Le Parents

I always wanted to live alone. I never wanted to live with someone or a lot of someones. That is why a dorm is out of the list.

Since Ate Meng left, there have been a few nannies but none of them were a stay in nannies. So I got the room, which was once a room I shared with Nanay Vilma and Ate Meng, all to myself. After that I liked the idea of living alone and being alone because even at home, I felt alone.

Don't get me wrong my parents were indulgent parents, sometimes authoritarian and sometimes authoritative. They tried their best to raise me in an easy lifestyle; having toys, going to malls, wearing decent clothes. But apart from that-its a bit empty.

Reminiscing the time when my mother took care of me was only when I was sick and mostly its my father who checks me most. There was this one fleeting moment when I remembered my mother singing me a lullaby to sleep and how she told me that she loved me when I wrote the "I hate you" note and gave it to her. The last one made me laugh because I have no idea now why I did it but that's what happens when your childhood is like mine.

Studying in Manila was a big step for both my parents and me. Why? I am a girl. Studying in a place full of danger. One plus one.


I lived in a unit that is a house and I have all to myself, well until my brother comes to live with me and that will be next year. I lived in a subdivision near my relatives and it was a nice neighborhood but my parents and my uncle and auntie thought differently, my uncle suggested he and his daughter stay at the unit at night. The house has two rooms  so my uncle stayed at the other room while my cousin and I stay on the other.

It was uncomfortable for me because of how I was brought up but I kept quiet because my parents were adamant about it.

But I rebelled with it later on. There was a typhoon and it was hard to go outside so I offered my uncle and cousin that they stay in their own house and  that promised them that I will be fine. Also I had an exam that I need to focus and people surrounding me is distracting so I told them that too and they understood. Sadly, I let it stay that way for a week and my parents found out. Boy, did they scold me and my mother cried about it. Felt like I betrayed her trust. She and my father were scared to death but I on the other hand together with my other uncle and auntie (I have two uncles and aunties and these other two are better than the first one) were calm about it because they know more about the neighborhood than anyone and I trust them.

I know that all they want is for my safety and sadly for my virtue to stay intact but what they didn't know is that they are strangling me especially my mother about little things.

Eventually we made a compromise and now everything regarding my living alone is settled.

I love my parents but sometimes I have to put my foot down. My mother told me that I act like I'm an independent person and that I just treat them like nothing. Honestly I treat them like an ATM machine at times. But I still love them. Its just sometimes its just difficult to handle them and vice versa.

Being in UP changed my perspective in life. I got liberated and widen my horizon and somehow that is what is lacking in my parents. Where I was open and worldly, they are close and traditional.