I grew up in a nonaffectionate family.
My parents are the opposite of each other. One has generational trauma. The other has anger issues.
My mother grew up carrying the responsibility of being the third woman in the family after my grandmother, who got sick when my grandpa died of cancer, and my aunt, who sacrificed her youth to work abroad and provide for the family. If I were her, I’d despise mornings. I’d hate waking up at 5 a.m. and preparing breakfast, but she’s been doing that for years now. My mother never showed affection, never said “I love you,” never kissed or hugged me except when I was still a child. I don’t know her love language because we are not a typical mother-and-daughter relationship. In fact, I am not her reflection or her “mini-me.” Despite not experiencing those, I know that deep inside her she still cares for me as someone she planned to bring into this cruel world (which I never wished for). Despite the disappointments, the questions about life left unattended, a cold shoulder, and unresolved problems and fights between us, for some reason, with no hesitation, I’d still choose her as my mother.
My father, who breached his contract abroad, chose his bad habits over his family’s future. My father was an alcoholic up until now, which made our lives a living hell. We were never close, as the memory I had of him was when he was drunk, throwing things, screaming, and plunging my five-year-old self into trauma while I sat in the corner of the room trying to hush myself with Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone” from the broken cassette player he just repaired last week. Despite covering my ears over the years, I can still hear my sobs, my mom’s weeping, his roaring voice, and the reverberating sound of scattered pieces of my mom’s vase and Corelle plates. I grew up with more fear than love. I grew up searching for affection. I grew up fixing myself like a skin deeply wounded by a rough road. I grew up being envious of other kids. I aged and changed, but my five-year-old self will always be the person you have eye contact with, have conversations, and exchange laughs with every single day. My five-year-old self will never be healed by fake “I love yous,” will never be filled with any fancy things, and will never be detached from my 18-, 30-, or even 60-year-old self. It will forever be here. Always.
My cousins would rather play with their friends than with me. My father always chooses to ignore my achievements, whether they are small or big, and, of course, my mother, who notices my failures and mistakes. I never talked poorly about her because somehow, as much as I wanted, I never hated her. I grew up being alone in my room, reading fairytales my mom bought from the supermarket; watching Disney movies from the old DVD player my dad bought abroad; waking up at 7 a.m. to sit with my grandpa in the balcony while waiting for his daily newspaper delivered by his friend and help him solve the crossword puzzle in it; watch my cousins play chess and tease me for not being good at it; draw on the walls with my eight-colored crayons like an artist painting a mural; play and pretend that I’m a doctor with my stethoscope and syringe toy I got as a Christmas present; and left with having no choice but to dress up and talk to the Barbies my aunts gave me on my seventh birthday.
Watching the live-action movie of “Barbie” as a young adult is like walking back to my childhood. It was heavy, a mood-shifter, and achingly beautiful. As if it was written for the eldest daughters like me who are trying to fit in, who are forced to become someone they never wanted, who have a scarred past and a glass façade, wherein a simple “How are you?” question can shatter them into pieces and break down. “What was I made for?” was one of the soundtracks in that movie. It hit me to the core that I ended up crying in the cinema, which unintentionally manifested how fragile and vulnerable I am as a person. How an almost two-hour movie made me lose myself and broke me into tiny pieces. How a 10-second movie scene brought back my past and got stuck in it like a corrupted file. This entitlement to exist has given me the privilege to live, but up until now, I am still unable to find my real purpose. I am still unable to navigate my own journey. I am still unable to find my self-worth. And it is so frustrating.
These are the things that became a burden to me for almost 13 years. Some of the words are written on the back of my biology notebook, some on random receipts, but most of it are etched in my mind where it took me 13 years to finish, where it took me hundreds of papers to finally have the courage to complete this, to finally free myself from all the chains that kept me under the bed, where darkness became my friend, where the creaking of the bed became my music, and where all my cries kept me alive. I am no longer a child or an adult because, after all these years, I am still that five-year-old girl soothed by grief and embraced by silence.
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Mer, 18, is a pre-med student from Olongapo City. She is passionate about creative writing and aspires to be a film writer, aside from a medical practitioner, in the future.