I don’t often tell people why I really return to Hawaii once or twice a year
Photo: Gerald Farinas.
Now that the departure is imminent, I have decided to admit the true reason for my visits to Hawaii. These trips are almost never for personal pleasure.
The popular fantasy of island respite collides violently with my reality: I don’t have time for myself, and having time for myself is impossible. People expect me to enjoy a break, a quiet moment away from anxieties, but the brutal truth is that my anxieties heighten the moment the plane lands.
The weather itself has been a poetic illustration of this internal state: an alternating mix of sunshine and rain, both falling simultaneously from a half-blue sky.
What began as a soft, tropical 80°F upon arrival has now turned brittle, with the temperature clinging to a cold 68°F as I prepare to leave. With each day, the cold trade wind gusts have increased, escalating from 10 mph to 20 mph, then 30 mph, with tonight promising a raw 35 to 40 mph.
This physical cooling and the increasing stress of the elements are a perfect objective correlative for the exhausting emotional climate I've been inhabiting.
Meanwhile back home in Illinois, the aurora borealis is dazzling the night skies over the Great Lakes and prairie.
My visits exist solely to introduce a temporary, fragile balance to various people who cannot find that equilibrium on their own. I have become the designated peacemaker, mediating a trio of volatile, contradictory forces.
There is the persistent anger, a low-grade static that can erupt into a storm over the smallest misunderstanding. There is the profound, suffocating depression and sadness, which requires constant, gentle vigilance to prevent total collapse. And then there is the manic energy, the unsustainable high that demands constant engagement and can pull everyone into its exhausting wake.
Managing these three states—the angry, the sad, the manic—is a form of continuous, psychological triage. I am the non-stop listener, the subtle boundary setter, the distraction specialist. The role is so comprehensive, so absorbing, that it eliminates the possibility of self-care. The energy required to keep three distinct ships from sinking while navigating a churning sea is simply enormous.
It is this profound exhaustion that I find myself concealing. I don’t want to write it, even in my own personal notes that no one else sees, but the desperate impulse is to go back home to Chicago as soon as possible.
Perhaps this very act of articulating what I normally hide—this flow of text, this confession—is itself the beginning of the coping mechanism, the necessary mental preparation for the difficult transition back to self.
Chicago represents routine, anonymity, and above all, mental safety. It is where my boundaries are firm, where my identity is not solely defined by the needs of others.
Here, in this beautiful place, I am required to exist as a mirror, reflecting only the calmness they cannot generate.
The return itself brings a new layer of anxiety, a fresh burden of social performance.
The questions I dread are the unavoidable, simple pleasantries that cut deeper than any harsh word: “How was it?” “Tell me what you did?” Or the blithely ignorant comment, “It must be nice being in paradise.”
These queries force me into an immediate, exhausting dishonesty, compelling me to craft a narrative of sun and leisure that never happened.
They demand that I validate their fantasy of my trip, erasing the emotional labor I performed, when all I truly want is to sit in silence and recover.
The best thing anyone can do for me sometimes is not to ask at all, to allow the gap between the perceived paradise and the actual burden to remain unfilled.
The pain comes from knowing that my presence is necessary to maintain their fragile state, yet the knowledge that I cannot stay is a matter of self-preservation. If I remain any longer, if I allow the emotional drain to continue, I genuinely do not think I can mentally survive it.
People will tell me I’m being selfish. People will tell me I’m being a bad son or brother. People will tell me this is not how Filipinos are supposed to treat their families. In Tagalog, a language I don’t understand because it was never spoken at home, I am failing my duty of utang na loob. It means that no matter the cost, I owe my whole life and being to the debt of being born to a Filipino family. And to fail in paying that debt is to be a failure of being.
I have to live with knowing that.
My departure is not an abandonment of my duties; it is a declaration that my own survival is non-negotiable. I leave them balanced, however briefly, only so that I can return to a place where I can restore my own center, safe in the concrete logic of home.
But I will come back again. Because I have to keep the balance. The winds will bring me back to these islands.
