My father made me. I firmly believe that.

(I also have a suspicion that his spirit, or whatever you call that remnant of what he was while living now that he's dead, is watching me as I type this, so I will type all this relatively slowly. As a result, the tone of my writing may differ/suffer because of it.
Whatever.
I have not written anything for a long time, so here goes.)

As far as I know right now, my father lived a prince's life. After his funeral, I heard from my paternal relatives how, as a child, he would be treated with foot baths every night before he went to sleep, with him eating grapes or even kicking his caretaker's face. My grandmother loved him so much that it's not hard to believe that she let him do whatever he wanted. He charmed her. He looked like a Hollywood actor. And had the sly wit and the je ne sais pas, magnetizing presence to match.

In the last years of his life, he sold little bottles of cultured milk on the sidewalk to the passing rabble. I saw him then, after not having seen him for almost nine years, a shriveled version of his old self. My Daddy, brought down, to the point that he wasn't even taller than me anymore. He was just this sunburned old man in an oversized polo shirt, frayed baggy jeans and baseball hat, who would sit hunched over on his equally time-ravaged plastic chair, staring into nothingness. Pain and loneliness lining his face. Dubbed as the Tatang of the neighborhood by the street children and his fellow sidewalk vendors, none of who had the mental capacity to understand what he was capable of, let alone how significant a tragedy it was that a man of his caliber would end up there with them. Except maybe the couple of similarly crackpot-theory loving old men who were drawn to him despite his appearance and circumstances. That, I think, made him feel young again, at least a little.

Mom has emotionally dissociated herself from Daddy perhaps a long time ago. I think it was for the best. When I told her he died, she didn't want to come to the wake or the funeral unless I specifically asked her to. I didn't. She did tell me about how, when she lighted a candle for him one night, the candle suddenly put out, and the smell of sampaguita permeated the house. Maybe it was him, visiting her for the last time. She told me all this, dispassionately. We would talk about his faults sometimes, still, sporadically, but I've stopped viewing this as a damaged woman's ranting against someone she still loves and hates at the same time. She's really through with the whole thing. She's just tiredly recounting it all back to me, little by little, perhaps in the hope that through her stories, however biased, I would understand both him and her even better.


My Daddy made me.
I was the most successful project he has ever undertaken in his life.
I am now more than that. I am a machine project that has come to life and gained a mind and a will of her own. I can only hope that I am better than what he had ever planned - could have ever hoped for. And somewhere inside me, still, though I may deny it sometimes, I wish that every day that I live, I am able to make him, wherever he is, now, proud that he has made someone like me.


My Daddy likes to claim that he has engineered even the fact of my birth. Mom tends to confirm most of it.
He prayed for me in all the holy places he could think of in this country to save his marriage with Mom.
When I was born, he would take care to put vitamins in my milk, to carefully choose what was inputted in my brain. He's probably done this even before I was born.
He's made sure to watch over me, especially during the first seven years of my life. I still vaguely remember this. I seem to remember, when I was seven, that I had "graduated" from his "course", and I was finally able to take on the "real world".
I knew all that time that he was making such a big deal about how he brought me up, so I accepted this. I knew what he was talking about. It was just that I had no way of confirming if what he said was true.
He probably didn't anticipate, though, that I would also be sexually molested around that age by some random kid a couple of years older than me near the playground on a no-school day, and would tell nobody, until now.
That probably screwed things up in his intended program a bit.

My dad was into conspiracy theories and alternate religions. He was into the whole ancient astronauts theory before it was hipster, and got into the whole European comic book, Heavy Metal, and Japanese animation scene before anyone even heard of Alodia Gosiengfiao. (I don't even think he gives a damn about cosplay.)
He fed all these to me, as well as a nagging paranoia for December 21, 2012, anticipating that it would be the end of the world by that date, and that my being 26 at that date should make me more than prepared to meet the apocalypse head-on.
I used to have so much trouble imagining what I would be like when I was 26. I think I even actually had an absurdly idealized idea of me being in high-heeled Mary Janes, sexy-secretary stockings, a black miniskirt and a navy blue blazer over a white tube blouse, with my hair in a ponytail and arching one of my eyebrows above my glasses with a sassiness that would put the entire "jaguar" category to shame.
But then I imagined I would be a secretary to some very important, bigwig boss. Who knew that the SEO phenomenon would happen and impact my life so much so like this?
No matter, I can make a few modifications to be a snooty, snobby Project Manager with high-heeled Mary Janes and zettai ryouiki stockings before their ends meet the hemline of my black miniskirt all the same. I'm working on it. I swear.

