There is a particular moment, sometime after the Holidays, when the city feels like it is holding its breath.
Bus terminals swell. Airports glow through the night. Seaports hum with tired voices and oversized boxes wrapped in tape and hope. Social media fills with photos taken at dawn—selfies with sleepy eyes, captions half-joking and half-resigned. Pauwi na. Back to reality.
For a few weeks, the provinces had them. The main characters returned.
They arrived with pasalubong and stories, with slightly altered accents and city habits that never quite leave. They slept in childhood rooms that no longer felt the same size. They ate food cooked slowly, by hands that remembered them better than they remembered themselves. They laughed louder. Rested deeper. Became someone recognizable again.
And then, just as quietly, they left.
There is something almost cinematic about this Filipino ritual—this annual migration of bodies and hearts between center and periphery. During long weekends and December holidays, the provinces reclaim their people. The Metro loosens its grip. Parents count days backward. Neighbors ask, “Hanggang kailan ka dito?” knowing the answer already.
Because the truth is, most of them are only visiting.
The holidays create an illusion: that home is intact, that relationships pause neatly while you’re gone, that time can be resumed where it was last left. But when January comes, reality reasserts itself with remarkable efficiency. Bills wait. Work resumes. Rent is due. Dreams remain tethered to opportunity—and opportunity, more often than not, still lives in the city.
So the main characters return to the Metro.
They line up again. Commute again. Shrink themselves into schedules and deadlines. Become background characters in their own lives, hoping the next long weekend arrives faster than it ever does.
This movement—this back-and-forth—has become so normalized that we rarely question it. But maybe we should.
Because what looks like tradition is also displacement. What feels like choice is often necessity. What appears festive on social media is underwritten by quiet sacrifices: parents aging without daily company, children growing up knowing their relatives through screens, hometowns full of memories but short on sustainable futures.
The provinces become places of rest, not return. The Metro becomes a place of survival, not belonging.
And somewhere along that journey, something fractures.
The question “Pauwi na ba ang mga main character?” sounds playful at first. Almost cute. But underneath it is something sharper: Why do so many Filipinos only feel like the main character when they leave the life they work so hard to maintain?
Why does fulfillment feel temporary and belonging feel conditional?
Perhaps the most unsettling realization is this: the country has quietly taught its people that to matter, they must leave. That to grow, they must separate. That to provide, they must be absent. We celebrate resilience without asking why it’s required so often.
And so every January, the cycle repeats. Terminals empty. Cities refill. Provinces grow quieter again. Parents wave goodbye with practiced smiles. Children promise to call more often than they will. Everyone tells themselves this is normal.
But normal doesn’t always mean harmless.
The mass return to the Metro is not just a logistical event—it is an emotional one. It reveals what remains unresolved: uneven development, centralized opportunity, and the quiet grief of choosing practicality over proximity.
Maybe one day, the question will change. Maybe one day, nakauwi won’t mean leaving again. Maybe one day, the main characters won’t have to travel so far to feel like themselves.
Until then, they will keep packing. Keep leaving. Keep returning—briefly. And the country will keep asking, year after year, as terminals fill once more: Nakauwi na ba ang mga main character?
--billymacdeus | follow us on Quarantined Tipsters FB
