the same direction, or the same point; you go and meet high school friends, you once spent twenty five hours a day with, now you have to meet them within their corporate availability and it really sucks. Like really sucks. You wanted to have outgrown home, but sometimes, when it feels like it outgrows you, that’s when the dagger hits the heart. Even when your eleven year old brother would rather spend his Saturday bowling with his friends, and you’re stuck reading a book on the couch. The book on the couch thing sounded like a great idea at the three-week-threshold, but when it’s quiet and that quietness sounded more like a lack-of rather than peace, you start wondering when he would be home again. Also, every weekday, your eight year old sister arrives at 6:30 PM from her swim practice, and you only want to have dinner with her and hear about how practice went; then you realise you only have two hours to spend with her until she has to sleep. Time moves so fast, and everyone’s just moving on. It really sucks, and you wish you could stop it, because it really sucks. 

So, you look at that same old bathroom mirror before bed, yet again; and this time you know you've changed. Congratulations, you are your parents. 

I’ve always wanted to grow up, I’ve always wanted my independence; and since I moved out it’s practically been bliss, yet I still grieve the care and the “not-having-to-fend-for-myself-on-my-own-out-there” kind of care. The world is scary! No one told me it was even scarier, once you’re not a student anymore. The thing is, I didn’t have to pay for a single meal back home, and all the food was fucking amazing; I didn’t have to worry about inflation or food prep, which is always a plus. I bought some jeans, and my parents paid for them. I guess they missed buying me clothes, and I didn’t have to save up for jeans, I just got them, because I wanted them. Yet, a single “where are you going and what time will you be back?” will just throw me the-absolute-fuck off. I know it’s unfair to only want the good stuff because you can’t have the best of both worlds (sorry, Hannah Montana, you raised me with false hope). It’s funny how family can turn you from twenty to twelve, in a split second. I learned to appreciate that power they have. It only meant that I could still stay a child for a bit longer, especially when I’m home. 

It also occurred to me how lucky I was to have people that could tolerate me as an adult and as a child. To have a home. To have a reason for tough goodbyes. The truth is, and I’d never admit it to my parents, but a piece of my heart always breaks when I leave home. Always. I never tell them because I want them to know they raised a 'tough girl', and that I don’t doubt my choice — to make it out on my own - but tears could kind of show that.

Every time we say our goodbyes at the airport, the rest of the family cries; so I knew this drive, this last drive, before I started my nine-to-five era was going to be a long and tough one. I graduated. I finished my education, and now it was ‘time for me to soar’ (as my dad says), but I really was scared (still am). Before I left Manila, my dad told me that I’ve always been brave. And that, I’ve only gotten braver since I left. I told him thanks. After flying back to Auckland, and after my family followed me there, I only realised it when they left: I am brave. I let them go through security, and I walked back to my car. Before I could even get into my Honda Jazz, I just wailed. Another pop girl has failed me, Fergie, you were wrong: big girls, they do, indeed, cry. 

I get up! As a heroine does. I remember what my dad said to me “you’ll always have a home to come back to, and you just come back home when you want. When the winter gets too cold, or people get too mean, you can say ‘no!’ and come back,” I reply with my wit, “don’t worry, I’ll see you guys during Christmases, or when I’m a washed-up journalist! That’s usually the plot anyway,”. The words he said after, are words I’m never gonna ever let go of: “don’t say that. You’ll never be washed-up, you’ll only, always be on the rise,”.

Sometimes it feels like all parents have to say that because they spent so much money on you. You’re a horse that they're betting on, like ‘c’mon, a private education, and a good university, an honours degree, surely, all this money I’m spending means she’s a brilliant mind, she’s gotta be worth something! God please. Let her be worth something.’; but he was right this time. The slate is clean, and it’s time for me to make it out on my own. 

So I start my car and drive. The longest, and toughest drive is over. It’s time to do it on my own. Be the driver. Call the shots… and start the rise that I’m only gonna ever be on.