Hurricane Honey: Bye-Bye, Boracay!

Thank you, Boracay, for a beautiful (almost) 2 years. xxx

White Beach at sunset. Taken in my first week of living on the island (April 2010)

As I sat in the Kalibo airport today, waiting to leave the Visayas islands for good, I was filled with a sense of calm, and a sense of peace. I am wildly excited about the new adventure that awaits me in Vigan (more about that in a later blog), in the same way that I find myself thrilled whenever I embark upon a new country, a new exciting phase, a new great unknown...

I realize now that the reason I found myself on a tiny island in the middle of a turquoise sea, remote and quiet, was that I needed to regain a sense of balance. I needed to relax, to calm down, to find my centre again. After my year of backpacking – after all the changes that that single year wreaked in my soul and in my psyche and in my being and in my entire world view – I needed a break. And I had it. In our lovely little home up on the hill, surrounded by lush green trees, with the sea gently lapping within earshot, birds in the garden, neighbour’s cats sunning themselves in the living room beside me, and all manner of bugs and insects traipsing through... I found my calm.

Of course, that’s not to say it all happened without turmoil. I found myself wildly emotional, erratic in my thoughts and sentiments, extreme, conflicted, oscillating... for months and months on end...

...

And then, after a while, the calm returned. I was happy to just BE. I started to go out less – not because I didn’t enjoy the hustle and bustle, the laughter, the people around me - no. Simply because I enjoyed my solitude more. When you give and give and give, and share your energy, and live large and loud and in vivid technicolour, it is WONDERFUL! But it is not sustainable; not without a pause to rest, to reflect and to renew one's energy.

So thank you, little isla, for SO MUCH. Thank you for helping me to find ME again. Thank you for magical sunsets, for brilliantly funny nights, for beautiful friends, for a soft and gentle cushion within which to manouevre through the (apparently normal) sometimes rocky first year of marriage. I cannot think of another place in the world that would have soothed me in such an important transitionary period – from gypsy to wife, from traveler to homebody, from bonfire philosopher to (once-again) official academic. It is only through the loving embrace that is Boracay island that I could bring the various facets of my being together, towards a peaceful co-existence.

And so it is not with a heavy heart at all that I bid you “Au revoir”! My heart is light, I am tranquil. I am grateful, excited, and infinitely wiser after these 22 incredibly important months in my life. They may have felt languid and laaaaaazzzzyyyy while I was living them – but in retrospect: WOW!!! WHAT A RUSH!!