Friday on the Verge of Winter

THERMOMETER reading at 7 a.m. was -4 degrees Celsius. Crap. It's getting colder. Soon it will be too cold to wear normal shoes when I walk to and from school. Will be wearing that new pair of hiking boots. Something to look forward to, I think.

Yesterday was strange. At the end of the day, on the walk home, I just felt like crying. I thought about All Saints Day in the Philippines and how I stopped taking part in the yearly cemetery festivities when my family left for the US. I thought about how our family home in AC didn't feel like home anymore. I also missed my friends in the Philippines. I missed hanging out with the choir. I missed Ouie, and Gina, and Lu-ann and Dona and Lolit and Riza. I missed fishballs and leche flan. This all felt all to raw all of a sudden. It kind of hit me like a tsinelas from out of the blue. And today, this morning, I think it must have been my period.

It's unpleasant sometimes, the way my hormones hi-jack me and take over. I'm just glad it happened at the end of the day. After my Photo 2 class report. After my shift at the photo lab. I'm glad it happened while I was along and didn't result in me being rude or short with someone. Dang. Hormones are weird.

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It's not that I did not genuinely miss all those people I missed or genuinely felt a pang of homesickness. I just think my monthly hormone hijacks just take away that layer of control or patience that I usually need to function normally during the day.

But tonight, I should light a candle for my dead.