Recharged

I was born into a family that leaves unspoken some meaningful words like “Thank you,” “I love you” and even “Happy birthday!” Our father, a strict disciplinarian, probably had much to do with it. We have distanced ourselves from everything sweet, mushy and cuddly. But still our home is filled with the familiar noise of a typical middle-class Filipino family, where the mother has to shout her every complaint to a chaotic household and the entire neighborhood hears it.

While growing up I wondered if all households were like ours. I suspected that it wasn’t the case. I did not have to wait too long to find out. At the age of 12, I left our house to study in a high school located in a rural area three towns away from our own quiet little town in Laguna. From then on my horizons expanded.

I saw parents who still kissed their teenagers as they brought them to school and teenagers who disrespectfully answered their parents (probably because of overactive hormones). I got to see big, empty houses that were perfect venues for group work and hanging out with the barkada, as well as families that were just like ours: closely knit yet distant in their own unique ways.

From my first week in high school, I only got to go home every weekend. This continued until I studied in a university two towns away from home. Summers, Christmases and other long vacations were the only times I spent at home for more than three days, yet even these were often cut short by extra school work, extra-curricular activities, extra work for extra money, or some social activities.

As my horizons grew wider, so did the distance between me and our home. After graduation, I found work in a company based in Alabang, but my job also involved traveling to parts of Northern Luzon and Mindanao as well as Singapore. But I was staying at home at last—at least on most workdays from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. and on Sundays, of course.  Saturdays were reserved for my social activities in the university, my second home. By then I thought of our home in Cabuyao merely as a place where I could sleep, take a bath, eat, change clothes, watch TV and see my family.

After working for seven months with the company, I was assigned in Singapore for five months. Then I got assigned in Isabela, which meant being separated from home by 10 to 12 hours of land travel, and I got to go home just once or twice a month.

After working for about two years in Isabela, I was moved to Mindanao, several islands away from home. Now I get to go home only once every two to three months.

I do not intend to complain about the places where my work has brought me or about how I have always been away from home. It was a choice that I made—every bit of being far away. And it has always been a choice that my family agreed with, in spoken words or silently, because the opportunities are out there and I need to follow where they are.

But there comes a point in one’s life, when you can’t quite figure out what is happening to you and where you want to go. There comes a point where you feel the need to stop, sensing that something needs to catch up with your fast-paced life. You try to sleep through the weekend, waking up at 11 a.m. only to eat brunch and then sleep again. You try to party and dance and drink till dawn, or get together with friends over a cup of expensive coffee, thinking all you need is a bit of socializing and some wild fun. In the end, you realize with some surprise that all you need is a dose of that drug called home.

This was what I discovered after being away for three months and finally getting to sleep in my bed in Laguna for eight hours, before hitting the road again and flying back to Mindanao. During that one night and one day that I was back home, I felt stronger and optimistic once again. I was able to go away the next day feeling invincible, feeling ready to face whatever the world would throw at me. I felt like I could do whatever I wanted to do or fall while trying, but stand up to continue the quest.

Perhaps, we are all like Harry Potter in this regard. Whatever evil obstacles Lord Voldemort has put against us out there, we need only to go home every now and then to restore our magical protection. The difference is, unlike Harry Potter’s “home” in Privet Drive, the nurture our homes provide don’t expire when we turn 17.

In my life I have done a lot of running to and fro. But at the end of those runs was home: an occasional text message from Nanay asking, “Musta ka jan?” that I disregard more times than I can remember; my father and my brothers, who are eagerly waiting for my every return, even though they don’t put it in words. Home is my ultimate charger, the one place I can return to whenever I am broken and then walk away from, knowing that I am always welcome to come back and recharge again.

At 23, I realize that a home can come in all shapes and sizes, and it may have a close-knit family or an extremely broken one. Regardless of it all, a home is still a home and no other place has quite the same power to make you complete.

In a world where we get lost quite often and sometimes we don’t know where we are or who we are, we can always find comfort in the thought that just around the corner our homes wait. No matter how far  we have strayed, or how long it has been since we left, or even when we are planning our grand escape because we think we have stayed home for far too long, we know that our home is always ready to embrace us and we  want to embrace it back.

You know those times when you feel you can’t see the end of the tunnel? Well, home can be the light you can transport yourself to anytime. When everything goes crazy, you can always come home.

Auraleen Harina, 23, works as a sales executive for a multinational agricultural company.