Living in a tourist town that is also an education hub, I have learned to live with impermanence.
Half of the people I meet on Session Road are only here for the weekend. Many of my college friends returned to their hometowns after graduation. Most of our old hangouts have shut down.
But coexisting with transience could not have prepared me for my first great heartbreak: the end of a five-year-long-distance relationship that began and ended with words on paper. We met as newspaper staffers in university. He broke up with me via a letter in 2020.
Getting jilted on a normal day is difficult enough. But it was in the thick of a global pandemic. I was stuck in the city where so much of our love story unfolded. And worse: all the bars were closed!
Still, I knew I had to regain my sense of self, even if it meant going piece by painful piece.
Restoring My Art
Every relationship is encoded in a language that is intricate and novel. Two human beings bring their quirks to the table—adding, deleting, and conflating elements until nothing on the table looks, sounds, or tastes the same as before.
My first serious relationship was encoded in arthouse cinema, indie music, and Pizza Volante’s grilled pork and Corsican rice. We went to exhibits and concerts together. He drew me portraits for our anniversaries. I wrote him a poem for his graduation.
Because we were both artists, we became collaborators. For a long time, I could not post my poetry unless it was accompanied by his artwork. I did not feel that my poems were beautiful enough without them.
Today, I continue to write poetry, good and bad. My friends and I even go out for writing sessions. I keep making poems because I know there is no other way to improve. Rejection emails from journals still sting. But years of sending out my work have made me realize that rejection is no death sentence. Four years after that fateful breakup, I launched my debut poetry chapbook at Mt Cloud Bookshop.
Revisiting My Best-Loved Places
Of course, Mt Cloud Bookshop was one of our favorite places! What kind of Baguio artist couple would we have been otherwise?
Still, returning to Mt Cloud Bookshop was easy for me because I had memories of the place that weren’t bound to my ex. In fact, I brought my 2021 dates to Mt Cloud to see what kind of books they gravitated toward. Talk about an on-the-spot personality test.
On the other hand, going back to Pizza Volante along Session Road was a struggle like no other.
Volante had been many things to me – to us – in the last decade: an overnight station for school paper presswork, go-to restaurant for dinner dates, and afterparty coffee house.
We loved Volante for its comfort and familiarity: the dim lights, red walls, and framed photos and art that seemed to never change across decades. The menu was budget-friendly, too.
To this day, a trip to Volante is always a trip down memory lane. I could sit at a second-floor table by the window and find the same walls, plates, chairs, and view I saw in 2016. For a long time, that to me was the restaurant’s greatest virtue. Little did I know it would come back to bite me in the end.
The good news is that I survived. I’ve gone back to Volante for a fresh set of tasks, dinner dates, and coffee breaks with new groups of people I adore.
Reclaiming My Favorite Sweet Treat
If I had to choose just one memorable food from my first serious relationship, it would be Volante’s Choco-Vanilla Affair, a delectable fusion of sweet and bitter, hot and cold. CVA, as the dessert’s fans call it, has a dark chocolate cupcake base topped with generous heaps of vanilla ice cream.
In every scoop of CVA, I remember everything. The sweetness and bitterness of love found and lost. The warmth and coolness of a city whose people and landscape are always shifting.
Now that I’m older, I understand.
With every hello comes a goodbye. Life evens itself out that way. More importantly, just because I’ve reached the last bite doesn’t mean I cannot savor the beginning and all the in-betweens.
After all, CVA is sweeter the second time around.
