The fall out started out because of some petty, stupid little thing. 

Two reasons: I forgot to bring my the clothes to the laundry. My brother forgot to give my Tita something. 

So my mom comes into our room and gives us our dog, asking if she (the dog) could stay in our room for the night. We say yes, we have a normal conversation. She then starts nagging about everything she sees, first pinpointing my mistake by leaving the laundry, then my brothers by forgetting to give the package. (Note that the said Tita lives in Bicutan, a place relatively close to ours, and even moreso, relatively close to a place of business my mom goes to). 

She bickers, nags, non stop about how it was irresponsible of him to forget, and my brother retorts simply with a “What about everything else I did for you today? I did a lot and you notice the one thing I did wrong?” I protect my siblings, even when they’ve made a mistake. After all, isn’t that what siblings do? So I answer, saying that I’ll just go try and find a way to bring it there. no big deal. The package isn’t going anywhere. No one is going to die if it wasn’t given today. 

And she zooms in on me instead, turning the simple act of explaining for my brother into some GRATUITOUS form of disrespect. It’s a natural parental fail safe. I’m the adult. I’m the parent. No disrespect. Here’s the thing. I’m a person. You’re a person. Shouldn’t we be respecting one another because we’re people, and not have it be a one-way thing just because you’re the parent? 

Okay, so she goes on about how i’m the worst son ever:

1. How I disrespect them.

2. No regard for proper work ethic (I work in the business, and if I went into detail about what kind of person she is at work, then i’d have to dedicate another post to it) and how she could hire someone for less who she can shout at (see? why would you even think that if you hire someone, it’s okay to shout at them?)

3. How I’m useless at home and I don’t contribute (and how when she was my age, she was married, had a job, contributed to the house). How I’m lucky we get a maid at home to clean up after ourselves. 

4. Bunch of other stuff i’m forgetting due to haze of rage. 

I kept my mouth shut, but for purposes of venting out, I want to rant it out here. 

1.  I refuse to say responding to a parent being irrational or accusatory is disrespect. it’s called defending yourself/explaining your side. Calling disrespect just means you don’t want to even TRY to listen.  

2.Her version of proper work ethic is bending over while she shoves her foot into your face. She gives me things to do, I give it to her for checking. She complains, saying “when your boss asks you to do something, do you email it to them expecting them to print it?” NO. But I do expect them to check it first to make sure nothing is wrong and we don’t waste resources. Which is what I do with her. I never send an email saying “As requested. Please print.” So fuck you and that invalid argument. 

She claims that I have no work ethic when she gives half baked instructions, with no idea where to get the information. When we ask, she gets mad because we’re interrupting her work. When we don’t know where to get information, she gets mad because we don’t ask. We don’t know what you do, so expect us. Expect me. to be asking things. 

She says that she shouldn’t have taken me when I asked to work for the business first? What a hypocrite. When her firm moved out of the Philippines, she lost her job, and our relatives offered her a job. So she asked for help, they gave it to her. And now, she’s going off about how she’s high and mighty? PLEASE. She was the same. Except the difference is, our other relatives aren’t like her. 

She doesn’t want employees. She wants punching bags, and door mats, and dart boards that give out reports. 

3. Okay, first of all, it was her choice to be married at my age. (Look at how their  marriage is now). Second of all, I never asked for a maid. She asked if it was a good choice to get a maid. I gave my opinion. I never DEMANDED it. I never even REQUESTED for it. It was her decision, so she shouldn’t be pointing fingers saying she was doing it for us. 

So again, she goes on, about how i don’t contribute in the house, and yet i “brag” about my stay in the condo and how i clean up after myself. Which I do. My room there is a mess, but it’s organized mess coz I know where to find things. It’s the same here. The only difference is, they like barging into our room. I was dishes at the condo, I wash the dishes at home. At home, I set the table, fix my laundry, fix my things, teach my sister, take care of the dog, look after the house. Things I didn’t need to do in the condo. Sure, it’s nothing monetary, but it’s still doing something. At the very least, I take care of myself, so that she only has to take care of her.

And she calls me “mayabang”. If anything, it’s her that boasts about how she does excellently, when she was younger and now. It’s her that brags about how she’s the “breadwinner” of the family.  Here’s the kicker: She compared me to our cousins. I never aspired to be greater than my cousins, coz they’re pretty amazing. I’m not my cousins, but look at where I came from. I can only be so much when coming from something so limited. 

To be fair, I did say I wasn’t picking a fight, and I didn’t mean to raise my voice. But of course, she wouldn’t hear it.  Not that it mattered anymore anyway. She had her version of what happened etched into her mind, and I don’t really give a fuck. There’s really more to rant about but I’m really just too out of it to think of the proper words to write. so maybe a part two will come by soon.

I swear. I just need this one thing and I’m out of here. That, or I’d die, which if I don’t get out soon, I probably will end up shooting myself in the head. 

Today turned out completely unexpectedly. 

I’ve been a bit troubled the past week, honestly. I was never one to dwell on horrible feelings, so I pushed them aside and just stride on. I mean, what’s the point, really? Especially when I know for me they don’t often last too long. So what’s my problem? 

Two weeks ago, I officially ended my stay in the company I was working in, to work for our family business. Mostly because I really just wanted out of the company. I couldn’t stand the boss, the work, and I can’t help but feel it’s a total dead end job. So the past two weeks have been a struggle: from the lack of everything I suppose. I’m working now, but it’s not something I enjoy. Not really. 

This week is the celebration of a friend’s birthday, and things were turning out well. But today, something happened that just slapped me in the face. It was like all my problems, all the things that I pushed back, not wanting to think about, came crashing into me like a huge wave, hitting me hard. I’ve always assumed I’ve already had a quarter life crisis before. But it never dawned on me how different it is to actually feel it. 

