Today I feel sad. For the past few days of me staying at home (since I am a newly grad and currently unemployed), I noticed my father’s lack of happiness. He just stays at home and watches TV everyday waiting for the day to end. And somehow it aches me to look at him look so miserable with each passing day. I was just talking to my mother about going on vacation this summer, at least before I get my 1st job. I was planning on going out with my friends but they won’t allow me, esp. my mother. Pag malaki na daw ako. So I thought, just to satiate my wanderlust, I should just go with my family and also to serve as way to let them see a new part of this world other than the store. I told my mom that we should go on vacation often and then she said that she can’t easily do that. Perhaps after putting up her dream apartment first. I thought it was good so I said I’d help her. She said I should inquire with the paper works to be done first so I said okay. In the midst of our talk, my father said that apartment is hard.
Pag walang umuupa, tulog ang pera mo.
So I shut the door and let my mother sleep. I went outside to talk to my father, trying to see his point. I also tried to explain my mother’s point: that an apartment is a good investment since land does not just depreciate its value. I don’t know how but from business talk, we ended up talking about life. He told me that while running our sari-sari store helped us met our financial needs, his life has been wasted to it. He said he wants a business that doesn’t exhaust him the way our 7 days a week and 15 hrs a day store does. And then I just found myself straining not to cry when he said, ‘Hindi ko na namalayan araw araw ganyan. Naubos na pala ang buhay ko jan.’ I didn’t want to feel bad about it but I feel so guilty that I might be the reason why he wasted his life away working everyday of his life to earn money just to support our financial needs. I am so sorry. Hindi ko po sinasadya. I don’t know how I could tell you this but I hope he feels how awful it is for me to see him unhappy every single day.
And then we’d often have this talk that he was already at the peak of his life and have just a few years left. God. It’s just so freakin painful to hear someone you love say that and I hope, I really, really hope that if should God would have to take them so early, I hope they’d take me before them. Call it selfishness but I just don’t think I can bear that sadness. So whenever he limits his life and say how many years he has left, I always beat him to it by saying he has a longer life left than me.
I don’t know what’s happening to us. I just don’t know what to do. I hate it when our neighbors ask about him, why he doesn’t go out. What should I say to that? L
