in between the lines

For most people, life started the moment they were born. For others, when they met the love of their lives. Stories of love, birth and miracle, thats what most people have. Most people. Excluding me.

Life for me started the moment i ran away. Life started on a warm May day, the year 2010. 

I could start telling my story from that day, but then you wouldnt understand. So i’ll start from where everybody usually starts, their earliest memory… And i hope, i hope youd understand.

Chapter 1 (my childhood… Or the absence of it)

I was born on a cold january day to a 19 year old young wife. Both my parents were students. I was one complication that shouldnt have happened (but im going ahead of myself). After a difficult pregnancy i was finally out.

Like most children, i was doted upon by my family. I got to eat what i wanted to eat, when i want to eat it. 

I was 2 when i started going to school, or so i was told. What started as curiosity as to where my cousin was going after lunch, ended as my family’s belief that i was gifted. After all, i was the girl who learned to talk at 8 months and walk 3 months after that.

I was amazed at the worlds i pretend i was in everytime i read. My love for literature began. Life was perfect, or so i thought.

My brother was born 5 years after me. I was finally an older sister. What my idea of a perfect life changed when i saw the obvious difference of how they treated my brother and how i was treated. Years later, i would find out that the joke my mom used to make, how she would throw me away, had some underlying truth to it.

I desperately tried to excel in school, simply because everytime i did, my mom would brag about me. Her pride would only last for a month, at most, but for me that was enough. 

My parents separated when i was in third grade. My world crumbled down without any explanations. The reason of the separation was never divulged to me or my brother. What i could distinctly remember however was my mother asking my father to leave. Dad then took arm and wanted to take me with him. Mom took my other arm. A tug-of-war ensued. It was so painful, i cried myself to sleep that day. I fell asleep having a father. I woke up having none.

No explanations were given. Things happen, was what i was told.

That didnt stop me from hearing stories though. My grandmother, the one that we were leaving with, would tell people who would listen that my father had a concubine, the village whore i was told. I didnt know what concubine meant then. All i know was that i didnt have a father and i wasnt enough to make him stay.

I heard awful stories about my father. One of them included how he spent all our money gambling. I heard my grandmother say my father beat my mother until her lips bled. I slept with them until my father moved out, i have never seen my mom get punched, if thats what theyre getting at. lola would remind me repeatedly that my father was good for nothing. How he wont allow my mom to visit lola eventhough the latter was sick. One other story was how my father would push my mom to beat me up when i did something bad. And that he would laugh whenever he sees me doubled up in pain. All these stories i remember, but all i could think was how much i wanted my dad back.

My mom, whenever i did something unacceptable or against her rules, would tell me that if my father did love me, he would’ve come back for me.

One day he did. It pains me tosay this, but i  was kidnapped by my own father. I was walking home from school one day when i saw him waiting for him. He had my brother too. He told me wed need to wait in our neighbors house until it was dark and safe for us to leave without anybody from our family seeing us. When it was late, we left for my father’s family’s house. It was then that he made orders to his younger siblings to tell my mom that we werent there if ever she called. We stayed there for a while. Until my father realized he couldnt handle the responsibility of taking care of two kids. He took us back. All the time i was with my father, not once did my mother check for me in school. Not once. Looking back, i dont even think that she was relieved when she got me back… Having my brother back, maybe she was happy. With me, not so much. Not really.

Years passed by. A lot of things happened. I downed a glass of baygon. It tasted bitter and looked pink. My mom found out after a whole lot of vomiting. All she did was to send me to sleep beside my aunt, that is after she beat me up for telling her that i didnt want to live anymore. I was diagnosed as having depression, but still i got into one of the country’s best science high schools. New environment. New world. First day of class and i had to go to school alone without so much as “im proud of you”.

High school pretty much was a rollercoaster ride. I met new friends. Friends like me in almost every aspect of our lives. We were considered to be the best minds in the country. We made models of dna and atoms for fun, cremated dissected frogs and were happy when we can measure the soil densities of the different soil strata. We were nerds. Yet we all have our drama as well. I had a friend who would usually go to school with bruises after the weekend. I hid mine under long skirts. His was much obvious. It wasnt long before we compared bruises every monday and fantasize that someday life would be better. For him, it did. For me, things just got worse.

During my high school years, my mom fell in love to a pretty nice guy. A guy i would someday call daddy mac. There was one thing that got between them though, daddy mac’s wife. 

My mom would usually beat me up if i went out of line. If a thousand pesos would be missing out of her wallet or if i went home too late. I would usually make up stories like how i joined a gang and was hazed. But any person with half a mind that hazings and gangs dont usually exist inside a nerd’s mind. 

When my mom was with daddy mac, she would usually go home late or not go home at all. I would hear excuses of business trips but would get calls the next day to go to daddy mac’s house. I knew they were intimate. And ignorant me doesnt want anything like that to happen. I accused my mom of not having time for us because of her boyfriend. That was the first time i ever spoke back. Tht was the first day that i knew how hard my mom could slap me if she wanted to.

I was still sleeping beside my mom eventhough i was in high school. One night i woke up hearing my mom talk to somebody on the phone. I knew it was daddy mac. I pretended that i was asleep and listened on. That night i found out that my mom miscarried their baby. I knew they were intimate. I have access to my mom’s phone. I didnt know they werent careful.

That relationship would last longer than my parents marriage. I guess they were meant to be in love. I thought they didnt end up together because of daddy macs own family. I found out i was wrong. My mom blamed me why daddy mac chose to be away. Another strike against me. Yeay me.

I tried to make up for everything that i messed up through being good at school. That worked out just fine. Fine enough to convince me that my mom didnt love me one bit.

Years passed. I made major screw ups. I tried running away a lot of times. But i would always go back. There will always be something that will make me come back. Guilt. My brother. Tito joseph. I would leave, my mom would beg me to come back, make promises that everything will change, id believe her, and id go home. Its a cycle that i know will never end.

If you ask me right now what i remember most about life with my mom, i would tell you that i destroyed her life. I was the reason why her life didnt turn out the way she wanted it to. How can i say that? She told me that more than once. And thanks to a brain that remembers almost everything, i can never heal what she has broken when she told me that. In fairness to my mom, she tried to make me forget that she ever said it. How? She punched my mouth several times until i could feel my lips getting cut from the insides. 

Dont get me wrong. I love my mom. I love my mom so much that i wanted to make things right for her. When i saw the perfect opportunity to run away, i ran. I dont intend to go back. Why? If my existence destroyed everything she believed in and i pose a threat to everything that she wants to have, id rather live my life alone. No matter how lonely it becomes. No matter how hard. I could never afford to destroy her life more than i already did.