my YA novel life: Cebu

This isn't about Cebu as much as it's about my particular circumstance in the city. I heard cities tend to have an alienating effect on people, especially if they spent half their lives in really small towns in the province like I did, but I had always been somewhat weird.

Growing up, I had different interests than other kids for some reason, and was always so annoying about all of them. I spent most my life judging people for not sharing the same perspective of things as I did, and so it's safer to say I alienated myself more than I was alienated in our tiny provincial town. This, of course, compounded with the sad fact that teenagers and their families always keep mutually misunderstanding each other in massively complicated ways and so are unable to completely be each other's comfort.

Cue A Day to Remember's "All Signs Point to Lauderdale" ("I hate this town, it's so washed up, and all my friends don't give a fuck"), and Simple Plan's "Welcome to my Life" ("Do you ever feel like breaking down? Do you ever feel out of place? Like somehow you just don't belong, and no one understands you?), and all the hit emo songs in the early 2000s, also known as the MySpace era (*shudder*).

The comforting thing about cities is that it's filled with strangers. Thousands and thousands of them. A normal and smart teenager would think this a cause of alarm, but I was 16 and I was dying to leave home, dying to leave town where everyone knew each other, dying to be a new person outside of everyone's versions of me I stopped being.

Cause you make shit decisions as a teenager, or you're a shit person overall. You lash out and let your hormones take over you, and you say offensive things, and you hurt the people you love, all while at the same time being so high on your own ego to admit faults and suffer consequences. I didn't wanna get stuck in that, but I can't change the opinion of everyone in town without maybe like joining a reality show.

Much as I hate keeping pretenses, I'm also batshit anxious of the phrase "that's not you". I don't wanna be put in the position where I have to explain to people that I'm not the person they think I am in their heads because (1) what if I still am?; and (2) It's just such an awkward conversation to have all things considered.

If my life was a Y.A. novel, it would start in Cebu City, and it would be a story about a girl who didn't like herself very much, and decided she wanted to change that - so that's not a very unique book, but I suppose a cliche is a cliche because it's true.

There was simply no better setting for that but Cebu - half-grime, half-crime, but so easy to romanticize with its big buildings and bright lights. It's an emo teenager's utopia!

I took long walks at night the first few months I was here. I, for some reason, couldn't get enough of the cold polluted air biting the skin on my face, the obstacle course of dog shit everywhere, the smelly sewers and the cockroaches - I was in love with it all in some twisted way.

I don't think I'm supposed to recommend walking alone in the city at night given of course that it's a hell hole, but it feels less lonely (and ironic) to be introspective while surrounded with a million people you don't know, as opposed to glued to a corner of your dimly-lit room. So, do it at your own risk, I suppose.

Three years down the line, it's exhausting to travel around town now. It's creepy to walk at night. You see the city for what it really is instead of that romanticized wet dream you used to make it out to be. I've grown up and I've changed and I'm not that emo anymore (thank god). My Y.A. novel life is good as over.

But I still get a kick out of the nostalgia. So I give Cebu 3 out of 5 stars.



Til next Sunday,

Des