MY STORY TO TELL

It had been two years since I last cried. I decided that I should be numb. Things are so much better when you just don’t feel anything. Everything that happened to me were once habits that had turned into a routine. The heartaches, the disappointments, the hurting. They are the same story that keeps on getting worst every single day of my life.
I do smile in spite of all these. I have my own life to live after all; I have a beautiful place called dreamland to visit every time I’m down. In fact, people could barely see me in a sour mood. The rainbow is always above my head; like a tiara shouting: “Hey! I am happy!”
A lot of people would testify that they know me; others would say wicked things about my personality. They think I’m all the person I show them that I am, but there’s much more things to discover about the true persona of Yanah,
Ever wondered how it feels like to grow up in a slum? To grow up with four other siblings in poverty and that your parents could barely afford your schooling? To go home to a house of broken ceilings and doors? To have a gambler for a mom and to have a father who is much more interested in the betterment of his organization than his own family? To sometimes wake up with the screams of your parents cursing?
You see, I was a battered child. In fairness to my mom, she does try hard to sustain for our family’s needs, that is, before she was introduced to gambling. And my dad, he has had decent jobs, but he would suddenly resign and reason out that he couldn’t afford to live far from his family. Then one day, he just got tired of working. That was also the time when he started hitting me. I was on my sixth grade in elementary that time.
My childhood wasn’t a normal one. My mom decided to go to Saudi Arabia to look for greener pastures. Shortly after, my dad went to prison. He was accused of estafa.
I learned to smoke and drink when I was in my first year in high school. We didn’t have parents and my siblings and I were separated. I was the only one left in our house with my blind grandmother and my drunkard uncle was my guardians.
Our lives didn’t get better when my mom went abroad. After two years, she went back to the country. That was also the year when my dad was dismissed from prison after he was dismissed from the crime that he didn’t commit.
We lived as a family again. I thought my dad had changed. He was good and sweet to us the first few months. Well, I was wrong. Maybe because he couldn’t find a good job and he gets frustrated by it that he’d beat me up without any reason at all.
There was this one time when he was about to beat up my younger brother that I stood up and shouted at him not to touch my brother. He got angry because that was the first time I talked back at him. As a result, he whacked me with two plastic stools. He didn’t stop until he saw the chairs were broken in my body.
There was also one time when my mother and father were arguing and when my dad saw me, he attempted to punch me. I did not move a muscle; I was used to his beatings. When he saw my reaction, he suddenly picked up a plastic stool and hit me with it on my head. There was so much blood. I was bleeding non-stop. My clothes were covered with it.
The beatings just stopped when I ignored my dad for two years. I built a wall around us and nobody could get through no matter how hard they tried.
We’re casual now; we have learned to forgive each other.
Most of my pains were caused by my family. They thought I was selfish and proud because I don’t ask them for financial assistance. I don’t dare ask them to give me money because I know they don’t have it, which is why I don’t ask them to give me any. I did not want to add up to their burden.
I am the one financing for my own studies. I have two jobs to keep me at school.
You see, I could have been a rebel, but I chose not to. I used to cry, but I stopped. I afford to smile in spite all of these not because of the saying that, “Clowns hide through their masks,” I afford to smile because I know that there are a lot of things to smile about. I have wonderful friends and I just find simple pleasures in the things around me.
I knew during those hard days that I should make a choice: to either be bad or good, and I picked the lesser evil.
Now, if you were me, what would you have become?


September 18, 2008