So they say.

Just to give a brief picture of my family: there’s just me, my older bro, Erpats and Ermats living in a two-storey house in the middle of an academically urban corner. We’re pretty close, to say the least. Honestly, my parents have no problem with us two siblings, at least nothing life-threatening, just the usual bumps on the road that nothing a pison can’t handle. My brother’s old enough to get married already, but he’s got other plans and having his own family is still way down his list. Right now, he’s career oriented. I’m old enough to get married as well, but relationships don’t seem to want to jive with my schedule (which is just all chenez). I’m working but am also working out to go back to school and finish my degree. So I can safely say we’re one simple, happy go-lucky family… that seems to attract a lot of problems.

My aunt’s currently sick, to be specific, with three kinds of diseases: diabetes, tuberculosis and (worst of all, in my opinion) gambling addiction. To sum it up, she hasn’t been very cooperative when people around her have been trying to help her get well. It has been almost three years since she got sick, really sick. I already forgot how she was when she wasn’t. She earned so many friends; she lost almost all of them. Now my family’s getting the worse end of it through criticism because of misinformation. Some said we weren’t doing anything to help her, she’s not getting proper care, she’s being mistreated, and all that shit. The worst part is, all that misinformation came from my aunt herself. Now tell me, how do you help someone like that? She’s not staying at our house anymore. Last year after my grandmother died, she left for Bacolod because her brother offered to take her in and help her get better. FYI, he’s the third sibling who tried to take her in and help her. My mother was the first. We got news a few days ago that she came back here in Manila, and sibling number three wasn’t able to do anything about it. She stayed with a friend for a few days but now it seems that she’s being kicked out and is probably staying with sibling number two. I just wished she has realized by now that she has no one to run to but her family, and yet we are the ones that she is bastardizing.

I didn’t want to care. I would let my parents handle the situation and not intervene. Somehow it made me feel like a twelve year old not yet equipped to make serious decisions and share my own opinions. But now it’s slowly sinking in that I need to act as well. For the past few days, my mother hasn’t been feeling well. Her head’s been aching down to her neck. Stress, obviously. A tablet or two would have done the trick, but my mother’s another case. She’s been taking meds for her arthritis and the effect is it weakens her immune system. This morning, she was supposed to leave for an out of town trip for work, instead she was driven to the hospital because of her headache. She’s home now and has been prescribed with meds, but it’s still hard to take in and hard not to think about too much, especially when my mother’s part of the foundation in our family. Even as the second eldest of five, all of her siblings go to her for advice and help. Even some of our relatives go to her. At present, my mother’s cousin’s son has bone cancer and they are currently staying at our home, especially now that he’s undergoing chemotherapy. My parents have been helping out in processing the documents at the charity center and running other pertinent errands. At least my cousin has every intent of wanting to live longer and is very cooperative with his recovery. My aunt is another game ball altogether.

So there. That almost sums it up. I didn’t want to care because I was too angry to care for my aunt. But now, I had to. Not because we have the same birthdays, or because she’s of my blood, or to clean my family name and prove all those hypocrites wrong. It’s because I love my family and I don’t want to see them get hurt. My brother said, God wouldn’t give us a challenge we couldn’t handle. I know we’ll get through this because me, my bro, Erpats and Ermats will stand strong, no matter what.

To be frank, I don’t know where to start on helping out. Probably I’ll start with myself and try to suck it up when the going gets tough and be not a burden. Eventually, when the time comes, I’ll know what to do. Right now, we’re looking on a positive light. And when it gets harder, we’ll just stop and think of all the blessings that were given to us, shake our heads and laugh it out after hearing my father say, “Si Lord talaga, mapag-biro.”