“I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.”

-- Herb Caen

             My sister recently asked my dad, “Would you want to bring back the past?” My dad answered her, “Yes, it was much more peaceful then.” This remark got me to thinking about a lot of things, most especially the past.

            I had a very colorful past, and most of it I owe to growing up with my cousins who, incidentally, were also my next-door neighbors. Everyday, I would stay in their house and go home only to eat my meals. Staying in their house meant fun-filled afternoons. We would play dress-up and be models for a day. Then we would grab a stepladder, hold a brush on one hand and a book of song hits on the other, and proceed to belt out the latest Whitney Houston hit, pretending to be a part of the Little Miss Philippines talent portion. After that, we would climb the closets in her room, pretending that we were scaling Mount Everest. Upon reaching the top, we would then jump unto the bed, a big adventure for us then since we had been warned against doing this: “You’ll both break your skulls one of these days!” As the afternoon sun went down, my cousins and I would go to the garden and throw rocks across the neighboring vacant lot, all the while making-up stories about the big white house across that vacant lot, a house which we believed was haunted. By six o’clock, I would be called in to my own house for dinner, and our adventures would have to be put on hold for the next day, when in reality, the next day meant the next adventure.

            Much of my childhood had been filled with pretending: pretending to climb mountains, to be models, to win the Little Miss Philippines contest. Yet ironically, it was in these moments of pretending that I was able to fully define who I was and what I would eventually become. However, I would only discover this fact much later, after I had forgotten this childhood somewhere along the path I had to take in growing up.

            It wasn’t long before my life lost all of these games and got down to serious business. I went to school, and I took school seriously. In fact, I even became a nerd. I loved school and I loved learning. Not a lesson went by that I didn’t raise my hand or go up to the board to explain the mathematical equation I just solved. I labored over my projects and turned in colored self-made books when everyone else was submitting stapled bond papers. My textbooks were always in mint condition, complete with plastic covers and sticker labels with my name, year and section printed in the front. My notebooks were even more overwhelming: they were filled with color-coded, meticulously handwritten notes. For important details, asterisks were written in blue, as were the words that needed to be defined. Everything else was written in black. To top that off, my notes were all outlined in the formal manner: Roman numerals, capital letters, numbers, lowercase letters. It was enough to drive anyone insane just looking at them. It wasn’t a surprise, then, that I earned the reputation of being very stuck-up as well as uptight. People were afraid of me, afraid that I would chew their heads off for creasing my notebook the slightest bit or for some little mistake that might make me go ballistic. They were also afraid that I wouldn’t understand them in all their lowliness, as I was supposedly some higher being on a pedestal who knew loads more than they did. Which, of course, wasn’t at all true. It was just unfortunate for me that then, it wasn’t the truth that mattered, but what was reputed to be true.

            Because of this, I grew apart from my childhood self that was quite flamboyant, daring, and fun-loving, and into a person who was cautious of her every move, as well as everyone else’s motives. In a sense, everything they said about me came true: I was uptight, and as a result, I was also stuck-up, though not for the reasons which they believed. I became this way because of them, and I hated them for it. I hated myself for it. I couldn’t believe that I had allowed myself to be turned into the kind of person I didn’t really want to be. I wanted to revert to my childhood self, and yet the circumstances I was in did not permit me to do so. Somehow, my childhood self had no place in the world that had been carved for me, a world I didn’t feel I had carved for myself.

            Leaving that environment to go to college opened new doors to me, as well as opened my eyes to see everything about myself that I wanted to change. I felt like there was a whiteboard filled with scribbles sitting in front of me, waiting to be erased. I knew that I didn’t want to start on a clean slate, because that would mean erasing parts of me that I was already content with. Instead, I wanted to alter those scribbles on the board: make it better or totally wipe it out of the board.

            In the course of doing this, I discovered how everything about me went back to my childhood past. My love for singing became more expressed, and I was no longer scared that people would hear me sing, solo or not. And each time I would stand in front of the microphone, I would remember the days when all I held was a brush and a book of song hits. Each time I had to write a story, an essay, or anything literary, I would remember –although vaguely-- the stories we made about the big white haunted house. And every time I would accomplish a task even if I was on the verge of giving up, thus surprising myself with the strength and resilience I thought I didn’t have, I would remember the way I had scaled “Mount Everest” in my childhood, determined to make it to the top and having enough courage to “fly” in the end.

            And so I vowed to bring back my childhood self and make a more mature variation of it: learning how to balance having fun with being serious. It has worked so far: I am now reputed to be one of the most makulit people in the block, but at the same time, I am also the “mommy” of the block. They come to me for advice, air out their grievances, and ask for help with their homework. I discourage them from cutting, somehow having a radar that they’re about to over-cut their class. I remind them about the requirements they have due and the assignments of the next day. Even in our gimmicks, I’m the one that talks to the waiter about our order, and I’m the one who calculates how much each person pays. And whenever someone isn’t feeling well, I try to check the stash of medicine in my locker and I pop a thermometer in their mouths, and I show my “maternal” concern by urging them to cut class in order to rest if they really don’t want to go to the infirmary.

The last bit was one of the things I had changed about myself. In high school, I always went by the motto “Studies above all else.” I didn’t care whether I was running a fever, having a migraine, or dizzy because of my sinusitis. I would accomplish my work, no matter what, even if it meant sleeping at three in the morning or not sleeping at all. But I suffered a burnout in my senior year, refusing to work anymore and sacrifice any more sleep. So I became a believer of “Health above studies.” If I couldn’t think straight anymore, I would go to sleep and just hope for the best, as opposed to forcing myself to study and crying in frustration because my body refused to cooperate with my mind. This proved to be a very big change of me, a catalyst for all the other changes that were to take place in my personality.

In some ways, I think it is much more fun to look back at the past instead of looking ahead into the future. The future is so uncertain for me: I had always thought I was bent on working as a print journalist, at the same time studying law so that I could follow in my dad’s footsteps, studying the profession that he never had the opportunity to practice. After six years of cherishing this dream, I started to lean towards broadcast journalism instead of print, and I began to dream of working for CNN as a correspondent based in Paris. This dream was nurtured for two years. Now, I’m thinking of going into something still media-related (that much, I’m sure of), but more literary and behind-the-scenes. It is still unclear if I want to go into something like writing for commercials or TV shows, or if I want to try my hand at scriptwriting. Maybe in a few years, I will dream of being a serious writer instead. Nothing in my future is concrete, and so I don’t really have fun looking into the future because anything I do now in the present will alter that future anyway.

But the past is something I enjoy seeing. I love the childhood that I had and the memories that came along with it. And although I hated my Poveda days to some extent, I like looking back to see how far I’ve come, how much I’ve grown. And in looking back at this sadder side of my life, I see all the mistakes I’ve made: mistakes which have made an imprint in my life, mistakes which I should learn from, mistakes which have already helped me grow into the person I am now. But most of all, I look back at the past and see the people, the events, and all the memories that make me laugh, make me cry: the memories that made me.

            It is in looking back at my past that I am able to cherish my present and look forward to my future.