it is impossible to live unforgiven.
and there comes a time that no one else can convince you that you are but you. because everyone already tried. but you were stubborn.
meet me where i am, Lord. show me who you are, that i might know who i am.
i can't help anyone if i ignore helping myself.
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12 dec.
shep says, you both have to find yourselves in God, independently.
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maybe i have never really felt my time was my own. that my life was my own. or maybe there came a point that i stopped owning my time, and my life, in some kind of twisted intention of being more present in others' lives.
i remember telling beci once, after meeting her mum, that i felt like my own didn't have much of an identity. i don't know what my mother was like before she started a family because i'm not sure that it shows at present. while packing for the UK departure, i was looking through some old photo albums and remember thinking the same thing - what was she like? my parents met in japan. she had some cool clothes. maybe the deepest thing i know about her is that she is a people-pleaser.
when i was around 7 or 8 years old she had gone through a phase of a scarring temper. if my sister and i (i'm not sure if i remember correctly but i was probably reprimanded more often) made her upset or if we didn't obey, she would tell us bitterly about how hard she works just for us. that maybe it's better that she didn't come home. i have suddenly just recalled a now vivid memory of being in their bedroom when we lived in makati. white walls, white closets, and white dressers. the bed was cream. and i was touching a set of garments, a brown pant suit, that was laid out on the bed. my mother was getting ready for work the next day. eh ano kung hindi na lang kaya ako umuwi? as she rummaged through her closet. i was stood by the bed, hearing the words but not seeing where they were coming from. i was looking down at the pant suit. thinking it may be the last thing i would see my mother wear for the rest of my life.
maybe i had used the computer outside of the allocated time (clear instructions were in blue ink, in my father's handwriting, on a small memo-sized piece of paper taped to the monitor). maybe i didn't want to eat the fish that had been prepared for dinner. maybe i still hadn't memorised the 6 times table. whatever i did, it was so unforgivable that my mother said she might not come home the next day.
despite those bad moments i always looked up to her as a child. she looked strong. she knew what she was doing. and maybe, in a way, because i knew i had disappointed her often... i wanted to redeem myself.
when i became a teenager i wanted and worked for the same thing as everyone else my age did: an identity. maybe this is is where i stopped wanting to redeem myself to her. because i was discovering new things. realising that i am someone. and my mother... stayed that way. she was my father's husband. and my mother. and that was it. i became more aware that she had friends and took time to see them. i didn't know what music she liked, and she didn't like mine. she tried to make me wear floral-printed clothing in a time all i would wear were sports-brand shirts and baggy jeans.
my parents worked the hardest in singapore. we only saw them in the evening, because we always left for school much earlier than they were even down for breakfast. they were always tired at night. i remember one night, one of the first couple of weeks in high school, i felt homesick. i was lying on the couch tired from softball tryouts and feeling anxious about what the coaches' judgement about me was. my mum was in one of the armchairs behind my head, with some papers laid out on crossed legs. maybe she was on the phone. she talked for a while. i remember thinking, i should talk to her after her phonecall. i fell asleep before she finished, and when i woke up she was still there with the papers. i can't remember why, but i didn't speak to her. instead i was in my head trying to understand what i was feeling. why am i homesick? what am i missing? why do i miss her even though she's just there? and why can't i just tell her about the softball tryouts? at the end of my first year in high school, i was in the bottom tenth percentile of the whole batch. failure was part of my identity and i learned to wear it as a badge of pride. because i was beyond school. i was busy with creating my identity. couldn't care less about algebra.
when i was still failing after the first quarter of the second year, my mother was crying to my teacher. good grades in english and an above average fitness test record wasn't enough. i didn't want to get kicked out. i did the remedial classes and pulled it up a notch. my parents couldn't say much because what i was required to learn at school then was beyond them. they were happy. i just wanted to play softball.
in the quieter moments there was still laughter and joy. Christmas, birthdays. we usually went to church together. but these relationships that persist in mostly silence are difficult to weave. and in manila i eventually, finally, started to try, because i was beginning to fall through a dark hole from the lack of a weave. it was too hard to stay resentful at the reasons for being uprooted from singapore. i remember one time in the car and having fun for the first time in that context. i was reading out whatever and everything i could read as we drove. i forget why. but i haven't forgotten how appreciative they were. that i was actually talking. i was still unappreciative about my context but at least i could laugh in the car with my family.
we have come a long way as a family, especially my mother. especially all of us in relation to her. discovering God, individually and as a family, at St. James did that. and her cancer changed all of us.
lately (i.e. the past couple of years, post-cancer), though, i have felt things shifting again. old habits die hard. for her. and perhaps i am searching for her again.
Lord, why have you made me remember all this?
i remember the pant suit memory again. i can't believe how easily i can relate to that younger self. do i really still feel that small? the bad kind of feeling small? is that how far i have carried this?
i thought i had surrendered all i needed to in my early adulthood, and thought maybe i was just forgetting how surrendering feels like. but maybe i hadn't looked deep enough into my own history.
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