Coming Home

They say that there’s no place like home, and I would say nothing much comes close. People here, there and everywhere dream of a place, abroad or locally to go to. But for people like me who grew up at the province and are now studying in a different place, we reminisce the times we were with the people who we grew up with. Yes, the place I would like to visit is my hometown of GeneralSantosCity. The place that I will forever cherish in my memories In the days coming before the semestral break, a friend asked me, “Are you going to go back to Gensan?” and I said “yeah”. Then she asked me why, at first I didn’t really know what to say. I just had this overwhelming feeling all semester that “I need to go back”. To go back to the place I spent sixteen years of my life, the place that molded my being, that taught me so much and gave me so much to bring with me here in Cavite. My quick answer of course was “because it was where I grew up”, at the time I felt it was sufficient but, as I thought about it more, I realized it was a pretty shallow answer. I mean, who doesn’t want to go back home? But then again what is a home? For some it doesn’t even exist, and for some they say it’s just a memory. Some say it is the place where you grow up wanting to leave and grow old wanting to come back. Still others say it is where we belong, it is not a physical structure but rather for me it is a sense of well being. You just feel right, when you’re there, I don’t know, I don’t have the wisdom to elaborate further, but I’m sure there’s a place where you’ve felt it too. For me, its just different there, I feel so calm, so relaxed, so at ease, so at home, it’s the place I feel I can let my guard down. Well its not that I didn’t have problems while I was in Gensan. Believe me, there were things that I regretted doing there up until now. “Ang rami ko ngang kapalpakan noon” as I say in our native language. But after dealing with my new environment here, nostalgia