But neither he nor I had any idea how it would be like to prepare for the apocalypse.
He died a few days after 2012 came in. Maybe it was his death that he predicted all along. But that leaves me, with the paranoia he created in me, here.
So now I am fighting with who I was to become someone who will actually survive the apocalypse, if it comes.


I was meditating on this idea a few months ago.
I am my Daddy's best willed project.
Mom may not think of me as a "project" per se, but I know she did the most she can for me, too, and it shows, so much it hurts.
My parents' parents may not have put so much effort to make their children the best they can possibly be from what they themselves can give to them, but in some cases the genetic material was enough.
It feels cold to say this, but I feel glad that I have the blood of a powerful local lineage in my veins, though I could never lay claim to their fortune.
I am also glad that I can claim to have the blood of two of the fallen native races who have succumbed to their invaders here, as well as the blood of two such invaders.
And, possibly, the name of yet another invader, or, arguably, the name of another victim of yet another of this country's invaders.
I am a walking history and collection of the ravishing of the Philippines.
I am also the best of what the collection of lineages I have accumulated from my ancestors have become.

I have a very heavy responsibility of being worthy of all this passed-down greatness.
Burdened with glorious purpose, as a famous movie line goes.
And, knowing a little of things like my lives past and how Fate goes, I also know a little of why I am here, with you, and not anywhere else.
It is a scary thing. The even scarier thing is knowing that I can do all that will be asked of me, and more.

I have my father's face.
I have my father's most treasured sentiments.
I have my father's last, most treasured personal belongings, which, though it is sad to reflect, actually amount to almost nothing.
But never mind that.
I am more than my father, or what has made him, or who made him that way, or how this world has shaped him.
I am me now, and my mother's, and my sister's, and my stepfather's, and my friends', and all the people's, those who I have encountered in this life, however briefly.
And I have a role to play. Passed down from everyone. Which will continuously be refined, filtered, and influenced even further by the people I will meet in the future, by the people who I think I know but who I will meet next as strangers.
I will carry this on. To wherever it may take me.
And in reading this, so do you, and so will you.

Because of the lack of pictures during that period, I don't even remember what I looked like, what I thought, how I acted. For better or worse, I am now changing so fast that I don't remember who exactly I was last week, and the me five years ago seems almost unrecognizable.

I have records of who I was, though. I tend to like writing a lot of journals. Like here, now. Like footsteps down a path, maybe. But the farther back the footsteps are, the more I don't seem them anymore. The more I don't recognize them anymore. The same with who/what I am.

I've noticed that when I go read my really old journals again, I do end up recalling what I was like, to the point that -- it's like wearing a mental outfit. I have a mental outfit right now, and by writing this down, right at this moment, I am leaving impressions of what being in that mental outfit is like -- whether these impressions are strong or not remains for my future self to see. But my past selves tend to be pretty vivid and descriptive of their impressions -- either that or it's just that they were me before, so I can easily bridge the gap between what was said and what wasn't and simulate the mental outfit I had at those times of writing again, and sort of get into that outfit again, to the point that I think like my past self for some time. Which, sometimes, is not good. Because I'm trying to evolve here, right? Putting on a mental outfit from the past is like undoing the path I have walked down on, if I'm not careful and start wearing my mental outfit of the past way too long.

So what I'm saying is, for all of you who seem to have really bad memory, like a friend I know, maybe it's okay to be so forgetful after all. Maybe it's okay to miss one diary entry - or several. It's like stories. There are good stories, there are bad stories -- and while you still don't know the difference between the two, maybe it's just better to let go of your stories and seize the present, breath by breath, right?

I, however, will continue to write, even just in ways like this -- a trail of gibberish to most of you but possibly useful to some -- because for me, writing it all down is also a means for me for letting go.