There’s a grief that only comes when you return to a place you once called home.
Yesterday, hearing the Singapore Airlines landing song, something in me cracked open. It wasn’t dramatic — just a quiet ache, the way nostalgia presses on a bruise you didn’t know was still there.
And then, at the Changi airport, seeing the secondary school kids leaving for South Korea — uniforms, excitement, the ritual of possibility — I saw Isabela in their place.
Not literally, but in the life I once imagined for her here.
It hit me: I’m grieving a life we didn’t live.
A life we walked away from.
A life we chose not to grow into.
There’s no anger in it. No regret.
Just the soft sadness of closing a door that once felt like it would stay open forever.
Singapore was a season of order, stability, and becoming.
Leaving it was a necessary decision — one still proving itself right.
But coming back reminds me that even good decisions carry loss.
That abundance, real abundance, makes room for grief too.
Maybe this is the season of my life now:
honoring the life we left,
grieving the version of ourselves we didn’t become,
and trusting that the life we’re building now in Manila is not second-best —
just different, just ours, just the one we were meant to live.
We didn’t abort a life.
We chose one.
And choosing always comes with mourning the roads we didn’t take.
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