By ‘Laura’
The author is in 4th year college in Bacolod City, majoring in Information Technology.
In my early years I could clearly tell how difficult it is to be born into a family where you long for love and care. Where there is only a little food that can satisfy your starving stomach. Where you can almost feel your world is spinning upside down because you can no longer stand the scarcity. Where you walk to school empty-handed, no ballpen, no trendy bags such as your classmates have, no paper or whatever.
My mother had to scrimp from her small wage. I tried selling ube candy in grade school when I was just a Kinder II student. I can vividly remember how my classmates laughed at me because I used a Lady’s Choice Mayonnaise jar for my water. To make the humiliation even worse, the jar broke because I was too careless. How I was so envious of my classmates having everything they needed. If only I could, I would work more than my mother did every day and every hour of her life. I used to cry a lot in silence thinking how my life was a mess. Like any puzzled kid, I protested, ‘Why me?’
‘Childhood is the critical stage of being a child’ said a psychologist I once met. It’s when children perceive the world according to what their elders teach them. I was born into an ideal family. Though poor, we were happy and contented, with a father who served as the breadwinner, a mother who kept the house clean and took good care of her children, brothers and sisters who set a good example as helping hands in all of the chores. As one family, complete and happy, we went to church together. We used to pray together. I tend to be religious, too.
My family used to work together because we had this little business, selling homemade candies (butong-butong, bandi, salted peanuts and boiled peanuts). I was close to my father. I used to go with him knocking door-to-door, selling our homemade products. My father loved to plant vegetables. In fact, among us siblings, he always picked me to sell those crops around the barangay. I used to be his favorite. I think he influenced me with his business-minded personality, I was just seven, young and intelligent.
My birthday was always a significant day for my father. He always gave me presents. He was always a thoughtful and loving father to us, especially to me.
Until my 9th birthday . . . My father started to change. He started to get drunk, drowning himself in alcohol and neglecting his responsibilities as a good father and as a good husband to my mother. He then started to scold me, hit me with a belt at the slightest provocation. I don’t know why he started acting that way.
From then many questions were raised in my mind. I tended to take those events in my life like a bad dream or sometimes denied they were happening. It was hard to accept that as I woke up my dreams turned into nightmares. Our life became miserable to the point that there were nights when we would go to bed without eating, because my father did not bring us any food. Since then no evening would pass without my parents arguing, shouting at each other so loudly that even the distant neighbors could hear.
I started rebelling but didn’t let go of my faith. I was disappointed with the way my father turned out to be, but I didn’t have any choice but to look towards the future. I wanted to strive harder in the hope of having a good life.
My mother took whatever odd jobs she could get. I helped her work in the sugarcane field, pulling wild grass under the burning sun. I was just nine, but more than any adult twice my age, I already had a rich experience to be proud of.
I worked, starved, cried, suffered and persevered through my elementary years, high school and right now, college, hoping that each graduation could be an answer to my years and years of suffering.
Maybe one day I can bring home a sack of rice, a pile of wrapped bread and money from a regular salary. Despite my frustrations I am still holding on to Him, so that in the many moments I tend to have regrets, I still survive. I know God has prepared me to become strong enough to overcome the difficulties in my life.