Kalon

Author's Note: After almost a month of debating how will I best describe transcendence, I finally settled with a Spotify playlist titled "i keep trying but im just not enough for you" wherein I will link my stories with the music I embedded. There will be two parts: Ocarina (PTE 3) and Kalon (PTE 4)

Music to play while reading:

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My grandma died on the Feast of St. Monica, 2020. I was the rosary leader back in Grade 10, wore white since it was the attire, then my mom called a relative taking care of my grandma.

After two weeks of battling stroke, gathering small beats of air because of her asbestos-filled lungs, and after a fitting sleep with my Tito hugging her tight as she slept in her room in her house where she lived for almost 40 years of her life, she passed away.

My parents looked at me dumbfounded because I was wearing white (for context, they thought my white shirt was a "sign" that she was going to die that day), and admittedly felt offended because I wore it for the rosary praying, not as Lord's vassal to exclaim to the world that she passed.

With the turn of events, I had to pass my rosary leader assignment to my classmate, saying that it was a family emergency, packed up my things while my mom cussed at my Dad saying it's his fault she couldn't see her mom face-to-face because he had work. After some quick calls, our driver came by and picked us up from our house to bring us to the province.

The thing is, during the whole process, I didn't shed a tear.

Maybe because we weren't close or because of the stories that my mom filled my mind with.

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She said that my grandmother never wanted her in the first place. My mom was the middle child of 5 siblings and the only girl. My grandmother's ambition was to have all of her children as sons who will grow up to be engineers, not a daughter. My mom, understandably appalled, worked hard to make my grandma notice her. She washed clothes, cook food, brew coffee, babysit (half-heartedly) her two younger siblings, studied hard, but it was all in vain. My grandmother eyed her 5th child as her favorite since he "miraculously" survived as my grandmother was taking contraceptives and missed a day of taking them. He was brought to a private school (My mom and the 3 other siblings studied in a public school), had a tutor, and is basically spoiled. My grandmother would remind her children not to do any harm to him because he is the "lucky child", and either way my mom would spank him whenever he misbehaves. I honestly believe it was because she was jealous of him because he get to have all the attention doing nothing while my mom does everything but still is unnoticed.

They grew far apart as my mom went to Manila to study Chemical Engineering as my grandma would wish for all of her children (initially my mom wanted to become a dentist, but they couldn't afford the tuition), but she would go back to the province when she can every weekend while balancing her part-time job to take care of her 6th sibling (a girl named Ellen Grace, named in honor of my mom whose name was Grace) and help in the household chores. To insert in my grandma's life, she was a victim of a bodol-bodol, losing the money my grandpa earned when he was working overseas and made my grandma life-long guilty about what she had done.

Meanwhile, my mom fell in love, had a boyfriend, and she graduated (and felt sad because her parents didn't even celebrate it). However, the boyfriend said that his parents are telling him to study first in America and urged my mom to go with him but she declined, but he added "I will give you money so you don't need to work." But my mom declined and they parted ways.

To fight away the pain of a broken heart, she became an OFW in Taiwan where she met my dad and he fell in love with her. According to my mom, he told her he would kill himself if she doesn't become his girlfriend (ripping his shirt and throwing his bike off the bridge as an example). Because my mom was kind, she agreed, entered into a one-sided marriage.

When she came back to the province however, her boyfriend was there. He saw my dad and... well became a drama. My grandma condemned my dad saying that she'll never be happy with him (in which she was right, 20+ years in the future) and my mom revolted, saying that my grandma was not the mom she hoped to be. After a "meeting" between my dad and her boyfriend, my mom still chose my dad and sadly waved her boyfriend goodbye (Right now he has a wife [Mom says she looks like her] and an unica hija [like me]; courtesy of my mom's researching techniques).

Zooming in into the present, my mom dislikes my dad how he used guilt to make her stay, and with me in the picture, she couldn't leave my dad if she wanted to because of me (which for me is lowkey saying that I should have died so she could leave my dad for good). Overall, she was unhappy, like how my grandma was with my grandpa.

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My grandma's death unleashed a bond of generational trauma that I have never noticed before. My grandma wanted to be noticed by her mom but my great-grandma loved her eldest more, spiraling into jealousy and unhappiness throughout her years; just like how my mom wanted to be noticed by my grandma, just like how I wanted to be noticed by my mom. They all entered into a loveless marriage and ended up regretting the life they chose (by the way, my mom is STILL NOT OVER her ex-boyfriend and compares him to my dad). It's sad to see that we are all just walking around in circles of the same traumas and hardships that the one before us endured, yet have we listened to them?

Have we learned something from them?

This is an open testament that fate MAY EXIST but, you can change it. Stopping the cycle is the best thing to do. I have fallen into the "not noticed" stage already, and I won't fall for the "loveless marriage" and the "life I will regret". I will start from scratch and change the course of my life. I know there is no such thing as true freedom, especially when we are toyed by fate like determinism, but I believe in existentialism where I make the choices that shape me as a person.

When I am free of that cycle, I will wear white, not to represent death, but rebirth and change I brought upon myself to break off the past that haunts my bloodline to be free of all pain and guilt and live the life I love.