When ‘ber’ months stop ringing a bell

While everyone is in high spirits with the culmination of “ber” months, my mind was preoccupied with high hopes for netizens to stop tweeting “Wake me up when September ends.”

I guess I’m way past the craze, just because I lost the point of anticipating for the holidays. Being an OFW for already a year now took its toll on me, as I again realize that plane fares would cost me at least half of a thousand Singapore dollars. I hear myself telling this time and again — “I’d rather send the money over to my family so they can have a festive celebration.”

Which brings me to my actual disappointment — I won’t be able to spend Christmas and New Year with them again this year. I already survived the first one, and without exaggeration, that was the saddest, probably because I had to convince myself that “at least I have friends to celebrate it with,” or “at least technology’s making the communication still possible.” The saddest we can be is when we convince ourselves that we feel otherwise. 

We always hear OFW stories, which at most touched our hearts and probably made us utter sheer praises for our “unsung heroes.” The difficulty may vary, in fact I’m in no position to rub it in as I am working on a free country with a Jollibee branch and 4x-a-day, 3.5-hour-per-flight access to our key cities in the Philippines. But no matter how we quantify the amount of sacrifice we give, the homesickness is real.

The move to leave my country was a family decision. I wanted a new environment; they wanted the same. As I started working here in Singapore, I completely understood the light and shade of the whole experience. Comforts of life, especially to those working in a first world country is one major thing. Here, I don’t need to worry about using my smartphone while on a train, or using my bag to reserve a seat at a hawker. I can walk through the streets late at night with a peaceful mind, and I can hail a cab anywhere without fears of having my head pointed with a gun. 

But I know somewhere within the nooks and crannies of these factors lies desire for a better life and a better future. We don’t need to say it, but the remittance receipts do the talking.

It maybe the biggest factor after all — I’ll never earn in our country what I could overseas. It’s way too frustrating, that the one thing that hinders us from using our skills back home rather than elsewhere is compensation. 

When homesickness kicks in, we tend to question our decisions and be frustrated about the pros over the cons of staying overseas. For an OFW nothing could be worse than to consider leaving a necessity. When we leave our home, we should either just take a break or permanently move elsewhere. OFWs are somewhere in the middle. Choosing either the former or the latter entails bigger risks and sacrifices. We choose to stay lukewarm so we could be stable — it’s a human trait. 

To choose a better life outside our country means missing important moments of our family members’ lives or failing to see our siblings and children grow up before our very eyes. Behind those new cars and newly-renovated houses are mothers, fathers, and children setting aside a big portion of their incomes to provide a little comfort for the family they left. 

Yet no matter how we take our choices as calls of necessity, being an OFW is always a choice. Whenever pangs of guilt stab me while looking at my parents’ Facebook photos, I have to remind myself: “Ginusto ko ‘to” (I chose this). While keeping myself strong and positive for the upcoming holidays, I could only wish that someday, we don’t have to go elsewhere for a better life, and that the advantages of going home outweigh the disadvantages. 

There will be more Christmases and birthdays when I would again sit down and pour out my frustrations, but within acceptance and contentment lies the hope that all of these will someday be worth it, and that I’ll once again get stoked on the first day of September. But please, no more lyric tweets from that famous Greenday song. – Rappler.com 

John Andri Cunanan is a Java Consultant in a Singapore-based company.