What does living life to the fullest mean to you? Is it treading through each day with varying degrees of caution so you can live to witness the next generation, or spending the next days or weeks stepping out of your comfort zone and confronting your fears and all the dangers the world has to offer?
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My name is Love Geraldine Dalisay.
My parents say that I'm the epitome of my name — loving and pure, the latter coming from my surname 'Dalisay'. I don't really know if my parents picked Geraldine for a specific reason or whether they just threw it in for the sake of having a middle name, but I searched on Google for its origin one day out of curiosity. 'Geraldine' apparently means 'ruler with a spear', perhaps a symbol of bravery and courage. In my 19 years of living, however, I don't think I've ever live up to those traits. So here I am, venturing into the wild on my own — in other words, I'm taking the public transportation unaccompanied for the first time in my life.
The journey from Dasmariñas all the way to España wasn't as bad as my parents had described commuting in the Philippines — cramped places, polluted air, sweltering heat, and dangers lurking in every corner — but let me start from the beginning. I embarked on my adventure at 8 in the evening, where there were fewer people and the cool breeze of the night tickled my skin, making me shiver.
"Ah... I should've brought a jacket."
All the houses I strolled past had lit windows and grandiose balconies, the trees surrounding them swaying gently in a synchronized motion. Amidst the tranquil of the night, a loud, prolonged sound of a buzzer resonated from a distance where there were squeaking shoes shuffling on the wood flooring and a rhythmic thumping of a ball hitting the ground.
Five minutes in and I'm still safe, untouched. Something about the night possessed a hypnotizing calmness, slowing down my heartbeat which thumped ferociously against my chest moments ago as I closed the gate to my house.
"You'll be okay," The words escaped my lips like a whisper, camouflaging itself in the wind and the inaudible words dissipating into cold air, "It's not so bad, isn't it?"
