Where Bougainvilleas Bloom

We don’t have spring in the Philippines, not in the way they write about it in books. There’s no snow melting on windowsills, no cherry blossoms waking the streets in a pink haze. But we do have tagsibol. The season of bloom.

The season when rice paddies blush green again, when trees that once stood naked in drought slowly dress themselves again with leaves, with life. It comes after amihan, after the cold winds that leave the skin dry and the soul tired.

It is the season of bloom. Where Bougainvilleas, those wild, unbothered flowers, start to burst along fences, climbing rusted gates and cracked walls with a kind of boldness I’ve always envied.

That was the season I met Luis.

I was raised in a small, quiet town, where everyone knew your surname, and your secrets. In our house, Jesus hung in every room, watching from the dining table, the sala, even the kitchen. My father spoke in absolutes. His words were commandments, and his belt was the punishments. My mother? She carried her silence like a prayer.

“Wag kang umiyak. Lalaki ka.” (Don’t cry. Be a man.)

“Tumayo ka. Hindi ka babae.” (Stand up. You’re not a girl)

My softness was a sin before I ever had the language to ask why. From an early age, I understood that there were things I could not be.

My mother, bless her silence, always looked away. When I tried on her lipstick at five, she wiped it off gently, said nothing. When I cried alone at the back of our old church during a Santacruzan, watching the “Reyna Elena” walk with grace I yearned to own, she offered me a plastic fan and pretended not to notice my trembling.

I learned to erase myself early.

I learned to mimic. To perform. I learned to bury my softness. I learned to flinch at my own reflection. I wanted to disappear into a version of myself that they could love. And for years, I did.

Then came Luis, one afternoon during a barangay clean-up drive. He was new in town. He moved from Dumaguete, I think. His skin was golden from the sun, his smile loud and warm, and he wore a thin scarf in his hair that danced in the wind as he worked. He moved with the kind of freedom I didn’t even realize was possible.

At first, I avoided him. I judged him, to be honest. Maybe because he was too much like the parts of me I kept chained.

But one day, as we painted the chapel fence together, he caught me staring, not at him exactly, but at the way he moved.

“You’re hiding so hard, it looks like your soul’s running out of air,” he said, brushing white paint onto the iron bars.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. But something cracked inside me.

He found me again later that week, sitting behind the chapel, sketching on a scrap of recycled paper. I was drawing his face without realizing it. When he saw it, he didn’t tease. He just sat beside me, held out his palm, and showed me a butterfly with a torn wing.

“Still beautiful,” he whispered, gently. “Still trying.”

I didn’t cry in front of him, but that night, I let the tears come. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t wipe them away.

Luis and I became friends. Real friends. The kind who didn’t flinch at silence, who didn’t laugh at secrets. He told me about the night his father threw him out, how he slept behind a tricycle terminal for days, and how he built himself again out of broken things. But he never told me his story like he wanted pity. It was as if his pain was just another season. One he passed through and learned from.

“Pain isn’t the opposite of beauty,” he told me one sunset, as we watched the bougainvilleas bloom in the corner of the plaza. “Sometimes it’s the soil where beauty grows.”

That was the season I began to thaw.

Not all at once, but in small ways. Like petals unfolding—I started to allow myself moments of truth, a softer shirt, a longer glance at my own reflection.

I came out to myself first. Quietly. Alone in my room. I said it out loud: “I’m not the boy they said I am.” And my voice cracked, but it didn’t break.

I told Luis next. He hugged me, tight and wordless. Then he pulled back, looked me in the eye, and said, “You’re blooming, day. Even if your wings are clipped, you’re still trying to fly. That matters.”

But truth doesn’t always earn you peace. Not all flowers are appreciated as they bloom.

My father never knew. Or maybe he did and chose rage over reconciliation. I stopped dressing to please him. One day, I wore a pale pink polo to church. He looked at me like I’d spit on the altar.

“Anak, wag mo na akong ipahiya,” (Son, don’t embarrass me anymore) he muttered.

That was the last time he called me anak.

My mother stayed quiet. Always. But she started placing small things in my room: a barrette, a pair of earrings, a folded blouse from Divi. Love in the language she could offer. Apology in the shape of silence.

I was bullied growing up.

“Bakla.”

“Mahinhin.”

They flicked my ears, mocked my walk, shoved me in corridors.

I laughed along. I made myself smaller.

But that spring, something changed. Not the world, but me.

The heat arrived with a sweetness. The trees in the backyard dressed in green again. The bougainvilleas by the sari-sari store bloomed without shame, bright pink, orange, white. Even the breeze felt different. It was like the world was reminding me: you don’t owe them a version of you that fits their comfort.

And tagsibol came again.

In the scent of sampaguita from the sari-sari store.

In the echo of Luis singing karaoke at dusk.

In the weightlessness of walking down the street and no longer flinching.

One morning, I stood in front of the mirror. Hair longer now. Face softer. A light blouse that made me feel like myself. And I smiled. Not just because I looked beautiful. But because, finally, I was free.

Forgiveness didn’t come easy.

I hated the boy I used to be. For hiding. For pretending. For surviving at the cost of my soul. But I looked at my reflection that day—eyes swollen from crying, lips trembling from fear and freedom—and whispered:

“I forgive you.”

For the silence.

For the shame.

For not blooming sooner.

The bougainvilleas near the basketball court are blooming again. Bright pink. Magenta. Some white, like surrender.

Luis moved back to Dumaguete later that year. We still talk. He sends me photos of the beach, and sometimes, flowers blooming in their yard. He signs every message with: Keep blooming, butterfly.

And I do.

That tagsibol changed me. It taught me that even after long, cruel cold season, there is growth. That even with clipped wings, there is flight. And even in places that call you a sin, there is still a season for becoming.

I walk past the bougainvilleas every morning now. They bloom wild, unashamed, as if they know what it means to survive.

And just like them, I bloom too.

Still blooming.

Still here.