#and her experiences of sa and eldest daughter rage

[ultimate-marysue]

I have this massive AU for the Batfam (and DC in general) that spawned from a very sleep deprived "You can't just gender swap Batman, there are implications" and honest to God, it's the one thing keeping me sane.

[iamjazzcarilla]

My Youth is Yours (it should have been mine)

It would have been easy to write about him. After all, I am no stranger to the notion of having lost him--I experienced that twice in 10 years, anyway--but a second, deeper look allowed my ears to listen to the muffled screaming of a voice that wanted an out for eons now. 

Youth. 

We all had our fair share of bullshits that we did when we were younger that make good stories now: drunken nights, reckless dancing, careless decisions, loving someone, self-exploration. I’m not going to put here some needless pity story about how I didn’t experience any of this because I did. 

I was called in the principal office because we were caught drinking; I spent a good number of nights dancing my heart out at parties; I went home late after some (so much) drinking and smoking and pretending I was cool, but as I sit here and try to write the perfect explanation for my teen years, my youth, I realized that all of these were just pampalubag-loob, something to soothe the raging emotions in me that were brought upon by years of fiery fights and lies. 

I’ve always been known as the strong one, and, really, I have long accepted that. After all, I wouldn’t have survived a decade of abuse if I weren’t one. 

As the oldest daughter--the oldest child, period--I’ve always had the unsaid responsibility of carrying the family every time we fall. My parents are fighting? I’m the logical one who breaks it up before it becomes a mess. My parents don’t understand my younger sister? I play the mediator, trying my best to let them understand why my sister is doing those shits. My mother feels underappreciated? I go out of my way to let her know we adore her. 

My family falls apart? I take the fall and keep all the secrets to unburden everyone else with the pain they might cause.

I was 11 when I first knew. It was purely accidental--a message I wasn’t supposed to read, a message that turned my whole life around. 

It was nothing monumental, really, just a simple “Mahal, may kainan pa ba sa office? Pabalik na ako.” (Love, is the party still ongoing? I’m on my way back.) On first look, this is harmless--but not when the message was sent to your mom and your parents aren’t officemates, not when your father was overseas for months then, and definitely wasn’t on his way to join the party. 

When I was a kid, I never really quite understood the feeling of the world being pulled under one’s feet, (as I should) but at that moment I felt like my whole world was not only pulled under my feet, it was shattered and I was left panicking, helpless, floating with no ground to land on. 

I have never hated understanding something more than I did at that moment, more than I did my whole life.

I spent the next days, months, years, dealing with the emotional storm that that one simple text drenched me in. 

I entered my twenties barely surviving, desperately convincing myself that I was okay. 

Surprise! I’m not. 

In the more than two decades that I have been alive, I’ve always encountered people who are surprised when I have a different, more mature perspective on things. They ask me how I do it, in awe of my maturity at such a young age. 

They don’t know that I always wish that I didn’t have to look at things the way I do. 

It has been years, I’m almost 25 now, but I still look back to my teenage years and wish that I wasn’t a guidance office customer who always visits because I always read salacious, cheating-filled texts from my mother’s phone. I still lay in my bed and ask the universe for reasons why I had to be the family’s remaining tie when I was only a teenager who wanted to know who she was. I still scream on my pillow at night, silently, as I have always done, because I still hate that I played the role of the liar--outright deceiving my father, for my mother. After all, the truth would have destroyed the entire family. 

And I still flinch because of loud sounds, still haunted by the sounds of slapped cheeks, miserable wails, angry voices, and the voice of my father promising to hurt my caught-cheating mother more if she doesn’t stop crying. 

I scream. I get mad. I get frustrated. I cry, but I’ve never really mourned my lost youth because I hate what-ifs. 

I hate looking back because doing so will birth more regrets, and regrets don’t have any space in the mind and heart of a woman who needs to be the strong one

I have never mourned my youth. 

Until now. Until now when I decided to scratch the barely-there scab off my wounds.

And as expected it isn’t pretty because, fuck…

I could have done more. I could have been more. 

I could have been someone who is not terrified to love; I could have been someone who trusted people more; I could have been someone who doesn’t run at the first sign of commitment, but I am all those and more. 

I have always been extra independent, desperately trying to do things on my own because my entire life, I was conditioned to think and feel that if I didn’t take matters into my own hands, nothing would happen. 

And now I’m tired--the type of exhaustion that was born out of years of pain and helplessness, the type of fatigue that needs a new life to regenerate.

I’m now stripping myself of all pretensions, of all the self-boost I injected in my blood to survive years of being alone and unhappy, of all the hope I tried to inhale to keep going, and just letting a deprived child say her repressed desires. 

I want to hold someone else’s hand--fuck, I want them to hold mine--and be secured of their intentions. 

I want to love freely and not immediately think of ways to leave when shit hits the fan. 

I want to entrust myself completely to a person and not think of the relationship’s expiration date, not think that there is an expiration date. 

I want to be unjaded. 

I want to move freely and be uncalculating of every move I make. 

I want to take risks and not unnecessarily kill myself over and over again because there were so many possibilities that could have fucked me over. 

I want to know the self that doesn’t always give herself up to make others happy. 

I want to let myself be loved.

And, really, I want the wailing child in me to have her peace, to have the inner acceptance she has always craved, to have the assurance that she is finally, finally okay. 

I know I’ll always be the eldest. I’ll always have my wounds and scars. I’ll always be this. 

But this is me mourning the years that could have been, the days that were stolen, the love that could have been mine, the me that could have been more. 

This is me screaming to the world--asking for reasons, asking for explanations, asking for answers for unsaid questions.

Asking for the lost things that were supposed to be mine. 

Universe, give me a chance. 

I’ve loved and I’ve lost, let me take them back, I want to take them back.