Commissioned by Canvas Magazine
Originally published in 2021, edited by the author in 2026
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See, it was never my intention to make work about migration. I grew up thinking that I would call the Philippines my home forever, to grow old and die there.
Growing up, my parents would move my brother and I to different cities every four years; they stayed, kept their home in a different town. We sought better education elsewhere. After every semester, we would go back to my parents’ house and stay there for a couple of weeks. Until now, I refer to that place as my mother’s house. Whenever we moved to a different city, I would have a growing, lonely feeling, which I thought was homesickness, but to be homesick, you must have a home. For most of my boyhood, I have been encapsulated by the confusion of where home is.
I knew of migration from my parents’ siblings.
During the economic crisis of Marcos' dictatorship in the 80s, the Philippines sanctioned a labor export program. Tito Fer, my father’s older brother, immigrated to Honolulu to work in the medical field.
In the early 90s, my mother’s sister, not out of socio-economic necessity, left to become a domestic helper in Singapore. Upon her return, she brought a Chinese husband, who eventually died a few years after I was born. Perhaps on another whim, in the early 2000s, she left her new husband and five kids to work as a domestic helper in Hong Kong. Shortly after, my mother’s brother left for the UAE.
They would send balikbayan boxes. In it would be soap, toothpaste, clothes, Spam, corned beef, and many other foreign delicacies. These boxes would be the reason for a family gathering.
In 2014, after the long-awaited immigrant petition, half of my family emigrated to Florida and Honolulu.
Balikbayan boxes were no longer sent, and family gatherings were no longer held.
At 19, I graduated from university, got a job, earned a salary, and eventually moved out of our home, the city, and the country.
In 2016, at 22, I moved to Dubai, perhaps on a whim too. But I had plans to return: I was going to return after my three-year contract. By then, I would be 25, and my Art Director position in the Philippine advertising industry would still be available to me.
The first time I was made aware of my migrant body was the first day I woke up sore from sleeping on the top bunk of a double-decker; it's not a nice feeling, and my roommates said I would never get used to it. I believe them, they have been sleeping the same way for a few years.
The same day, I learned a few words that would shape my future art practice: bed space, partition, Kabayan, survival, and loneliness.
That week, I realized that cooking adobo is the best way to save time and preserve dressed chicken.
That month, I knew that a monthly salary of 2800 AED was only enough to pay for rent, a monthly metro pass, a humble list of groceries, and a few nice meals at an okay cafe. I also realized that to send cash back home, I must learn to know my needs, remove my wants, close my eyes, and pray that tomorrow I will find 1000 AED on the street.
That year, I also learned that loyalty to a company should not take priority in decision-making; that I must learn to think of myself first.
I quit my first job in Dubai after six months; I negotiated better pay in the companies I subsequently worked for.
The decision to go back to the Philippines became unclear as the years went by.
Six years on, I am still living and working in the same city, calling myself a Dubai-based artist. Only now have I realized that my childhood’s growing loneliness, which followed me everywhere, is the same feeling I have right now.
It is not homesickness, after all.
Through lenses of nostalgia, I see myself in distant and near places, sometimes rose-tinted, other times clear. I have come so far, I assure myself.
To have lovingly accepted my aching migrant body in a lonely city is a place not a lot of people arrive at.
There must be a word for this unique feeling singular to migrant bodies; a quiet desire for a home yet to be known; an inevitable loneliness only a small part of the world can resonate to.✶