The Periphery Behind Me
I love late night thoughts (hello from 1:45 AM)
There was a word I used to think about a lot. It’s called Ruckkehrunruhe (but with two dots on top of the first u. Sadly the font doesn't work with it.) Let’s look at its definition.
n. the feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness—to the extent you have to keep reminding yourself that it happened at all, even though it felt so vivid just days ago—which makes you wish you could smoothly cross-dissolve back into everyday life, or just hold the shutter open indefinitely and let one scene become superimposed on the next, so all your days would run together and you’d never have to call cut. (Koenig, 2021)
(For transparency, this isn’t a real word. It’s a made-up one for the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Then again, as Thor said, all words are made-up.)
After trips, especially long and memorable trips, there’s two things I like to do. One, I often count how many days it’s been. I remember that after our Singapore trip, I kept counting how long it had been since the big spike in my walking distance.
Two, I like looking for anything that indicates we went somewhere. Bags that still need to be unpacked. Local food that we bought. A pen that was given to me in Singapore that I used until it ran dry.
Why do I do this? I think it has something to do with the feeling of Rückkehrunruhe. I don’t want something to end so… definitely. To the point where, just a few days after the fact, it’s as if it never happened at all. There’s nothing lingering after a few days. It’s just gone.
As of writing this, it’s June 10, 1:54 AM. Just two days ago (plus about an hour or so), I was shouting out the lyrics to Love Story at the top of my lungs. Can that be true? It doesn’t feel like it. Nothing’s happened since then, so it should feel fresh in my mind.
But it’s fast fading. It doesn’t feel as if it actually happened. Which is sad to me, because it was everything to me at one point. Everything but Periphery was just beyond the periphery for me. Out of sight, out of mind, and out of care.
The time since all this is also growing longer. It’s now been more than three months since our last YMSAT and the retreat that weekend. It’s been four weeks and little under a month since the last (official) week of classes we had in Pisay. A week since I was last in the library cramming something.
And what scares me is that slowly, the souvenirs of the past few weeks are also fading. The coke bottle that I brought home from our silid party has been emptied and thrown out. The snacks I got last week have all been eaten. The clothes I wore to the ball have been either returned or washed and put back in my closet, as if none of it ever happened.
It’s as if I flew right past the last few weeks, and saw them slowly growing smaller behind me, until finally, they dip below the horizon and pass out of my periphery.
(Sorry, too many peripheries. Side note, one thing I love about 2023 stuff (which 2024 should really learn how to do, cough Ephemera cough) is that they’ll pick a theme and really stick to it. Sometimes it gets corny, but it’s always good corny.)
It’s not that I don’t want to change. Change can be a good thing, and I know I have to leave high school behind eventually. But sometimes, I want to hold on a little longer. Hold on until my hand hurts from holding on, and I finally have to let go. Hold on until I’ve memorized the feeling of the rope, and I can feel it in my hand long after it’s gone.
It still hasn’t fully sunk in that we’re leaving- sorry, we’ve left Pisay just yet. I just woke up from a dream where one of my teachers created a brand new game from checkers pieces (which, looking back, is really just chess). I still think about going to school in the early morning, walking up to our room (which will always be the Reading Room to me).
Sometimes, I feel sad about it all seeming further and further away. But then again, in the wise words of Winnie the Pooh (which makes me wonder, is Pooh like a taxonomic classification? Is it just that the “pooh’s” name is Winnie?), “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” So thank you GradComm for pulling it off, and of course, thank you to Batch 2023 for making it an amazing night. A night that, you could say, will last us for years.
And there are souvenirs I’ll always keep. I have pictures, the yearbook, and my signed polo. Those will always be mine.
This is a bit jumbled, since my thoughts are all over the place. It’s 4 AM now, so I should go back to sleep.
Oh, and write my letters, which will be pretty much my final goodbye to Pisay. Been putting it off since I don’t want to let go yet, but I have to.
References (because my res and bio teachers really nailed this in):
Koenig, J. (2021). Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows. Simon & Schuster.
