Choosing to be away

I have been asked several times if I miss my life in the Philippines.I am an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) and have been away for almost a year now. I left a loving family, a good career, and a private relationship for a life of independence and uncertainty.

Yes, I miss my life back home. I miss the mornings when I didn’t have to worry about creased clothes or cooked food. The days when everything was convenient and easy. I was at the point in my life where I could afford stuff and enjoy random trips I didn’t have to take out a loan for.I had an amazing job. I still had to answer to a few bosses, but when I came to work daily, I was in charge and in a good spot.

I was in a relationship that not many people knew about. As private as I always am, none of my personal life is exposed to many people, even my family. I’d always tell my friends, “private but not a secret.”

People are curious why I left a life like that and started again as a bottom dweller. Do I miss my life? Am I thankful?

I am, and will always be, thankful, but I can’t go back.

I don’t want to get used to easy, because it will be harder to let go of easy when I stay longer and wait for life to disrupt my pretty mornings with hot coffee, slightly-burnt hot dogs, and fried rice. Yes, my life was convenient at home, but behind all the seemingly calm life, is a story of an eldest son and sibling who once had to make sure he was successful after graduation. A son who had to make sure he had a good-paying job because he needed to help with the bills. A son who couldn’t immediately afford a breather because supplies were more important. A son who had to make sure he had things figured out in a snap because he had no choice. I said no to many dreams, because I had to say yes to my family first.

My job was everything to me. It helped me afford a house and a car and shaped a lot of what I was outside my professional life. I loved sharing my expertise and strategizing to achieve goals and targets, but being with my job, somehow felt like a repetition of what my role was at home. It was the same script, but with a different set of characters. I had to shelve opportunities and delay desires because people needed me.I was always told to be grateful, but underneath this narrative is the inability to sometimes say NO to others, the inability to freely express how you feel without repercussions, and the inability to safely make mistakes.

I was actually sort of in a “relationship.” I was always used to pleasing people and compromising how I feel for the greater good. So I was in this relationship where everything had to be kept under the rug or sometimes denied, where I shouldn’t be ready yet, because the other half wasn’t. I was fooling myself that it complemented my preference for living a private love life, but in reality, it was all a big fat secret.It was something I was asked to hide for fear of shame and judgment. One-sided. Gut-wrenching. But of course, I swallowed up my pride, because I grew up thinking that I was low priority. Even in my most vulnerable, I had to cover up for others first and be the goose in a group of ducks. I had to deny that those sad songs in my Instagram stories weren’t about that person, and those posts weren’t connected to our relationship. I was never the partner; I was just the entourage.

So leaving was the most selfish and selfless act I have ever done in my life. Here, I struggle with the extreme weather, cultural differences, the social dynamics, but this is the reset button I truly wanted and needed. I have proven several times that I thrive in the uncomfortable and that nothing is ever permanent. I won’t be struggling my whole life, and the maiden stages of my reset are difficult but winnable.

I have to be away, of course, for my family, but more so for myself. I had to yank myself out of the mindset and situation that it’s too late to start over and re-rank my priorities in life.

Choosing to be away is choosing myself.

I had to leave because I had to see what’s out there for me. I had to leave because I couldn’t exist with what-ifs. I had to leave because I had to stop overlooking myself. I had to leave because I had to stop gaslighting myself to make people think I have emotional intelligence. I had to leave because I had to stop settling for relationships that weren’t give and take, that weren’t affirming, and that weren’t built on requited love.

I got tired of always being there, of always being needed, of always expending the love I cannot receive back. I got tired of always proving myself to a construct that is never satisfied.

I deserve more because I have given more. Yes, I miss the familiarity of home, but I can’t keep making this life about familiarity. I don’t know yet whether I will regret this decision in my life, but I am at peace with the thought that I finally made a decision where I put myself as the top consideration.

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JP, 29, is an OFW.