"The Mind Bender"

"For a second there i thought you disappeared..." The lull of Jason Schwartzman's voice nudges you back into the waking world. Despite a desperate urge to drift back to the mind - numbing oblivion of the Tylenol PM's you took the night before, a confrontation with your emotions is in order. The knot around your heart swan - dives into the pit of your stomach as the plane finally begins its descent towards Manila, the city you call home. Seats back up, no tray tables down. Time to switch off all electronic devices. You try to be a punk and hide your headphones under your hoodie, because the idea of your phone crashing to the beat of your favorite Jeff Buckley song is much more appealing than facing the facts your three - month hiatus from life in the real world is rapidly drawing to a close.

The city lights that faded in the wake of your departure now flare to greet you, blazing like neon "welcome home"signs built from a vulgar amount of billboards. The black and grays of Manila at night quickly materialize into sky scrapers, highways, hotels and houses. You stare out the window and trace random shapes into the fog your breath leaves on the double - paned Plexiglass. The wheels finally touch down on the runway, but you don't even notice that your plane's landed until you hear the syncopated clicking of seatbelt buckles as passengers scramble for their pasalubong in the overhead and stealthily switch on their cellphones. Welcome home, you think, as if trying to convince yourself that you're exactly where you want to be. You try and attempt to forget that just 24 hours ago, you were saying goodbye to a life you hadn't thought you wanted.