I’m on my own now. I got a room in Makati. It was on the ground floor of a two-storey building of seven rooms. Perpendicular to it was a freestanding structure that housed a common kitchen and two toilets/bathrooms. There was a dinner table, but none of the tenants took there meals there, all preferred to eat in their rooms. One-burner electric stoves-- one for each tenant, was lined up on a counter on one side. The tenants shared an old battered fridge, filled mostly with Tupperware tumblers of water and leftover food. A common laundry area was on the far end of the ground floor. There was a small garden in the middle that served to screen off the main house from the apartment building at the back where, according to the landlady, her pigpens once stood. The door on each room is framed by jalousies, and each room had a built-in cabinet, a dresser with a chair and enough space to fit in a double bed.
The landlady was quite a character; on most mornings, I would be roused from sleep by her loud voice; she would be bad-mouthing the housemaid or her husband or both of them. Other than that, it was generally quiet and peaceful.
The tenants kept to themselves and other than a nod of acknowledgment when we bump into each other on our way to the bathrooms or the kitchen; there was not much social interaction. Tenants come and go: two Ilokano brothers occupied a room on the second floor, a pregnant woman occupy another, a young couple occupied the room above mine; I could hear them having sex on the floor every night, they'd switch positions then they'll go again. The others were like ghosts that I could hear but never ran into.
It will soon be Christmas.
Christmas is a curious thing. We were brought up to believe that Christmas should be the happiest time of the year; yet it is the time of the year when the suicide rates are the highest. It seems that we have been misinformed. Contrary to what we have been told, statistics show that it is the most depressing time of the year. The problem I think is that people expect to be happy each time Christmas comes around; and when that expectation doesn’t happen people feel depressed. There’s nothing like being required to be happy and if you're not, being made to feel that everyone but you is having a good time. Suicide is usually a good option.
When I was younger, I remember being genuinely happy only in some instances of Christmas so I thought I would be immune to this holiday malady, but being alone with nobody to try to be happy with on my first Christmas alone pushed me over the edge. An unrecognized emotion reigned over me; before I knew it I was on a bus in EDSA intent on spreading Christmas cheer. Bad idea.
"May bisita pala!"
It was in that tone that I knew very well. It's astonishing how harmless words can be turned into toxic weapons of mass destruction simply by the way it is said, its inflection; its tone. While cuss words were taboo in our household we grew up to recognize annoying tones and inflection that could hurt more than the baddest cuss words a boozed up Tausug pirate could regurgitate.
Most families have eccentricities and quirks: maybe a subservient mother silently suffering spousal abuse or a father who wears only his underwear in family gatherings, but I had a childhood that could have been taken from a Charles Dickens novel. I was an orphan trapped in a big family of siblings. I never figured out what brought about this detachment, this estrangement. But, it was there: the prejudice, the aloofness, the hostility and that feeling of inconsequentiality. I’ve always felt alone. I would have been a good study of how a quirky childhood had an affect on the mind of an adult.
I was soon on my way back to Makati. Smiling revelers on the sidewalks and on the bus constantly reminded me of how miserable I was. I made it back to my rented room before 12 o’clock. I sat alone in the dark and stared at the luminous dial of my wristwatch watching the minutes and the seconds counted down. Tears ran down my face. At 12:01, I perked up considerably. I actually felt good and was uncontrollably laughing at myself. It was over. I've survived Christmas.
"What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger"
--Friedrich Nietzsche
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