Living alone in Manila: Of moving out and taking risks

When is the right time to move out? 

The paired concept of moving out and living alone in Manila is quite taboo. 

Oftentimes, necessity becomes the motivator to move out, coming in the form of situational events that involve family or finances, or life milestones called marriage. 

Growing up in private education, I was accustomed to the tied pairing of moving out and living abroad. It was picturesque, even aspirational. 

I thought to myself — why would I move out in same, old Manila if I could strive to do it elsewhere? The notion of a better life, the thought of fulfillment in a different country.

But frankly, I didn’t really have that privilege. 

I started working for myself right after graduation and the hustle of working and earning became a grind I relied on. Even if the desire to move out remained, I was so fixated with a certain picture of how things should look like. 

So I worked and waited, worked and waited. But waiting can be tiring, moreso frustrating — especially if our expectations are set. 

So it hit me. 

Did I really need to wait for external factors to enact in order for my life to progress? 

Was it really necessary to stop my work and study abroad just to see the world? 

Was it an absolute need to have a job opportunity in another city just so I can live on my own? 

Do I really have to wait until a man comes knocking at my parents’ door just to marry me off? 

All these and more — I knew that the answer was a crystal clear no. 

They say change and loss are intertwined.

So often we want change to happen but the reason we stay exactly the same is because we refuse to change and we refuse to lose something along that process. 

I knew I wanted things to change but how change looked like wasn’t the picture I wanted. But if I wanted to grow, I had to accept that I was not in control of everything; maybe even anything. I had to work with whatever I had at that time in order to take ownership of the narrative of my own life.

And quite frankly that meant two things: my far-from-liquid bank account and a shitload of self-courage.

The fear of the unknown coupled with the fear of discomfort holds us back. And can we be blamed? Life is hard and if we could bask in comfort, we would. But it is only a matter of time when comfort turns into stagnancy, and routine turns into patterned repetition. And once that’s set, it becomes harder to break out and enact change.  

Maybe there really is no perfect or right time to do things; just moments of faith in-between waiting to be answered. 

It is in accepting our reality that we allow our destiny to take course. It is embracing discomfort that we pave the way for good to come. It is saying, “This doesn’t look the way I would have wanted, but let’s do it.”

We hold onto things because we want them to happen for ourselves but life has a crazy way of saying “Not now” sneakily followed by a whisper of “Maybe later, maybe not ever”. 

Even if things don’t make sense, we just have to make do with what we have and make the most of what there is. 

We have to go through it to get to it.

I don’t think I can really explain the craziness of working and living in a third-world country and sustaining myself amidst all of it. Maybe the more technical side can come next time. 

It’s crazy, it’s hard, it’s fun, it’s whack. 

And it is the life I choose to live in.