I found myself standing in the middle of our front yard. To my right, all sorts of vehicles brushed past back and forth along the adjacent public road, their roars and intensity slowly shrank into background noise as I found myself yet again thinking. As if I was outside of my body looking down to what was then the version of myself that I know, the one that I lived through, the culmination of twenty eight years of life and the only one I’m ever going to get.
It’s a strange feeling whenever the realisation that you are back home hits. What I mean by that is that when you migrate into a different country, especially at a young age where you sort of have lived through some of your life enough to have formed an opinion about it, made friends, made connections to people, to places, all of that gets put into a this thing called the “past”. All those memories become sort of a dream, something that happened but isn’t tangible anymore, not really.
So there I was with my thoughts circling through my head as if the Philippines’ sun wasn’t burning through my skin. I just looked on through the basketball court I used to play in as a child in front of me, the memories started to manifest themselves and not just the type of memory like remembering what the shopping list was or recalling what you revised the night before an exam. They were the sort of memories you get when you step into a place you once was very familiar with but have been away for sometime to visit, or ate a dish you had years before and you are only getting the chance to taste it again after such a long time. You actually get to feel these memories, almost relive them too in a sort of poignant yet sweet way. I stood there in the middle of the yard under the scorching tropical sun and within the random epiphany I was having, if you could call it that, an idea floated about like a leaf through a sudden gust of wind, gently it glided through the memories I was having and struck me on my forehead; “What if I never left?”.
Understand that this was not an idea that I have only ever thought of in that instance, I am convinced that I have always thought about it, somewhere deep at the back of my mind I have always wondered what could have happened, I just did not want to face it nor find the answer to it because it felt like a question you ask when you lose a gamble or the sentiments you feel after a failed love, “What if?”. Such a hurtful and ambitious query compressed into two words and now, by some kind of a potent varnish brought about by my standing randomly in the middle of our old ancestral house’s front yard, the solid layers of years and years of trying to swat that question away crumbled and fell until only the question remained, glowing and surprisingly welcoming. What if indeed I never left? Who would have I been? What would have I been thinking had I found myself standing at the very spot I find myself in now? Isn’t that such an interesting thing to ask yourself? Pointless maybe, but we’ve all done pointless things in our lives and this one felt okay, it certainly didn’t feel worse, something that was worth pondering if only for the sake of pondering itself.
I came to the conclusion that I would have been a very different person, and as much as I would have loved to find out what those forks in the road entailed and what they meant had I taken them instead of what I originally chose, I realised that it was okay if I never found out. Truth is we are who are, we make right and wrong choices left and right, we make mistakes, we move on and all of these decisions, all of these events shape our lives in the most unique way that it is enough to experience just one and be content with it. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to live the life I would have had had I never left, the version of myself that stayed, the one who probably was a better person or the one who had lost his way but as I slowly snapped out of that sudden trance, something clicked in my head. What I have now, the experiences I did get to live through were enough and will always be enough. The fact that I was given this chance at life against the insurmountable odds that is the universe should be enough, it has to be. It would be ungrateful of me to ask for another.
The person in the other timeline may have been me once, but his dreams and perception in life aren’t anymore, we may be looking at the same basketball court, standing in the same front yard, getting burnt by the same sun and yet we couldn’t be anymore different when it comes down to it. So if you do exist, the “me” in this alternate timeline where I never left, maybe you have a better hairline than I do, maybe worse. Maybe you became a popular rock band artist just like we used to dream of in high school, or maybe you became a school teacher instead! To you, and all the countless variations of us, I honestly wish for you to be successful at whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve, your dreams may not be the same as mine anymore but I know you deserve them because I lived your life once too and if anything, if I am going to root for someone, it may as well be myself…or at least someone who used to be me.
”Kakain na Christian!” I heard them call and I was back to myself again.
Krisper 