Family

By NOTSO bad

This is from a friend who is more than willing to share her story.

Family? Drama. Functional or dysfunctional. Supportive or otherwise. Complete, broken or discontinued. Those were only the first few words that popped on my head whenever the word family was being talked about.

            Honestly and frankly speaking, I came from a broken family myself but a very functional one. Functional? Erm, functional in terms of communication and financial support, I guess. I have one sister and one half-brother from my dad. I never grew up with my dad. He had always been working overseas.  Traveling from one country to another. The last time I saw my dad was when I was barely six. Now, I am turning twenty this coming October. Just do the math.

            I could never imagine the pain my mom went through the first time my dad committed adultery against her. I was barely two when I had my half-brother. He was a product of an amorous and erotic love created in Rome. My mom believed in ‘karma’ way back. My half-brother’s mother had never got the chance to see nor hold his child. She died right after giving birth to my half-brother. Nonetheless, my mom never taught me to hate nor maltreat my younger brother, instead to show him love and be a good sister to him. Afterwards, my dad was forgiven by my mom and so my sister was born. 2001. Upon after having his Philippine vacation, dad left for States on that the same year my mom was about to give birth to my sister.  My sister never got the chance to meet our dad in person. Despite those years of not seeing him, our dad pampered us materially and financially which I think is his way of filling up his absence for fourteen years. We can tell him anything we want to have or how much money we need to buy stuffs we want and so far he had never failed us on that part. Finances are good and overflowing but of course we need him – we need to see him and be with him also. He never had his vacation since he left for States and we don’t know why, but I suspected him to have another family in States because mom and dad were already divorced on summer 2012.

            Going back to the functionality of my discontinued family, I find our family to be recently functional evidently because after upon the divorce of my parents they are in good terms again, I assume. Not that, my parents were not in good terms before but dad never asked me how mom’s doing or whatsoever two years prior to their divorce. Both of my parents are talking to each other – dad has been checking out on mom again, asking her what she wants and needs which is really ironic for a divorce couple. Nonetheless, it feels so good to see and hear that despite that divorce my parents are friends, if that’s what you call. But, I believe first love never dies. That’s why my sister and I smell something fishy about why dad asked mom how is she or what does mom need or want.

            If you can see I have never talked a lot about my mom on the previous paragraphs. She is really good. She has pure heart. She is super nice, patient, and understanding. In fact, due to her overflowing goodness, sometimes I really confront her by telling her, ”you are too good to be true”, but really she had never been good at faking. Trust me. That’s why I envy her attitude and personality. She never taught us to neither hate our dad, our half-brother, nor our grandparents despite all actions our dad made nor even after all the cover-ups my grandparents did to tolerate what my dad did. What she did was not easy – to shut her mouth up despite all the emotional pain she suffered from to protect the intimate relationship we have with our grandparents on our father side. If that was me on my mom’s situation, I could not afford to do the same thing. Maybe, I would probably go for what my heart desires but my mom always say, “always go for what the brain says. That’s the reason why brain is higher than the heart.” I really salute and respect my mom for a lifetime for it.

            If there is one thing I want you to learn from me is this, despite all the wrong-doings your parents did to you and your siblings, either your mom or dad, you can’t change the fact that they will always be your parents and without either one of them, you will never be here today. So, even how much you hate either your mom or dad, well you should learn how to respect them at the end of the day. J

SocSci 10 Z Group 4
Jaeger Dwayne Tamaray, Mike Gyro Paras, Anthony Teofilo Jr., GiannaCapacia, Faye Mendoza, Jerome Gabriel