"The Other Side of Your World"

My alter ego speaks.

As you turn a year older, you assess, you turn back time (like you always do), you recall, and you treasure beautiful memories in your life that have left you nostalgic, melancholic, always. You just close your eyes, wherever you may be, just when that sudden attack of loneliness pinches you, you just know. After all like you always tell yourself, you are now one who believes that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

And so back in college was the life of trivial and negligible things. Memories of that football field would bring you to think fast times with your group of friends or batchmates or blockmates. Sneaking through basketball players’ locker rooms, escaping tennis practical exams, crashing in friends’ parties in clubs, filling the long gaps with strolls in the malls. Everything else showed facets of college life, a step short of supreme adulthood and major responsibilities. Joining the mass choir made for an uplifting pursuit except for the fact that falling for the choir leader never felt so hopeless and futile. It was mere infatuation, or if you will, wishful thinking. But it felt good. Think Sleepless in Seattle good. Even if those were gloomy, stormy days you remember. Your point is, it was certainly good.

You have never appreciated making a thesis more than when you were all set to march down and throw your hats off to burning eyebrows and earning degrees. Here you tell yourself you’re ready to face the world, but you don’t know what kind this world is made of, climbing the corporate ladder, heeding the desires of your heart, or preparing to start a career in another continent. You eventually unravel for yourself the reality of life as you tread along the path of your choices. In this world anyway, we choose the life we make.

From dream to dream, end to end, you seem to have acquainted yourself with the most bouncy of characters in your life. You sincerely allowed these chaps to take the better out of you once, twice, even thrice. In the end, you turned neither condescending nor irate. You cherished hope amidst the sore heart. You wished good thoughts about them and thought this is how love works on you, as much as this love heals you and protects you from the next bitter episodes.

When you’ve moved on to the more interesting and good-natured phases of your life you had a more expansive look at the other side of the world. You have now gracefully taken in the best of blessings through the small family you’ve created for yourself. You’ve nurtured and gave your companion and offspring the kind of love that you know, this time reciprocal, eternal, resilient. Then you suddenly discover your true self. You opened your eyes to the veracity of your existence, as a wife, mother, sister, and friend. You are now avid and keen on satiating your mind with every rambling and musing of life and love. Truly, because you know deep inside that this is your home, this is your place on the other side of your world.