Sunday, November 16, 2008

"If you suspect yourself of hypocrisy,"

When I'm not staying in my apartment, I'm usually staying over at my relative's place uptown in the weekends. Honestly speaking, I only go because my Grandma wants to see me more often, and of course I want to see her more often too. Seeing as she's my only grandparent left. But there's something a little uncomfortable about staying at some other family's home. We are blood related, and I do have my own room (however bare and empty it is. most of my stuff are in downtown). I appreciate it a lot, the way my relatives treat me nicely, gives me free meals, and spares me a room in their own house. I have a cousin around my age who lives there, and we do share a good number of interests, enough to carry an awkward-free conversation (which I am very very thankful for. I can't really say I'm familiar with interacting with relatives my age.)

I'm not quite sure if I like staying with them in the weekends. I really do appreciate the generous gestures, but there's always this nagging feeling of intrusion whenever I'm around them. I know that I'm a kind of spoilt, protected little girl in the eyes of my relatives, and it's not like they ridicule me for it, and it's not like I do anything about it. The reason is because I usually just stay unnoticed and unattached is because I feel that anything I do will probably be unnecessary. I tend to just stand and watch for patterns, and learn from them. In comparison, I feel a lot less useless and intrusive than I did last year, but the feeling is still there and alive.

This isn't some kind of teenage angst post about how I don't feel like I belong, or how nobody understands me or anything fickle like that. It's just a personal output about my life. 

My parents back home (as in home country), tells me that once I graduate from my first degree, they would actually retire and move here with me, and then I wouldn't have to live with my relatives, and I (and my mom) wouldn't feel so lonely. (this is arguable, because although homesickness isn't infrequent for me, it usually has to do with the fact that I barely phone home, which is actually just a result of me being lazy or forgetful, which is honestly not a good excuse for being homesick at all. My hypocrisy is going to be the death of me, really.)

A curious thing, homesickness. Yesterday my relatives and I went out for dinner, and they were talking about my cousin (the one around my age) and how she's getting a stable job and earning money to pay for our grandma's living expenses soon. I thought about my parents, and revisited my insecurities of my future like an old friend. It's something not uncommon among people my age, I suppose. Will I do alright in college? Will I get a job? Will I be able to support myself, let alone my parents?  It's all really natural for anyone my age.

And then something completely out of the ordinary happened. I suddenly had this urge to cry, and my eyes began to hurt with something I haven't experienced in a long time. I don't know if it's the fact that I miss my parents a lot, or if it's because I feel amazingly insecure about the days in front of me, but it stung. Anyone who knows me personally would know that I'm not exactly the most outwardly emotional individual, so I was genuinely shocked when this biological phenomenon occurred out of the blue. Of course, no tears actually came out, I think I would rather suffer greater things than to actually cry in public, or even in front of relatives. 

I realize that I'm being hypocritical, yet again. I honestly don't think showing emotions is a weakness. I know emotion is a great thing. It motivates people, it prevents people from bottling up all their emotions and going crazy with stress, it makes people grow up. But when I think more about it, it registered to me that all these thoughts are in a third person point-of-view. I consider myself pretty lucky to not have to go through too much hardships and issues in my life that would cause such extreme emotions, and hence I can't truly say that I understand what I say about emotions and weakness. There has been events in my life so far that has made a big impact on myself, and I'm sure it caused a lot of distress to me at the time, but I really can't experience the same emotions in my memory. (Though the one thing I can do is hold a grudge for a long, long time.)

My hypocrisy never fails to amuse me.