His Day

i never knew my dad.

what an ironic statement to say because he's just a few inches away from me, sitting on his favorite spot, reading his newspaper while i'm eating my lunch. he's just there. he's more of a caricature in the house. perfunctorily going about the affairs of the household until it's time for him to leave for his second home (read: other family).

how can you know someone all your life and still not really know him? it's just one of those realities in life.

so lets see. what do i know of him? i know he works hard to keep both families living comfortably. i know he is a penny pincher. i know he is an Erap fanatic.

as for emotions you would come to expect from a father? i've seen him laugh, but not heartily. i've seen him mad, when i was younger, i was always at the receiving end. i've seen him happy, but not really.

have you ever seen your father cry? i know. it's an odd thing to imagine. but i look for it. why? i believe that there would only be two kinds of people you would truly, sincerely, and honestly let your tear drops fall for them to see. the ones who you loved so much and the ones you hated so much.

i've never seen him cry. so what am i to him? wallowing in the fringes, i guess.

--

what's your earliest recollection of your father? i remember, i was 5 years old and i wanted to see this cartoon on TV. i can't because he was there hogging it up, too engrossed with basketball. i begged and i pleaded for him to let me watch my favorite show, all he uttered to my mom was:

"kunin mo nga tong anak mo!" .

it has always been like that. he always refer to us siblings as "my mom's children". never have i heard him say "anak natin". why am i being all emo about semantics? i don't know. maybe it seems trivial, but i would have really loved hearing him say that i was his kid. but that never came from his lips.

--

when i was 7, i had a juvenile urge to play with toy guns. i imagined myself being a space marine or a space cop. my mom gave me this (then) cool looking space gun that lights up and makes all those (then) fancy sound. imagine me a kid, beaming with consummate joy. i was so excited to go brag about it to my (then) kid posse. except that i kinda busted the part where you put in the battery. you see, it had wires. for the life of me (then), i didn't know what they were for, so i pulled them out. my dad saw me do this. he went on a fit of rage. he was so mad, he grabbed the toy gun and threw it against the wall thereby smashing it to bits. you know how in the movies, things slow down for a dramatic effect? i saw my gun hit the wall, shatter into a million pieces and sputter out just like that. i've never cried harder in my young life.

--

fast forward a few years later when i was in middle school. it was then that i was becoming "confused" with my sexual orientation. i do not believe that not having a father figure would make you turn out gay. it's really a whole lot of things. but having a father figure would surely have made me more secure about who i am. and putting me in an all boys school? wrong move, dad. surrounding your neglected kid with other boys wouldn't be an ample substitute for your presence. it would only lead him to seek affection and gravitate towards these boys who you thought are supposed to make him "beef up".

--

we had a happy family life once, despite the things happening with me at school. as a family, we had the weekends to go out. we saw movies together. we played together. we ate out. bottom line is we spent every free time we had as a family. those were the golden years of my family.

that was until that whore came into my father's life. to cut the long story short, she came, she seduced, she got pregnant and she demanded support. they are now on their 2nd kid.

you know, it's pretty fucked up why men would often use the excuse that they acted only on instinct. "i'm just being a man". if being a man meant you would throw away your vow to love and cherish the one you married and her kids, then fuck being a real man!

--

i need to simmer down a bit.
......

--

if it sounds like i have lingering resentment in my heart for all the shitty things in my family life because of my dad... it's because i still do. but we've gone past the drama stage. we're past the things you see in telenovelas. we're now at the stage where we live with what we've got. and by that i mean trying to make the most out of the things we have.

well for one, he didn't leave us.

he's here, albeit, shuffling his time between our house and that den of iniquity they call a home. nowadays, we only get him Saturdays and Sundays (how the tables have turned).

second, he's trying to make up for the transgressions. he is trying to reach out to me, now that i'm an adult. i guess, he is trying to make me understand the impossible.

but the glass already has its cracks. things can never go back. and to make a facsimile of what was then true is just not for me.

--

i guess the point of this entry is to express in minute details how i feel about the man. despite my unquenchable hatred, this is matched by my undeniable love for the man i call my father.

you could never truly hate your parent. i guess that's what love truly means. and i'm all for giving the guy a break. he tries. oh yeah, he tries. and so i should too. i'd rather have a messy, dysfunctional relationship with him than none at all.

--

epilogue:
i've often wondered if i would make a good father someday. don't get me wrong. i still am allergic to seafood, if you catch my drift. but i dream of having a son. adoption is definitely out of the question. i am 100% sure i would want him to be from my loins.

i believe- no scratch that- i know that i would be a good father someday. so happy father's day to myself if ever it comes into fruition.


P.S.
dad, i love you, you scumbag.