So here's the deal. I haven't actually held on to my promise to be regular in terms of updating this blog. Hey, you can't blame me. School hasn't exactly been merciful on us when I had this new blog site put up, so I can't really do a new post everyday. And since it's the lamest summer ever (what with me being unemployed and constantly worrying about the future), I just didn't have the energy to write anything since it's been the same boring routine every f*ckin' day since I got home here in Bicol.

However, this afternoon seemed like a surprise for me.

I had a sudden change in my unlikely hobbies this summer. Although to be fair, it's not like I haven't been productive these past few weeks. I have; I've been the one cooking meals for the family since our yaya seemed to have a permanent vacation, thanks a lot to her. But other than that, I've been doing nothing except watch TV and surf the same sites for the most part.

So this post is meant to tell you what I've done today, which served as a change in my lame summer itinerary.

I woke up at around 7.30 this morning. If you had any idea as to what time I usually woke up these days, you'd be saying I've been good in waking up that early. So anyway, I spent the morning watching the updates on TV about the elections, blah blah. Then, before my dad left for work, he was like, "Please do what I asked you to do and clean your space upstairs. I'm expecting results when I get home in the evening."

I was like, sure sure. Never mind the fact that I've been promising him I'd do it for the past two weeks or so, but I hadn't got the chance because I got a lot to worry about. At least, that had been my excuse to him. He never bought it, I guess.

Anyway, I made good on my promise and I actually spent a quarter of the afternoon cleaning my space. You see, my family and I have been sleeping in the same room for as long as I can remember eversince we trasferred here in Bicol. Oh, it's spacious enough alright. However, as we kids were getting older, the space seemed to have decreased, but still, it can accommodate us for the most part. And we have our designated spaces in the room, and the general rule is, if it's your space, it's up to you to keep it in shape. After all, we suffer the consequence of sleeping in a topsy-turvey bed if we don't fix it. You get the point, I assume. And even though I'm a girl, I can get pretty disorganized sometimes because I don't hang out much in the room during the day because mom doesn't want us to die from heatstroke plus our electric bill rose from the previous month alone, so we're kind of conserving electricity around here these days.

So, instead of opening the airconditioning unit to keep myself from dying from heatstroke and give my mom a reason to get mad at me for consuming too much electricity, I just opened the window nearest to me to let the fresh air in. And, opening my laptop, I played some music connected to our bad a** speakers so I could get on tidying mode pronto.

Oh, the mess in my space is not as bad as you think. There's just too many clutter on every available surface so you can't see where something is without going through the trouble of digging in and throwing more stuff around ergo creating more mess.

When I stared out my window, I noticed how unusually pretty the sky is. Wanting to capture it, I searched for my camera but on a failed attempt. Re-read the paragraph before this and I think you'll know why I didn't bother looking hard enough. The next smartest thing to do is to pull out my cell and use it's camera. Thank God for camera phones, yes?

And then I began de-cluttering my very cluttered bed space while listening to some loud music.I kinda noticed that our neighbor's cousin's auntie's son (I couldn't tell, there are a lot of people living inside) , who's house is just infront of ours, kept looking up at me and I could tell he could see right inside our room. I had no idea if he was pissed off that my music was too loud or if he was expecting me to flash him or something, I didn't have a clue. But I didn't care and paid him no more attention after that.

So I began gathering stuff, and much to my dismay, some of the junk in my space didn't even belong to me! Most of them were my mom's clothes and some of them still had the tags on, and I was like, "WTF?!" and I just threw it in her usually neat closet which is beside my bed. Haha. Sweet revenge. But out of guilt, I pulled them out again and folded them anway. HAHA.

Then, when I actually started to keep MY stuff, I bumped into old things like my elementary projects, high school quizzes and notes and some letters from friends. Seeing all these again made me go, "Aww." I took one test paper and checked the date--September of 2003! Wow. That's like, 7 years ago! I cannot even remember who I was 7 years ago and then I find these? And as always, the images of a thousand memories kept flashing back to me.

You see, there's a reason why I wish to keep my old school stuff (nevermind that they're like, over a hundred years old and showing signs of misuse) despite my mother's fervent wish to get rid of them. All these have so much sentimental value to me and I feel like if I let go of them, I'm also letting go of the memories I hold so dear. So I refused to have them get thrown for the longest time.

I remember year 2006, the summer before I head off to college, I distinctly recall crying silent tears because I worried that I might be missing out on too much while I was away. And I kept on hearing anecdotes like "You can never go home again" and such, so it added to my loneliness that when I come home, it won't be the familiar harmonious space I've grown so used to for like, almost 10 years. That's why before I left for some schooling in Manila, I gave strict orders that no one touch anything from my things otherwise, they will pay some consequences in the form of brat attacks and fits. I did this because I thought back then, maybe, just maybe, if I kept most of my childhood stuff and mementos, things won't change and I won't have to be sad about not being familiar with anything.

But as the years in college went by and I got more and more comfortable with my new life, I started to forget about most things in the past. And even though home seemed like a million miles away, I started to let go of the things I used to know and I opened up to new adventures. Which is always a good thing, I suppose, as long as we know how to look back.

Yet every time I seemed to have forgotten who I was before, somewhere inside me, a nagging feeling always made me want to go back and forces me to remember.

Now that I have closed another chapter in my book, I'm missing out on a lot of things. But it doesn't mean that I'm not looking forward for the next one. If anything, I'm more than excited. No one cares more than I do.

So now I bet you're wondering what happened to my late afternoon cleaning sesh? Well, let's just say that I have more bed space than I probably could remember having more than 8 years ago. You got that right. I threw away most of my childhood stuff already. It's symbolic for me, really. Letting go of these things doesn't really mean that I want to forget all those memories. No matter what happens, I'll still be holding on to them, material evidences notwithstanding. And as for my more room space? Well, I can always fill them again with some new clutter now that I am willing enough to give up things of the past and gear up for a new adventure!

And oh, it still makes me wonder if I can never go home again because up to this point, I keep thinking if the place has changed or have I? Well, no matter what the reason may be, I do believe that I can always go back home.:)