Father Dearest

“Sadly, no one in our family ever said, ‘I love you.’ Do you realize that? The truth is, I think we were all frightened of saying it, since the obvious reply would’ve been, ‘Well, if this is love, what is hate like?'” ~ Louie Anderson, Dear Dad, Letters from an Adult Child

We spent the holidays in the Philippines with my parents. Now that my parents are older, I try to make it out there twice a year, time and money permitting.

As you grow up, the things that you see and experience, without having anything else from which to compare, you assume to be normal. If your father yells at your mother for not having prepared dinner earlier, or if your father beats you for disobeying his rules, you may not like it, but you accept it as simply how life must be because, again, you know no differently.

The last few visits to see my parents have opened my eyes even more to how dysfunctional my family is, and how horrifyingly toxic my father is.

I already knew even when I was a teenager how abusive my father was. I had come home one day, one hour after school dismissal because I had wanted to watch a soccer game. When I arrived home, my father was waiting for me. He had asked me why I was late, and I told him that I watched a soccer game after school. He did not believe me, and instead yelled at me for coming home late (it was 4:30 p.m.) and accused me of being late as I was probably out with a boyfriend. Out of frustration for being wrongly accused, I yelled at him that I was not with a boyfriend and that I was late because of a soccer game, and that I had even arrived home in a school bus since it was a school sponsored activity that I had attended. He was furious that I yelled back at him, and he slapped me for “being disrespectful.” He even got a hold of a whiskey bottle, and he was about to hit me over the head with it, and had my brother not stopped him, I would have died that day.

After that day, I went to live with my cousin for the next year, until I was off to live in a dorm at university.

During this recent trip, my parents got into an argument. There was a leak coming from the kitchen sink, and my father asked my mom to call the plumber. My mom was in the middle of cleaning up the water that had leaked onto the kitchen floor and did not call the plumber right away. My father got very angry and yelled at my mom because she had not called the plumber when he had asked (told) her to do so. He started going off on a rant about how she never does what he says, and he kept inching closer and closer to her, as though he was going to slap her. I got in between them and said to my father, “Stop yelling at her!“

His face twisted angrily, and he yelled at me, “Don’t you ever yell at me again!“ I yelled back, “Stop yelling at her!“ He stepped closer to me, and yelled “Don’t you ever disrespect me again! Do not ever yell at me!“

It was at that moment that the memory of that day from high school came flooding back. It took everything out of me to not punch him flat in his face. He is eight-four now. I could easily hurt him. Every fiber in my body wanted to lash out at him, in retaliation for all the times he physically and emotionally abused me when I was younger. But I managed to stop myself, from punching him, from slapping him, from yelling at him some more. I backed off, but my blood was still boiling from the hate that had been brewing all these years. I tolerated him throughout my life, maybe even had forgiven him at some point, but to see him continuing to mistreat my mom, all the anger and hatred that I had suppressed all these years, came dangerously close to exploding out of me once again.

To Hell and Back

“Razors pain you,

Rivers are damp,

Acids stain you,

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful,

Nooses give,

Gas smells awful.

You might as well live.”

~ Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

I realize now that I have not written here since the end of 2021, and now it is 2023.

It is because I was in hell all of last year. 2022 was my year of personal hell.

In January 2022, I found my daughter in her room dangling from her neck, minutes away from death. Her face was blue and she had almost lost consciousness. Fortunately my brother was there and he held up her body as I unraveled the bed sheets from around her neck.

Thirty minutes before that, she had told me she was hungry and wanted to order McDonald’s. I was not happy as I had already made breakfast and told her that she should not be eating so much fast food. She muttered something unintelligible, went into her bedroom, and slammed the door.

The delivery guy came. I went to her room and knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again, this time louder. No answer again. I tried the door knob. She had locked the door. I felt like something was wrong.

My brother was visiting and I told him that I felt like something was wrong. He picked her lock, and that was when we found her. She had tied bedsheets around her neck and hung herself from the steel window bars.

If she had not ordered food, we may have found her too late.

