Above and Below, Inside And Out

No matter how hard the wind blows up here, you can never get a scent of fresh air. You can’t even see the farther skyscrapers. They have been hazed by pollution. No matter how extravagant you think it is here in Manila, you still give in a price to pay.

Her friend’s words echoed in her mind as she stood by the veranda overlooking the entire Ermita of the city of Manila. This is where she grew up but unfortunately missed the opportunities of having wonderful memories here in the very place of her birth. All her life she was confined indoors with austere rules and authorative regulations. In her youthful days in Manila, she could have enjoyed all the available pleasures if only she had not lacked two things: Money and freedom.

I can’t leave you alone in Manila! It’s dangerous! I don’t want to always worry about you thinking what horrible thing has already happened to you!

This time it was her Mom’s voice that echoed. She could have had money but freedom was the one thing she had to aspire to have. She had to gain her parents’ full trust which was next to impossibility. After all she could not blame them for not constantly worrying and panicking. Manila-living is ten times more dangerous and hectic than simple provincial living. Back in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, life was very prosaic and mundane. Anyone can be made happy with just the simplest pleasures and there’s not really much to do or go around. With only a small shopping area with a small grocery area and only two storeys worth of department stores selling brandless items, two Jollibees, one ChowKing and one Dunkin’ Donuts where it’s virtually the Starbuck’s of the city.

She sighed as she continued with this entry. Four years ago when she and her family migrated from urban Manila to rural Puerto Princesa, how she hated everything around her – from the tallest Provincial Capitol Building to microscopic crawling ants all over the ground. “Puerto is so boring!” she would scream to herself perennially. “The people here are so shallow and simple-minded and entertainment is lacking!”

Yes… All she ever did four years ago was complain. Complain about her low-standard school, complain about how small and laidback the city and its people is, complain about the lack of updated trends that reaches Manila just a day after they’re discovered, complain about everything…

“Stop complaining already! You’re no longer in Manila! You’re here in Palawan now and there’s nothing you can do about it but to live with it!” her Mom finally yelled at her as she could no longer tolerate her endless decries of her new hometown. That very sentence sealed her mouth for good. She could do nothing but heed her Mom’s words. She was right. Too right. Complaining will give not even a miracle to let her fly away from Puerto Princesa and back to Manila. She had to live with it.

Fortunately, for the next three years she grew up and matured and so did her ideology. Eventually she has grown to love Puerto Princesa as well as her school which is Palawan Hope Christian School (PHCS) no matter how political and corrupted its ways can become. Even if she has now considered Puerto Princesa as her new hometown, she still can’t eliminate the longing feeling of Manila. After all that was where she was born and raised and she can’t help but feel that she has left a fragment of her in that anomalous metropolitan area though she has hardly any unrestricted liberated experience within it.

No matter how magnificent it is from above, you’ll find how hellacious and and oxymoronic it is down here, that place called Manila…