There was a word I used to think about a lot. It’s called Ruckkehrunruhe (but with two dots on top of the first u. Sadly the font doesn't work with it.) Let’s look at its definition.
n. the feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness—to the extent you have to keep reminding yourself that it happened at all, even though it felt so vivid just days ago—which makes you wish you could smoothly cross-dissolve back into everyday life, or just hold the shutter open indefinitely and let one scene become superimposed on the next, so all your days would run together and you’d never have to call cut. (Koenig, 2021)
(For transparency, this isn’t a real word. It’s a made-up one for the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Then again, as Thor said, all words are made-up.)
After trips, especially long and memorable trips, there’s two things I like to do. One, I often count how many days it’s been. I remember that after our Singapore trip, I kept counting how long it had been since the big spike in my walking distance.
That final spike was ~26k steps. And that’s not the whole story, since we were still running around the airport after midnight, which should count for about an additional 2k steps. No, it was not worth it, since my feet didn’t work properly for the next day or so.
Two, I like looking for anything that indicates we went somewhere. Bags that still need to be unpacked. Local food that we bought. A pen that was given to me in Singapore that I used until it ran dry.
Why do I do this? I think it has something to do with the feeling of Rückkehrunruhe. I don’t want something to end so… definitely. To the point where, just a few days after the fact, it’s as if it never happened at all. There’s nothing lingering after a few days. It’s just gone.
As of writing this, it’s June 10, 1:54 AM. Just two days ago (plus about an hour or so), I was shouting out the lyrics to Love Story at the top of my lungs. Can that be true? It doesn’t feel like it. Nothing’s happened since then, so it should feel fresh in my mind.
But it’s fast fading. It doesn’t feel as if it actually happened. Which is sad to me, because it was everything to me at one point. Everything but Periphery was just beyond the periphery for me. Out of sight, out of mind, and out of care.
The time since all this is also growing longer. It’s now been more than three months since our last YMSAT and the retreat that weekend. It’s been four weeks and little under a month since the last (official) week of classes we had in Pisay. A week since I was last in the library cramming something.
And what scares me is that slowly, the souvenirs of the past few weeks are also fading. The coke bottle that I brought home from our silid party has been emptied and thrown out. The snacks I got last week have all been eaten. The clothes I wore to the ball have been either returned or washed and put back in my closet, as if none of it ever happened.
It’s as if I flew right past the last few weeks, and saw them slowly growing smaller behind me, until finally, they dip below the horizon and pass out of my periphery.
(Sorry, too many peripheries. Side note, one thing I love about 2023 stuff (which 2024 should really learn how to do, cough Ephemera cough) is that they’ll pick a theme and really stick to it. Sometimes it gets corny, but it’s always good corny.)
It’s not that I don’t want to change. Change can be a good thing, and I know I have to leave high school behind eventually. But sometimes, I want to hold on a little longer. Hold on until my hand hurts from holding on, and I finally have to let go. Hold on until I’ve memorized the feeling of the rope, and I can feel it in my hand long after it’s gone.
It still hasn’t fully sunk in that we’re leaving- sorry, we’ve left Pisay just yet. I just woke up from a dream where one of my teachers created a brand new game from checkers pieces (which, looking back, is really just chess). I still think about going to school in the early morning, walking up to our room (which will always be the Reading Room to me).
Sometimes, I feel sad about it all seeming further and further away. But then again, in the wise words of Winnie the Pooh (which makes me wonder, is Pooh like a taxonomic classification? Is it just that the “pooh’s” name is Winnie?), “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” So thank you GradComm for pulling it off, and of course, thank you to Batch 2023 for making it an amazing night. A night that, you could say, will last us for years.
And there are souvenirs I’ll always keep. I have pictures, the yearbook, and my signed polo. Those will always be mine.
This is a bit jumbled, since my thoughts are all over the place. It’s 4 AM now, so I should go back to sleep.
Oh, and write my letters, which will be pretty much my final goodbye to Pisay. Been putting it off since I don’t want to let go yet, but I have to.
References (because my res and bio teachers really nailed this in):
Koenig, J. (2021). Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows. Simon & Schuster.
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