Footnotes to Roxas

I’ve never really been fond of Roxas. My hometown, located down south of the province of Oriental Mindoro, features no landmarks worth taking note of. Being three hours away from the nearest city meant that as a child, I had to wait half a day for Jollibee (or McDonald’s if we were being particularly spoiled). As an adult, it meant being deep into the conservative countryside, tucked away from the city culture I’ve always wanted to be a part of.

Maybe it was the music from my emo phase or the slew of coming-of-age media that romanticized the sentimentality of leaving your hometown and making your own destiny at a city that doesn’t know your name, much less care for why you’re there. Even with the benefit of hindsight, however, I embrace the chaos of a Friday night rush hour on Quiapo or the mundanity of a 40-minute traffic on Taft avenue. I saw myself as a city boy at heart, and even if this piece may imply to you, my dear reader, a sort of emotional payoff wherein I reconcile with my small-town origins, I assure you that this part still rings true.

I should probably tell you more about Roxas. A quick Wikipedia browse tells you it’s the smallest municipality in OrMin (Oriental Mindoro), as well as its most densely populated. Maybe this is why despite the town's interminably busy activity, its places could never quite catch up to the diversity of its people. As earlier stated, there really isn’t anything from the town that warrants notoriety, bar from the fact that the province is often subject to a series of prolonged power outages. The outages have become so frequent and unbearably lengthy in duration, in fact, that it is somehow embraced as part of the culture, albeit unenthusiastically. On special occasions, there would be a large sound system set up in the town’s central park. It would play budots mixes and Tagalized versions of popular American music from as early as 6 in the morning. Sometimes, the Tagalized American songs are the budots mixes. I love telling my friends from Manila these peculiarities because that way, I get to mask the place with quirks instead of the mundanity that often makes me wish I was anywhere else.

I do realize the spoiled brat in me surfaces whenever I express my lack of enthusiasm for my hometown. These ramblings and meanders might as well come with the world’s smallest violin. I’ll make no attempt to make my woes sound deeper than a young adult’s self-admitted sense of entitlement. Most people in my town who went on to study in cities would tell me I would come to miss the quiet afforded only by the uneventful corners of the country—the type of quiet Roxas possesses. Again (and it’s not like I can make it sound any more pretentious than it already is), I embrace the chaotic; if only you could see my desk.

I do admit it took some adjustment period when I finally got to leave my province and study in Manila. For the first week of school, I exclusively opted to ride UVs that didn’t require me to sit on the back because I didn’t know how to open their doors. There was a specific time window that I had to catch if I wanted to leave for school and not get caught in unbearably slow traffic (hence the 40 minutes I spend on Taft). The water was so different from the one back home that I spent the first month with a stomach that either despised me or begged me to just risk UTI by drinking another bottle of iced tea. Everything had to be fitted into a schedule because Manila traffic was its own part of everyone’s routine. Still, as soon as I got the hang of waking up really early only to order a large iced McCafe and a hashbrown for breakfast, it felt oddly liberating. 

I’m sure everyone has encountered nihilism at least once during the peak of their hormonal years. It’s easy to boil it down to the belief that life is meaningless, because sure, who am I to gatekeep Nietzsche? However, I’d much rather believe that our insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe gives way for us to manifest our own meaning and impose it on the world.  Leaving Roxas reminded me of my own triviality and smallness in the face of a city so impossibly expansive and indifferent to my woes and because I was made to confront my own insignificance, it made it easier for me to start all over again as a person. I’ve met friends who shared my wavelength. I got to get out of my comfort zone. I managed to take significant steps towards the things I’m passionate about such as film and writing. This isn’t to say I wear Roxas like an albatross around my neck, but I was finally closer to figuring out who I was when nobody knew my name.

You still stumble in the process of a reinvention, though. You make mistakes, hurt people, push them away, and even change for the worse. I figured new beginnings would eventually get lonely, too. I wasn’t prepared for it when it did. Homesickness starts to kick in. A trip from Manila to Roxas would take you around eight to ten hours. Commuting wasn’t particularly convenient, nor was the fare particularly cheap. The whole travel is tiring despite spending most of the time seated with strangers.  It’s in those times that I wish I saw a little bit of Roxas. Maybe an old schoolmate, a family friend, or even a vague face I saw once in one of my many summer youth camps. 

I have spent the last 2 years of the pandemic in Roxas, contemplating my relationship with it. I have resented this place for its supposed dullness. I’ve attempted to erase the traces of this town in my identity and yet, I come back to it with my dog’s warm welcome. He never fails to recognize me even as I spend months away at a time. The bed would be unanimously softer. The ulam that day would be my favorite, either papaitan or bulalo. I thought I had let go of Roxas, but it never seems to let go of me. 

Sometimes, I’d catch the budots remix from the town plaza, or be in the midst of another power outage (the third time in a week), but I can laugh and sigh in relief knowing I am home.