That first visit back to the Philippines after working abroad felt like stepping into a dream that didn’t quite remember me. Everything looked familiar, yet slightly out of focus—like someone had rearranged the furniture of my memories while I was away. I had expected changes, of course. Time doesn’t pause just because we leave. But I hadn’t anticipated the quiet heartbreak of feeling like a stranger in a place that once felt like an extension of myself.

You don’t realize how deeply your roots go until you leave.

Some homes had crumbled in the wake of the super typhoon in December 2021—places I used to pass every day, now reduced to memory and debris. But in their place rose tall, glittering buildings, new establishments that buzzed with life, roads that led to corners I no longer recognized. Even the directions had changed, rerouted by progress. It felt like the country was sprinting ahead while I stood still—suitcase in hand, passport stamped with foreign dates, and a heart caught somewhere between past and present. It was beautiful, yes. But it was also jarring. Like trying to hold onto something that’s already halfway gone.

I looked at my cousins—once the wild-hearted kids who ran barefoot across sunlit fields. Now, they were wrapped in schedules and responsibilities, the quiet rhythm of adult life pulsing through their routines. We’ve all grown older, and in some ways, grown apart. But when we hugged, I still felt the same arms. Heard the same laughter. Time may change the shape of our lives, but love has a way of staying constant—quietly waiting for us to return.

That’s the thing about home—it shifts. It stretches. It continues becoming, even in your absence. But if you let it, it still welcomes you back. This time around, I noticed the little things I used to overlook. The streets I once ignored now seemed steeped in stories. The familiar hum of a sari-sari store, the smell of sun-drenched laundry, the crackle of someone cooking otan bisaya next door—all of it, sacred. Even the vegetables I used to complain about? I devoured them with reverence. Because distance does that. It teaches you to see ordinary things as extraordinary. It sharpens your hunger for the mundane.

I became the cliché I once rolled my eyes at—taking too many photos, writing captions thick with nostalgia: “There’s no place like home,” “Home is where the heart is.” And you know what? It’s true. All of it. You don’t realize how deeply your roots go until you leave. You don’t realize how much you needed to come back until you’re standing outside your old house, weeping at the sound of your own name. It’s a sound you haven’t heard said like that—in that tone, in that accent—for far too long.

this land still holds my heart. The culture, the chaos, the closeness of it all—it’s mine.

Because the truth is: no matter how far I go or how many years pass, this land still holds my heart. The culture, the chaos, the closeness of it all—it’s mine. It’s the soil that raised me, the language that shaped me, the people who remind me who I am beneath the uniform, the role, the adulting. Even if I build a life oceans away, the Philippines will always, always, be home. I used to think leaving would set me free. And maybe, in some ways, it did. But returning—quiet, jet-lagged, heart wide open—reminded me of something far more important.

It reminded me who I really am. me free.

But returning reminded me who I really am.