Bababa ba?

Visited the Ateneo High School this evening. Same places, same faces. Yeah, it was the same old high school. Except, of course, for the newly repainted walls and the redone landscapes and all the improvements. (Bitter? Hahaha).

A walk through the EDSA Walk gave Kenneth, Dan and I a weird feeling. Somehow, the place was different.

After seeing how big UP is, Ateneo High seemed very small.

The seemingly endless corridor of the EDSA Walk doesn’t seem to be as endless as it was. The end to end walk was very short, compared to the distance that we’re now walking everyday in school.

What made my EDSA walks longer this evening was not the distance of the walk itself, but the different distractions scattered all around. Org posters, teachers, students, and parents, both old and new. I was like a freshman looking all around the place, staring at the different things.

Every time I encounter someone or something familiar, I’d slow down and observe things or people that seem very familiar, but feel so new and so exotic as of the moment.

Well, that’s how a revisited home should feel, right? Once you have been immersed to a different area for a long time, home would feel very familiar yet very different. Sounds very oxymoronic, doesn’t it?

Familiar in the sense that you recall the things and places that you once claimed to be yours. You know the different places by heart. Walking the familiar ground gives you a sense of nostalgia and causes you to yearn to be in the past again.

But here comes the twist: all of a sudden everything becomes very different. The places that you once claimed to be yours have new inhabitants now. They now own the place, you don’t. And though they whole-heartedly accept you back, you would still feel very alienated. You then realize that things are different now. Somehow, the place isn’t yours anymore.

Eventually, in the future, there would come a time that things would end up being very different, causing them to become more exotic and alienating you more. But there would still be something, even if it’s just a little something, that would make you feel at home.

The locations? The people? The plants perhaps? I don’t know. But what I believe is, when ten years have passed and I come back to visit this place, even if things end up becoming very different, something would be reminding me that this place is home, and would always be.