2015 started out hopeful as I still had a hangover from the volunteer activity in Ecuador and the side trip to Peru. The people I met there reminded me that I was working with the world's most brilliant minds, making me feel like a kid walking among giants. It was both an enriching and humbling experience. They inspired me to achieve greater heights in my career, and I was duly recognized.

The rest of the year unfolded as it should, I immersed myself in family, work, friends, travel and hobbies while I grew roots and faded into mediocrity. It was predictable and safe, it was frighteningly comfortable, I was almost on the verge of contentment, and I would have stayed there if I could, but then life happened.

Life's like that, it doesn't prepare you for a denouement, it takes you up then slams you down, forcefully to the ground, without warning, and you are left clueless on what just happened, as you try to pick up your broken pieces and decide what you'll do next.

Coelho said "don't be someone that searches, finds, and then runs away". When I decided to leave my comfort zone for good, it felt like I was running away.  I was not really looking for anything in particular but something found me, something that needed to be distilled by time to make it pure. So I chose distance to make me wiser, but I think Murakami may have been right, "distance might not solve anything, no matter how far you run".

So here I am, thirty three days later and seven thousand miles away, I jumped off the cliff and I'm about to hit the ravine, but I'm still struggling to grow my wings.

I've got nothing on me save for an inked pen, a notebook and three minutes of your time, so here's the one zillion simoleon question of a lifetime: will you come fly with me?

Dear Papa,

Happy birthday to you! Today you will be 61, I wonder where you are, are you celebrating with friends or family or just on your own looking out to the sea?

Once upon a time you were my superhero, my Santa Claus, my protector, the tallest and strongest and most handsome guy in the world, the man I look up to, the one who will read me bed time stories at night, sing Simon and Garfunkel to make me fall asleep, and sing "Mockingbird hill" to wake me up each morning. Once upon a time you taught me how to play chess and ping pong and bowling and billiards and poker until I learned to count Hershey's kisses like chips that I can use to call, raise or go all in.

I remember we used to go on midnight drives to the gas station convenience store to buy chocolates or to Minute Burger to have a midnight snack. Life was so simple then, the house in Bulacan was like a distant dream that I used to visit every summer so Kuya and I can play Monopoly and hide and seek with our cousins.

Everything is so different now. I last saw you three years ago when we had dinner at Shakey's, you told me about your life and where you're headed then you asked me what my plans were. We talked like old friends and suddenly I missed the father who knew the answers to all the questions, the cure to all the pain, and the solutions to all the problems. There were so many things I wanted to ask you then but it looks like as we grow older we'll just have to figure things out on our own.

Pa, I think I got my anger issues and running away genes from you. I try to keep it at bay and everyday is a chance for me to be better, but sometimes I just want to leave everything behind and go as far away as I can to a place where no one knows me. I think that's where you are right now, did you ever find happiness there? Is it everything you had hoped it would be?

You once told me that when you grow old, you just want to go to the mountains and live a simple life among indigenous people then teach them crafts, I wanted to ask you "but what about me? what about us?", but then you taught me not to be the clingy, needy, possessive type. Instead you showed me how to be strong, independent and unattached, like you.

Someday, maybe I will see you tuning a guitar and singing "Bookends" or sitting at an old cafe playing chess with a random stranger and talking about the history of the world.

Till then, I hope you are with people who love you and I hope they are taking good care of you, or since you don't like that domesticated crap, I hope you are strong and healthy and still fighting with life.

Your daughter,
-

2015.12.18.6.35.a.m.