Blank.
Completely blank.
Hollow.
Suspended animation.
These are just a few impressions of what is going through my mind and soul at the moment. Writer’s block is an understatement, but I feel as though my life has been put on hold for the moment, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Perhaps the effects of #lockdown2020 during the first half of this disastrous year are finally creeping up on me, or it is also the overwhelming lack of anchors that bothers me the most. If you recall my blog entry The Agony of Surrender, you will also understand that my current statelessness is also a source of distress. Having surrendered the citizenship that defined my cultural identity my entire life, was painful as it was frustrating. Five minutes was all it took for me to go from being a proud Filipino to a humbled stateless person. When I appeared at the Philippine Embassy for the last time to submit the documents, I did so with trepidation, and produced the papers one by one in the sequence requested. When they asked for the passport, I inevitably swallowed hard and hesitated, and finally handed it over. Five minutes.
So now the loss of all familiar anchors that I grew up and matured with is complete: parents, home base, marriage, and citizenship, and that is not even counting all the people I lost along the way, either by death, circumstance, or choice. The sense of grief has taken over my soul, and while I await my German citizenship to finally come through, I sit in this peculiar world of statelessness, but also look forward, look up, and look ahead.
FrogDiva Thoughts 