Agita and Expectations

Agita and Expectations

I remember the day when my mother threw my notebooks at me when I was a sophomore in high school. She went through my bag and discovered I got a 3 out of 10 in one of my Math quizzes and an 13 over 20 in one of my CLE tests in one day. It also didn’t help that I went straight for the computer to watch videos on YouTube. In my defence, those quizzes were a surprise. In general, I suck at surprises. In my offense, I should’ve studied better.

Anyway, I disliked my parents a lot at that time. They nagged too much, they expected too much, they got angry too much. They, themselves, were too much. They constantly compared me to my cousin and wondered why I was their kid. They criticized me for riding on the second bus home and getting home too late from hanging out with my friends, not realizing that I finally had friends to hang out with. She may not remember but I will always remember the time my mother called me stupid just for handing out the wrong fish to clean. Of course, that wasn’t the only time I got called stupid but that was the pettiest thing that stuck to my memory. The ban from the internet when my report cards showed up a little lower at one quarter of the school year wasn’t a shock to me. Sometimes, whenever I did something voluntarily, it almost always turned out wrong to them. It’s like it was better if I didn’t try even though they wanted me to try. That part of that year was slump after slump.

Soon enough, I didn’t dislike them anymore. Everything just felt normal. I felt stupid and it was normal. I felt ugly (they never said so but I did) and it was normal. I felt irrelevant (again, I said so) and that was normal too. Of course, I had to do something to make my situation feel easier since I was sick of feeling like crap, so I just did what they wanted. They wanted me to be better so I did what I thought what was better in their eyes.

I kept up my grades and shut my room. I didn’t get out of the house like they wanted to and I shut-upped about anything and everything whenever I was around my parents. My disagreement was their disapproval. I grew up learning that doing nothing is better than screwing up when acting on your own. Mistakes are hard to do when you get pummelled down whenever you made one. I thought that if I didn’t act on my own then maybe they’d be less disappointed.

Time-skip to a year later, and of course they’d think the opposite of what I thought. Didn’t I learn enough that nothing seemed right at all whenever it involved my own being? They suddenly wanted me to think for myself and initiate things. They wanted me to make my own decisions. I thought I got whiplash. I felt like a rag doll tossed from one side of a room to another by a five-year-old.

Basically, I was a junior and I was screwed. I spent the majority of my life trying to gain my parent’s constant approval with what seemed to be their ever-changing criteria. If they told me to be a nurse, I would have. That was also the time I believed that my father’s dinosaur figurine collection was more important than me. They pretty much left me in the air and I had nothing to fall back on. That small chunk of freedom destroyed everything (and yes, I’m writing this in an over-dramatic way). For once, they could approve of what I wanted but the problem was that I didn’t know what I wanted since I decided to just want what they wanted considering I didn’t want to screw up since almost everything I did on my own got me into trouble anyway.

I was so unsure of myself. I felt like my decisions would turn out to be crap as soon as I thought of it. I felt like I wouldn’t get to anywhere in life since I didn’t know what I wanted to be or what I wanted in general. For once, I was distressed about what I wanted. I never thought I would see the day. Now that I think about it, it’s a bit funny. I still don’t know what I want in life.

I’ll never forget the day I got third place at a poetry contest when I was a junior in high school. I thought it was ridiculous to tell my parents. It was just third place after all. They wouldn’t be satisfied since I got first place years ago. Unfortunately, my cousin called and told them. You know what they said to me? They said they were proud of me. I went to my room and cried. Thank God, finally.

“When a parent's expectations for children are large, it becomes a burden for children.”
- Haruki Murakami

Group 3

Nunez, Vanessa Janine R.
Red, Ramces Brayalle T.
Ojos, Kevin H.

Alabin, Glassyl R.

Calip, Kaye Paula Ara M.

Moraleta, Raniella