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I Also Know How to Feel

Whenever I look at my nieces and nephew, I could not help but envy them with the kind of life that they have now. They belong to a happy family with their parents genuinely showing them their love and affection. They are not deprived of things that could develop their full potential and they are being raised and molded into a godly character.

Thinking about how fortunate they are with their parents, I look back and try to remember how I was as a child. I try to remember what I was like, who were my playmates, which were the things I valued the most and what were the circumstances that made me who I am today. I try to think, but I could not remember anything. It's as if, every memory of my childhood has been erased. A case of selective amnesia?

I remember during one of my classes in college, one of the lessons was about personalities of human beings. I could no longer recall the exact lesson but I remember understanding why I am not able to recall anything from my childhood. It was because it was too traumatic and too depressing that I unconsciously decided to repress and forget everything. I chose to be passive because the wounds were too deep and it pains me to realize that the people who should have taken care of me have caused those deep wounds which have not been healed until now.

I'm not really a very emotional person. In fact, my sister often tell me that my heart is as cold as ice, I don't know how to feel. She tells me that among the four of us, I'm the most different. I'm the one who doesn't care much about the world. The three of them are outspoken, very much open to how they feel. They easily get hurt and they often find themselves in trouble because of that. But me? Ala lang...

But I don't agree much to what my sister said. I do get hurt. I do feel the same things that they feel. I do feel angry about the kind of family that we have, the sufferings that we had to undergo as children, the unhappiness of our lives because of the way our parents brought us up, and the traumas of our childhood. I do cry but I always choose not to show it to them. I always choose to spare them from the heartaches that I feel because I know that they've had enough and my own feelings would just be added burden.

It is so wrong for my sisters to think that I am not being affected with the things that have been happening now because the truth is I am. My life right now is mostly because of the things that happened in the past. I may not admit it, but sometimes I do realize that somehow, my being me is the result of how they molded me to be. I'm not blaming them but I do feel resentment at times.

But dwelling in the past just makes me feel hopeless and depressed. I'm now trying to change the course of my life by not thinking about what happened before. I want to be different. I want to stand up from this mess and show them that I am what I am not because of them but because this is what I want my life to be. Easier said than done and could be a very big leap. But everything starts with the first step.


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