hikaranko

since getting back to Manila, i've kinda really badly wanted to go visit my school. not the spruced up campus that i graduated from, but the old one. the crappy as hell one, with its peeling paint, and the red flooring in the hallway that for some reason always rubbed off on my shoes. the one where i ran around as a kid, that i'd known since i was in the 3rd grade.

we passed by it one night, one of the first nights we were here. me and my sisters all tried to get a peek at it. they both had their final years on that campus, after all. but it was raining, and it was hard to see since it was so dark. we still tried to sneak a peek anyway.

the place that we knew... it had been there for a long time, even after we had to pack up and leave for the new place. it stood there forever, even by the time i was graduating from the new campus it was still around. some kids from my graduating class went to visit it and take a look around that year. they made a video of it and put it up for all of us to watch. my graduating class was the last one to stand in that campus as high schoolers.

it had been a really heart-wrenching video to watch, even then. moreso for those of us who'd been there longer. and just seeing how the field was overgrown, its grass too tall, trees even growing up out of it... and the gyms, crammed full of old furniture that hadn't been brought to the new place. stray dogs wandering the abandoned hallways, layers of dirt and dust caked all over the floors and walls...

it had only been 3 years since we left it at that time. now it's been... what, 7? 8? and when me and my sisters went by to get a look at it...

it's finally gone. there'd been this construction site right by the campus that hadn't finished in forever... well, now it's finished. there's this mall or something and its parking lot right where it used to be, as well as right over where most of the high school classrooms had been. those old hallways, the gym with the pool, maybe part of the cashier's office... all just built on top of. like they were never there. like they hadn't mattered to anybody. the rest of the campus was closed off by one of those under construction walls, and it was easy to tell that on the other side there was nothing.

nothing. just rubble.

the sign said that a bunch of condo buildings were supposed to pop up there, right over all the places where we'd each spent the equivalent of so many years of our lifetimes. people were going to live on top of our school memories. the building was no longer around for us to pass by and get hit by waves of nostalgia. ...no, actually, we'll probably still feel it. but it'll hurt a lot more than it would if the place were still up and running.

and all three of us just sat there in the car, motor still running, staring at where a construction barrier had taken the place of an entrance gate. a gate where all of us had waited for hours for the car to come rumbling in and take us home through 2 hours of Makati traffic.

it was so... unreal.

i kind of wanna go there again, just to see. it'd be nice if i were somehow allowed past the barrier, just to really confirm that it was all gone for good. to wander through the rubble and think about what it had once looked like. to imagine it as it once was. to remember it. but then i'm also scared that if i do, then it'll just make those memories fade faster.

memories are so weird like that.