I've been wanting to come back but life has been busy.
2025 feels like it's going to be an amazing year because I've been coming back to myself a bit since the last quarter of 2024. However, this first quarter has seen one explosion after another. We've survived somehow.
Last week we visited Auckland because we caught the Eraserheads tour stop there. We stayed with our friends in Browns Bay and couldn't really do more because it's tiring to travel with U at this point even if he has been really good at it. It was lovely to come back to our former home suburb, and all the sweeter to be with people we used to live with and/or have had such close relationships back in the PH.
The concert itself was amazing, a religious experience, singing those songs while surrounded by other Pinoys who loved them so much, too. We were so lucky and grateful that Raims let us come backstage after the show so we could say hi. We had to leave them after a bit because they had an early start the next day, and we felt we would be imposing if we stayed.
Today, I feel bereft. All weekend, I kept talking about the fantasy of moving back to Auckland to be with our friends, though of course I also acknowledged the barriers to that. But as predicted, our homecoming to Nelson was so sweet. U was happy and relieved to be back.
I feel that this trip has highlighted for me all the things that we lost over the years, and most starkly what I lost in 2025. Watching the concert reminded me of gig life in the Philippines, and meeting the 'Heads again my friendships and connections, all the behind-the-scenes of such a life. I am grieving.
Perhaps all our paths will converge again somewhere down the line, I know they really will. But oh how much it hurts to be apart from what has been part of yourself.
P. S. It helped me to write this down. I had been feeling ill since yesterday morning, a sickness in the heart. It's been tempered now.
