independent

i kind of had a falling out with my mother last week. because of that, i vowed to myself "hinding hindi na ako uuwi." i planned to confront my mother after a 5-day silent treatment.

i called her today. she said i shouldn’t bother going home anymore.

haha. sige lang. keri. sabi ko –> "ok, bayaran mo muna utang mo."

so there.

i was going for a big decision that will change my life. naunahan pa niya ako. bitch.

and i felt that i don’t wanna gome home anymore. nagsimula to last week, nung ondoy. stuck sa bahay buong week. feel ko nasasakal na ako dun. or at least i feel out of place. like i don’t belong there anymore.

and where is my new home? i don’t know.

masama ba akong tao to think of the best in people but not of my mother? kagabi lang i was bitching to reyvan about some irresponsibility regarding a project… i told him, ok lang na sumalo ako ng trabaho, because i can do it. i’m just giving that person a chance to do it, because i think of the best in people. but not my mother.

hindi ko maexplain. am i turning into someone else? i don’t think so. i’ve thought about this since way before college even started. i think nag-start ito nung highschool. ewan basta.

when you call someone "bobo", ibig sabihin, wala siyang capacity to think. pero ang "tanga", hindi marunong mag-isip. argh basta.

nakakabwiset lang kasi ang sitwasyon ko ngayon. and at the same time, i feel guilty because i’m thinking about these kinds of things about my mother! i don’t regret it, kasi medyo may pagka-righteous din ako, so i stick to myself. at least hindi ko iiwan sarili ko na gutom at walang pera at walang pag-asa.

i guess, in the end, we all live alone. we live alone, we die alone. life is the train, not the station. at wala kang kasama.

i think everyone of us will eventually leave the nest and start living on our own.

i’m starting it right now.

shet, i feel scared. i AM scared.

dammit, ang hirap mag-isa.

i really need to get that job. ASAP.

ondoy

i’ve been away because of two things:

1. Acads (it’s a given)

2. Ondoy

i’m sure a lot of you have heard about the whole ondoy thing. yes, ondoy, ondoy, ondoy. i’m from marikina, nangka to be exact, and me and my family and relatives were severely affected. my village, the appropriately named “Marikina Village Subdivision”, was a neighboring subdivision to the Twin Rivers Subdivision, and there’s a reason why it’s called “Twin Rivers”. look it up. my house was not that affected, the flood was only up to our gate, but we were, in all sense of the word, stranded. i felt the devastation because some of my titas and titos live IN twin rivers! we’ve survived, we’ve coped, we even find the capacity to laugh about it. ) yet i find the reactions of other people to be OA and just “too much”. all i heard about the shiznit of this event was “oh, poor them, they lost everything” and “kasalanan nila yan, nagtatambak kasi ng basura” or “poor them, poor them”… ARGH!

first of all, even though our house is still standing (but my aunt’s are in shambles ), despite all the brouhaha on tv or the internet about losing property and all that crap, WE DON’T ACTUALLY CARE!!! WE ARE ALIVE DAMMIT!!! THAT’S SOMETHING ENOUGH TO SACRIFICE EVERYTHING!!! take it from us who are actually affected. of course, we might care a bit about losing some stuff, but what the heck, those look very unimportant right now. at least we can still walk and talk and breathe and eat… the appliances and sofas and tvs can’t do that for us! haha.

secondly, we are MARIKINA! hello! one of the cleanest cities here in the philippines! there’s a reason why bayani is the MMDA chair now you know! efficient waste management was one of the things we have that the others don’t!

the “poor them, poor them” crap is kind of getting to me this week, since everyone i know knows i live in the far of place known as marikina. parang nakakabwiset pag dumating dun sa point na parang bine-baby ka na or talagang pini-pity ka nila. NAKAKA-ASAR! it’s basic anthropology: people are doing the pity thing because, inadvertedly or unconsciously, they’re trying to say to you (silently) that I’M-BETTER-THAN-YOU-BECAUSE-I’M-NOT-IN-A-WORSE-OFF-SITUATION-LIKE-YOU-ARE!!! it’s human nature right?! the challenge is to rise up to that urge and stop it! so stop with the pitying talks and looks! you know what you can do to help? DO! DO SOMETHING!

gosh, don’t get me started in all that publicity crap GMA (as in the network) is airing during those times. (yung mga artista trying to help? whatthefak? mas mahaba pa yun kaysa sa pag-air ng mga mas importanteng bagay!)

and you know what my family did? we helped. me, 2 of my sisters, my mom and my titas went to bayan and sports complex, armed with shovels, and started digging up the dirt. nag-pala kami ng putik at burak at kung anu-ano pa. just to start-up the ongoings sa bayan. just so that people can go back to normal again. funny thing: nakakagulat nalang at maraming janitor fish sa putik! haha! nabuhay pa sila dun sa putik! )

and i’m proud of Ateneo for being one of the institutions to rise up to this challenge. nagulat nalang ako biglang kumatok si doc marcelo sa bahay namin offering any help! [take that kc! )] i was the one to start an online document trying to compile the status and conditions of all 3rd year math majors (all are good, except of course, ANGELICO-NA-WALANG-CELLPHONE-KAYA-NAGLAHO-SA-MUNDO!). here it is. overwhelming ang reply and was so glad everyone is willing to help. i was also one of the people na nag-ikot sa marikina to help the affected math majors. i was and STILL so moved by all the movement and action and doing! i HAD to do something as well!

it just completely dispelled my notion of an APATHETIC ATENEAN!

i can sigh my relief and breathe again. you don’t need to study philo or politics or economics to see there is something in us that just blooms out and awakens in this kind of situation. i can’t pinpoint one thing, because it’s a group of a lot of things. all i can see and observe is that everything roots and blooms from one thing: we are all beings in this earth together. and whether we like it or not, we are each others’ responsibilities, kahit hindi explicit or implicit or whatever. basta we are all each others’! hindi na actually kailangan na may mangyari na ganito for us to realize that! it’s been there since we’ve been here! and isn’t that a beautiful thing? to live in this world and love and appreciate every scene and moment and time and emotion and everything TOGETHER? it might be the romantic in me, but it’s more than just a romantic spot. it’s just being human.

and i love it.