Years I lost in the haze

It was in 2021 when I first learned how to write.

My mama prepared a table in our small garden, one with Christmas lights and a tiny bahay kubo decoration. I would sit there with my old, heavy laptop—all its keys creating sounds similar to that of a typewriter whenever I am immersed in my campus journalistic work. It was still at the height of the pandemic, when classes were largely remote and press endeavors had to be done online. I would sleep at six in the evening, wake up at four just before sunrise, make myself a mug of instant coffee, and listen to Chopin or Mozart or maybe Beethoven—it was my ritual for writing. I was familiar with the scent of midnight and the sight of daylight’s first fall on the ground.

Four years have passed since then. I am in college today at Los Baños, and I rarely come home to Rizal. The very few times I visit, this house always changes. The table I used to have in our small garden is no longer here. My office is now on a newly constructed balcony, where I can easily see the vast azure. The old chessboard set my dad gave me on my 14th birthday, with all the letters and paintings from old lovers inside it, is no longer under my bed in my room. The mountain in Montalban looks a little bit taller, complementing the sunrise even better. My table is no longer the table that seemed like it could break at the slightest motion, and my laptop does not sound like an ancient typewriter anymore.

Like countless iskolar ng bayan who travelled from their distant provinces to Laguna for college, I entered the university with courage. There was this feeling of certainty that I could just lose and find myself—be homesick, be hurt, drink in Puesto at night, jog at Pili Drive in the morning, join mobilizations in front of Oblation or at Carabao Park. I felt this sensation, this pride that made me think I could mold my world into what I want it to be at the University of the Philippines. “Go on a journey,” I would imagine Mozart telling me from the skies, for a writer whose inspirations still partly root from classical music.

What I failed to realize is that parts of me had already been lost long before university. The were years I lost in the haze when everything broke, dreams and friendships and love.

Long years inside the pandemic changed me. I learned to pretend I was more mature. My hair grew so much longer, and I became more conscious about my appearance. I fell in love, got broken, then fell in love again in April. I wrote poems and unfinished anthologies, then got broken again. I met the music of The Ridleys, I listened to “Aphrodite” and “Germany and Rome.” I believed in love.

I miss writing poetry. I miss drafting editorials on issues that made me look smart when published in our student paper. I miss exchanging emails that make my heart flutter. I miss walking around campus, waiting for a jeep near Katipunan, navigating the roads of Anonas and Molave—things in my past life that I, in retrospect, took for granted and eventually lost. Maybe this is just a testament of what someone once told me, “Tomorrow is not certain, and it’s a dreadful thought to wake up without today’s warmth.” I miss the café I used to stay at, which had already closed three years ago.

There is this uncomfortable feeling of grief for the things and people that I loved. I would often ask myself, what about the essays and poems and prose I wrote for those who would no longer care to read them? What of the words left unsaid and the screams still echoing? I could have written more. Reminiscing now, I see how I was so young three years ago before the pandemic, and I was so disillusioned when suddenly times changed, and I was older—I had to act older. This feeling has recurred lately. I would initially tell myself, “This discomfort is temporary.” Things have no permanence, and I cannot cling to stillness.

But maybe, parts of me still willingly let themselves get stuck in these recollections, despite the initial preconception, because they are reminders of a life I once lived.

I remember once reading an article that said, “Home need not be a place.” Indeed, home, now, feels more metaphorical than physical. That little boy—who is familiar with the scent of midnight and the sight of daylight’s first break, who loves to write on the table his mama prepared for him—does not know this.

Perhaps this is why, since childhood, I have always been fond of constructing sentences that imply my hopes for events that are no longer likely to happen, that are just absurd and outright impossible.I want to visit and relive the past again.I want to guide that little boy today, to show him the reality of constant shifts and changes, of heartbreaks and years of broken things.

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Prince Luke Alicum Cerdenia, 19, storyteller and lawyer-in-the-making living in Los Baños, Laguna. He dreams of a world where he can freely write about the stars, the trees, and all the kindness of the people.