#baguio

I love Baguio.

That’s what people know.

But it was never just a place I loved. It became the place I ran to whenever life grew too loud, too heavy, too much.

When I was young, my mother would tell me how much she loved Baguio—the cold weather, the quiet mornings, the boats in Burnham Park. She told those stories like she was describing a place made of softness and light. Long before I ever saw it for myself, I had already decided I would love it too.

I also loved strawberries. Maybe because they reminded me of Baguio before I had ever been there—sweet, a little tart, and strangely comforting. Whenever I thought of Baguio, I thought of strawberries too.

The first time I went there, I was seventeen. My parents were strict, so traveling out of town was rare for me. I went as a delegate for RMYC, and the convention was held in Camp John Hay. It rained almost every day.

Back then, I was still full of hope. Still young enough to believe that life would be gentle, that love would last, that some people were meant to stay.

I was there with the person I believed I would spend the rest of my life with.

Looking back now, I think that was the first heartbreak Baguio quietly witnessed. Not because we had already fallen apart, but because the future I imagined there would never exist. At seventeen, I believed forever was something you could build if you loved hard enough. I didn’t know that sometimes, the people you build your forever around become nothing more than memories tied to a place.

The fog, the rain, the pine trees—it all felt like a scene from a romance film. I fell in love with Baguio because it held every feeling my younger self didn’t yet know how to name. I promised myself I would come back.

And I did.

The second time was during my review at CPAR. I was exhausted in ways I couldn’t explain. My mind felt heavier than my body could carry. So I skipped my review classes and quietly left for Baguio with one of my closest friends. No one knew. Not my parents, not my classmates, not anyone else.

I just needed somewhere to disappear.

Over the years, Baguio became the first place I thought of whenever life began to crush me from the inside. Whether I was celebrating something beautiful or grieving something no one else noticed, I always found myself longing for its cold air.

It became my refuge.

It held me through the seasons when I felt invisible, when the people around me only remembered I existed because they needed something from me. There were people who thought of me only when it was convenient, only when life was good for them or when they needed my help. The moment I had nothing left to give, it was as if I had vanished.

What hurt most was not that they asked for too much. It was that they asked for so little of me as a person. I never wanted grand gestures or constant attention. I only wanted someone to ask how my day had been, to wonder if I was okay, to stay long enough for a conversation that didn’t feel like a transaction. Is it really too much to ask for someone to fake a little small talk? Is spending even a few minutes talking to me that exhausting?

I spent so much of my life making time for everyone else that I forgot what it felt like to have someone make time for me. It was fulfilling to be needed until it wasn’t. Until compassion turned into exhaustion, and giving pieces of myself left me with almost nothing.

Empathy burnout is a lonely thing.

People don’t notice it because you’re still smiling. You’re still helping. You’re still answering every call. They never realize you’re quietly coming apart.

So whenever I could no longer carry the weight of everyone else’s expectations, I ran to Baguio.

Not because it fixed anything.

But because it never asked me to earn the right to exist there.

Recently, I hid there again.

The city was just as cold as I remembered. The strawberries still lined the roadside stalls. Tourists still laughed over cups of hot chocolate, and the fog still swallowed the streets every morning. Everything looked almost exactly the same.

Except me.

I realized I’ve spent years returning to Baguio hoping to find the version of myself I left there—the hopeful seventeen-year-old who believed in forever, believed people stayed, and believed love was enough.

She never came back.

Maybe that’s why I love Baguio.

Not because it is beautiful.

But because it has held every version of me—the hopeful girl, the girl in love, the exhausted one, the one running away, the one grieving a future that never happened—and never once asked me to explain why I was breaking.

In a world that remembers me only when I can give something away, Baguio has never demanded anything from me.