I'm pissed.
Actually, I've got no plans of blogging until the coming exams this September are over... but circumstances do come up with not so funny jokes once in a while. And those "once in a while crack-ups" have just reappeared on the dining table earlier.
Around 1:30 this afternoon. It was hot. In fact, everything was, from the crimson ceiling to the simmering fish soup.
Unexpectedly, it would get hotter.
Right after sipping the last teaspoon of the inconveniently semi-boiling stock, my father asked me for the nth time (he had been doing so since the last 3 months) where I'd be lodging in Manila for my review. I told him ALSO for the nth time that I'd be finding one as soon as next week when I get back to Manila. In addition, I'd be living alone since none of my friends pushed through with the plan of us staying together for the review.
To give you a background (just pretend you're interested) : the apartment me and my sister leased in Sta. Mesa when we were still in law school had already been given up (so to speak) by my way too stingy father days after the last final exam of my last semester in masochist's, er, law school. Friends told me that leaving the apartment was a bad choice since the leasing fee only amounted to 4, 500/month and the access to almost everything was undeniable. (A church, a market, a laundry shop and an internet cafe were just steps away. Not to mention the fact that only a lonesome jeepney ride was needed for one to be taken to the LRT station and to Mendiola/Quiapo.) But fate -- or my father -- had other plans. Conclusively, when the review starts this April I'll be homeless unless I find a new place to live in.
So I thought the conversation would end with my way too rehearsed response. But, alas, it didn't end there. My father then said that maybe I have "PLANS" in Manila that's why I'd be living alone.
It was more than a plain, harmless statement -- it was a banter more than suggesting that I'd be spending months in a place far away from home just to have my booty slammed against someone else's. My father suggested -- or suggests -- that his son is a tramp!
The afternoon got hotter. It boiled. I couldn't believe that he said that.
So I retaliated, "Anong plano po?" I asked this with an obvious opposition and an almost awakening monstrosity.
He paused, sensing that I didn't like what he said. "Baka mag-lamyerda ka lang," he responded.
Every person surrounding the table knew that wasn't what my father really wanted to answer. Everyone there, including me specially, knew that what he meant was that I'd be inviting promiscuity or "dirt" in my prospective boarding house/apartment.
I was really pissed. I wanted to shout, to scream, to take my lungs out and to just get the hell away from him.
But I couldn't. So here I am, blogging my stupid heart out.
Not too long ago, I swore to myself that I would not let any person, any society or even any Theological principle dictate what I should do with my life, how I should schedule it, who the people I should be making friends with and where I should place myself in every circumstance. Though no man is an island, I am still an individual. I can't let anyone carry me in his palm -- or his cage -- forever.
I've had only two relationships in my whole 25-year existence. I didn't cheat and I tried my hardest to love them fully. (Obviously, it wasn't enough.) Now, I'm already nearing 3 years of "singlehood" and I haven't had any sexual relationships with anyone. But still my father thinks I'm a prostitute?!
Maybe I just couldn't blame him. After all, many people think of me the same way. To put it in another way, many people think of OTHER PEOPLE LIKE ME the same way.
Can't change that. No matter how hard I try. People are people.
A law professor once told me that God has many faces, and such vary from person to person. He believed that his God -- although deviant of the Church's notion -- is sympathetic, indiscriminatory, unconditional and always receptive of every person, regardless of the latter's "social and/or biblical" imperfections.
He is my God, too. I know He loves me.