I spent much of last year taking her to different therapists and doctors. She was prescribed some antidepressants, which she refused to take. She slashed her arms multiple times. I lived in a constant state of fear and worry. Every day I was sure that that day was going to be the day that I would lose her forever.

After over twenty years of not going to church, I started going last year. Every Sunday, I went to church and prayed to God to save my daughter. I prayed non-stop to a God that I had hated for over two decades ever since I lost my sister to cancer.

I urged my daughter to also turn to God. She even joined a youth ministry. Things were starting to look up for her, but then the youth minister started sending her inappropriate messages. She became disgusted with the church, and she and her fellow female colleagues stopped attending the youth services. Eventually, the priest was sent away, and she and her colleagues slowly started coming back to church.

A year later, my daughter is better. She is still healing and still fragile. I am also still healing and still live in a constant state of anxiety and fearful with the thought that my daughter may slip back into a dark hole. Praying to God helped me and my daughter last year. I will continue to pray this year.

Love Does Not Keep Score

“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was an individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.” ~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Day 401.

My uncle passed away last week. He was my father’s youngest brother. Among my father’s siblings, there’s only my father and his next oldest brother left. My father will turn 83 this year, and my uncle will turn 85 in June.

I had not seen my uncle since 2016, and prior to then, I had not seen him since I was a child. It is a curious thing how memories bind our love towards people even when we rarely see them. I have lifelong memories of my uncle from when I was about nine years old. We lived in California then and my uncle had not married yet. He came to our house often. I think he even lived with us for a time, if memory serves me correctly. Anyway, I remember how he was the “fun” uncle who would buy us candies and make us laugh. He had a wonderful singing voice too, reminiscent of Matt Monro. When I was around ten, my uncle married and then my cousin was born. After that, we rarely ever saw them, and some years later, my family moved to the East Coast, and I never saw him again until my visit to California in 2016.

2016-04-24

I feel as though I am not worthy to speak of him since I rarely ever saw him. In a span of a year, I probably only thought of him a few days out of the 365 days, on holidays and such. But love does not keep score, does it? Time and distance have no weight when you love someone. It is just there. And now he’s gone. But the love is still there. It was always there. And I will miss him and mourn all the days we did not spend together, but I will hold tightly to the memories I have held since I was a young girl.

See you later, Uncle. ♥

Intangible Success

“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” ~ Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Day 354.

I got a promotion at work this week. It is long overdue, so I am not even excited about it anymore. I am thankful about it though. So many people are out of work and are anxiously waiting for the next stimulus check in order to make ends meet, while I am here flourishing in my career. It does not seem fair somehow, but then again, I worked damn hard to be where I am in life, and so I do not apologize for my good fortune, but as always, I am, and remain, grateful that I have achieved some successes in life.

My brother, on the other hand, has not been as fortunate of late as I have been. Troubled by his increasingly turbulent marriage and failing business due to the pandemic, my brother retreated back to the Philippines to reset his life. My parents, ever judgmental, have not been very supportive of his decision to return home, albeit temporarily, and have been bombarding him with questions and accusations, and in short, have called him a failure.

Harsh. But that’s how they have always been – tiger parents that have instilled in the minds of their children that if you are not successful (translation: rich), then you are a failure. Or simply: a loser.

But, really, what is success? A good job? A good marriage? To be able to afford a big house and a fancy car? Why can’t success be something intangible, like achieving peace in one’s heart? Why can’t one be considered successful if they are able to satiate the hunger for freedom in their soul, or dull the ache in their core to feel the fullness of life, instead of the emptiness in their heart?

In theory, my parents consider me successful. I have a good job and a lovely daughter. My brother has a failing marriage and a failing business, and his biggest crime: he has no children.

But in reality, my brother is more successful. No matter what obstacles he has ever faced in life, he has always kept a positive outlook and is genuinely happy. I, on the other hand, despite outward appearances, am prone to depression and disparaging thoughts. I am empty inside while my brother’s soul is rich. To me, that is real success.