going indie

My parents and sister are in Bora. My brother is getting ready for an entrance exam for higher education in UP early Sunday morning. I am going to spend the weekend without parents or relatives, or anyone looking over my shoulder. It's like a dry run for what my life's gonna be like when I start to live on my own.

A short thought (or a long one that I intend to be short): how do you exactly live on your own in a country like this? In my case, it will only be when I leave the country (if ever) or get married (if ever). But then if I get married, I don't think that's exactly classified as living on your own. And if I ever leave the country, I doubt I would do so on my own. Okay, that's short enough.

I've been living pseudo-independently since 1999, though I've had to come home every weekend to teach in the studio, and since I'd be living with the rents every weekend, I never really thought of it as being on my own. When I was still working for that record label, my officemate and friend Jennie said to me right before she left her parents' house to live in an apartment two hours away, "Now I won't be so envious of you anymore." It only occurred to me then that what I was doing was considered living on my own. Even if I did come home to the rents on the weekends.

I consider this weekend as total freedom because I'm running the studio on my own. I have to make my own means to get there, to find something to eat, to get home. I can do anything I want. And even if Lucas comes home at any time, it will feel like he's only visiting.

Before they left, my Mom hugged me so alarmingly hard, like they had sent me off to prison or given me up for adoption or something. I reiterate, how do you ever really live on your own?

I hope I have time to make Nigella's Bitter Orange Ice Cream. Yum.