There’s that feeling of lack of self worth. Like all the hard work you’ve done back when you were younger just didn’t seem to amount to anything now. Or that there was just no point in all of it back then. Or that your effort was too little, and you should have done more. 

There’s that fear. That fear that everyone else is moving forward while you’re not. That fear that everyone, that life, is passing you by why you just stand there, stagnant. That fear that maybe you’ll amount to nothing. It’s already been 25 years. What makes you think that things will become better in 25 more? 

There’s that thought in your head, wondering how things would have differed if you decided to go for something you’re passionate about and not something more practical. Or how things might go for you now, if you decide to go back on the things you missed. 

I’m not someone who easily lets people in. And yet, it’s the first time I’ve actually felt like going into a room, locking the door, and just staying there forever. Now, I can actually feel the ‘crisis’ here, the internal struggle that plagues the mind and just lingers there hauntingly. 

This isn’t meant to be as depressing as it seems like, especially now that I’m rereading what I’ve written so far, I guess it is. The only good thing about this is, I know once I get out of this train of thought (or whatever it is you wanna call it; state of being, etc), things will change. I dunno yet if it’s going to change for the better or the worse, but things will change. That, I’m sure of. 

Too Many Walls

Hey, you probably thought I wouldn’t post here again until after a year or so, didn’t you? Well, that’s not the case because I really am taking the blog seriously. At least, as serious as I can be, which, trust me, isn’t much.

A week ago, I rode with one of my officemates to a meeting in the PICC forum for a convention we’re part of.  Now while I’ve always liked my officemate (let’s just call her OM, okay?), we were never really close enough to be the type to swap personal stories with. Which was why it came as a shock to me when she told me she was having marriage problems. I don’t think I’m supposed to air out dirty laundry out in public, so I won’t delve into specifics or anything. Basically, it was your typical mistress story (Honestly, I have no idea what a typical mistress story is because 1. I’ve neither seen movies like No Other Woman or The Mistress and 2. because movie affairs don’t always necessarily showcase real life ones). She found out that her husband has a mistress, one of their close neighbors, and she decided to finally move out. She’s a bit old and her marriage has lasted for a while now. She has a kid and a grand kid, and I can only imagine how tough it was for her to actually muster the courage to get up and leave.

As she told me, she wasn’t holding on to the husband for herself. She was doing it for the rest of the family. She knows it’s hard growing up with a broken family and she didn’t want that for them. It was really then that I realized how strong she was. Someone who always flashed a smile and waved earnestly at me whenever I ran into her in the office. I could tell that she was fighting the tears as she told me the story and I was just left in awe. I wonder if ever was or will ever be as strong as she was. My parents have threatened to split on more than one occasion, and honestly, I didn’t really think much of it. I told them that doing that would have repercussions for my younger sister, but me and my brother could cope since we were older. Looking at it now, I wonder if I really would have been okay. Theory is never really always reliable and as far as I know, emotions would betray me.  Though I guess that’s a bridge I’ll cross if I ever get there.

Another thing that I’ve been thinking about is why she would tell me. We were never really the ‘share personal stories’ type of friends. Was she just looking to relieve herself of the burden of keeping it all to herself? Did she really trust me enough to let me know? Was she just looking for someone to listen? Whatever her reasons, I’m now starting to think if things might have been more different if I was more like her.

I’m a very introverted person. Sure, I talk to a lot of people, I make friends easily, and I’m part of various groups of people. But I know that I can never fully be completely open about myself to others. Maybe it’s the wall to block out any and all insecurities I’ve had all these years that’s keeping me from it. Maybe, like most people, I’m just afraid of being judged and I feel like letting myself be completely open for scrutiny would just shatter any tinge of self esteem I have. That, or I’m just over thinking everything and there’s really nothing to be secretive about. We’ll see. It’s still a journey I’m taking and maybe by the end, that wall will be down.

Collecting dust

It’s exactly been one year and six months since my last post. And I think it goes without saying that I am in no capacity to be a proper blogger. I have no discipline, I’m scatterbrained, I’ve got random opinions and no cohesion with how I express them. So maybe I’m not meant to be a proper blogger. Looking back, I never started a blog to become one anyway. This was a way for me to get out thoughts that I don’t usually let out in person, things that run through my head that are moving too fast for me to form actual verbal words for. And now that things are happening, there’s just so much I want to share and so much I want to throw at wordpress and at you, person reading this.

I guess I could start with the main driver for me actually writing this blog. My mom and I got into a stupid argument. Here’s the thing you should know about me. I don’t back out easily. I blame the competitive streak I have for it. And when I get into arguments with my parents, the same things apply. Heck, if they tell me that I shouldn’t let anyone push me around or that I should fight for what I believe is right, then I assume they don’t mean it with underlying double standards, one that suggest that if it’s them that I’m arguing with, I back down like a puppy and just succumb to whatever it is they tell me.

Anyway, my mother started ranting about work. I listen. Then, somehow, things turned 180 and she started berating me for something (a topic that I’d rather spare details about for now). I rebutted, knowing that it was uncalled for and unnecessary. It was a lot of pot calling the kettle black, and I suppose I was in the wrong for answering back. (Relax, no relationship ruining words were exchanged) Yet, I don’t feel sorry. Because I know accepting that it was my mistake and just keeping silent would mean me admitting that she was right when she wasn’t.

I suppose it’ll be another few nights with silence exchanged between us. Then again, life in this house is never about proper exchanges anyway. No bitterness from me, though. It’s just truth. Looking back at all of this, maybe this is a sign that I’m slowly beginning to outgrow the life I have now. Time to step out, wipe the dust out of my hair and start exploring. It’ll be a long way, because god knows i have no idea what I want. But there’s always that start. Let’s see.