It is What It is

It’s father’s day and I am not on speaking terms with father. Imagine that. My mother reminded me yesterday to greet him a Happy Father’s Day. I said that this time I’ll be true to myself. I will not reach out to him. I’m tired. Let him be. It is what it is.
The family. What crap. There is no family here. Not when what really ties us now are mere bloodlines. I say let him be.

I always thought that for all the fucked up stuffs I could possibly do in my life , for all the my dissapointments with relationships, at least I’d have the family to rely on. But well, people dissapoint us all the time. And people, well, they just change.

He actually deserves a pat because he was a good father when we were kids. When we where growing up it was fun, my brother and I enjoyed the weekly trips to the groceries, the little dinners, the way he talked to us, like we were mature people, when in fact I was still just a pimply kid and my brother was a fat but cute little boy. We know he sacrificed a lot ~ his personal dreams , his chance to live and study in Australia, and how he stuck with us despite him not loving my mother. I guess his point was, he stuck with us when he could have chosen to leave us. I say, thank you. But isn’t that not something we should thank you for? Didn’t you consciously take on that role the moment you decide to create us? I know you sacrificed a lot for us, and I know a lifetime of doing good, of showing you how successful we’ve become will not compensate for what you’ve done for us. But you are our father, you took on that role when you decided to father us. What gratitude do you want from me? Silence? Silence of my own hurts for all the dissapointments that despite your best efforts, you still gave me?

I know we’re lucky, my brother and I, because growing up we lived in relative comfort . Not spoiled enough to get all the stuffs we want, but we knew that that our parents can always provide for our needs. I was, to my mind, raised to know that what we had was a privilege and that we should not forget that there were those without means. And so now that I can help, I do try in my own way to help relatives who deserve to be helped. And for that point, I am sure that he raised me well.

But there are snapshots that I will never forget. Maybe I am just screwed-up. But I will not forget that instance when a relative who went to Davao and met his “new baby” there told me, “Hindi naman daw nya kayo mahal eh.” For your father to say that to someone else, that you are more or less nothing but a responsibility is the worst thing possible. I’ve tried to disprove that sentence time and again. Observing how he was with us, that it is not just the money he provides that matters, that he really wants to spend time with us too. Sometimes I felt that for sure it wasn’t true. But then you see him living in with someone else, in his new house while we stay at a dilapidated place.

There was that instance, one of the few dinners that me and my brother can have with him while he was in Manila, and he asked us instead to come to the dinner he was already having with one of his staff, and they effectively talk about office stuffs and my brother and I are left to just enjoy the food in silence. Because perhaps, to my father’s mind, when we ask him to treat us to dinner, we are only after the food, and the fact that he paid for dinner is enough. Years later, when I brought it out to my brother, he says, “Nagtaka nga ako sa iyo bakit di ka nagalit eh. Minsan na lang tayong magdinner, sinama pa yung asungot nya.” I was confused too, I felt it was not my place to get mad, that maybe that dinner was enough to be thankful for.

One that stays with me is this: his enmity the last time he talked to me. I was in Davao then on a short break from Korea, bringing in supplies for the shop, and while I was buying stuffs to bring back to Seoul he texted me that he wants to talk to me before I leave. I said sure, at the back of my mind, I did think that (1) either he will finally come clean about his relationship with one of his staff (2) he will talk to me about the annulment. But he said nothing. But on the way to the airport, he said something about the shop, I think it was about the bakery equipment that was being offered by a contact of his girlfriend-staff’s brother. But the way he said it, I will never forget that voice. To hear halting anger from your father’s voice when you know you haven’t done anything wrong is the worst thing in the world. At that moment I thought, he’s mad at me for being here, for being who I am. For cramping his style now that he found a new love. All a daughter could think of would be, I didn’t turn out good enough for him. It was almost as if he hated that I was there, that it was such a hassle for me to be part of his life. And I put up that shop at his house in Davao precisely because I thought all along that he wanted me and my brother to someday be based there. And after all my expenses, all the trouble I’ve put up with just so I can open that store and please him, that was what I got.

On the airport he didn’t even say goodbye like a normal father would. He just said, sige ingat. And from then on I swore to myself. Enough. Stop expecting your father to be the typical father who dotes on his children, who would spend time with them, who will be there to guide them even as they grow old. From that moment on, I told myself, I’m going to do well in my business, I will try my best to stand on my own financially so he can be free to do what he wants and so we will no longer feel like burdens, responsibilities, dragging him down, preventing him from going after what makes him happy.

Unless a miracle happens, I swore I will never ever have children. I do not want to fuck up another person’s life. I don’t feel I could provide the emotional stability to mold someone’s character. And yes, most of it is because, I never knew how it is to grow in a family where parents care for each other. Do I blame them? No, perhaps it just couldn’t be helped, maybe they really did try their best. But if at all possible, I do not want to subject another person, least of all my own flesh and blood, to any of those emotional brouhaha I went through.

So yeah, it is father’s day. And I hope he enjoys the day with this present love. I cannot greet him because it would be a lie. Perhaps I could say thank you for the father he was, when we were kids, when he still wanted to be a father to us. But for the past year, it isn’t fair to be dishonest. There is no trace of that loving father at all. And so I say, I’ll let him be so long as he let me be. It is what it is.