There is another layer to this that is harder to talk about.
Not because it’s unclear.
But because it is.
There are versions of people that only exist in certain rooms.
Versions that only come out when no one else is watching.
Versions that never make it into the stories other people hear.
And I have lived long enough to know this:
The person your children see
is not always the same person you have known behind closed doors.
This is the part that breaks something in me quietly.
Because I look at my children -- especially M --
and I know they are forming their understanding of me
without ever fully seeing the other side of the story.
Without ever witnessing the silence I’ve sat through.
Without ever feeling what it’s like
to speak about something serious -- something real --
and be met with nothing.
They don’t see that.
They don’t see the moments when I said,
“I’m going through something medically,”
and the conversation was redirected like it never mattered.
They don’t see the absence.
And absence is very hard to prove to someone
who has never had to sit inside it.
There are no raised voices to point to.
No dramatic scenes to retell.
Just the quiet, repeated experience of being… dismissed.
And how do you explain that to someone
who has not felt it in their own body?
Sometimes I wonder what they think.
What version of me exists in their minds.
What conversations have shaped that version.
What silences have filled in the gaps.
And then I remember something that was said to me --
not in anger, not in passing, but clearly enough to stay.
“Kapag wala ka, masaya kami ng mga bata.
Kaya dapat talaga makalipat ka na sa ibang bahay.”
When you’re gone, we’re happy.
There are words that don’t need to be repeated many times to take root.
That was one of them.
Because it wasn’t just about leaving a space.
It was about being made to feel like your absence is an improvement.
Like your presence is the disruption.
And when you carry that into everything that follows --
every silence, every dismissal, every moment of indifference --
you start to see a pattern that is hard to unsee.
But the hardest part of all of this is not even what was said.
It’s what is not seen.
My children, especially M,
do not see this version of their father.
They don’t see the disengagement.
They don’t see the indifference.
They don’t see how kindness can simply… not be given.
And because they don’t see it,
it does not exist in their understanding.
So when they form their judgments,
when they create distance,
when they decide how to respond to me,
they are doing it with only part of the picture.
And I am left holding the other half.
Quietly.
There is a particular loneliness in that.
In knowing something deeply,
but not being able to make others see it
without sounding like you are trying to convince them.
So I have learned something difficult.
Not everything that is true about your experience
will be visible to the people you love.
And sometimes,
they will make decisions about you
without ever knowing the full weight of what you carried.
But here is the line I refuse to cross:
I will not turn into someone who needs to expose,
prove, or tear down another person
just to be believed.
Because at the end of the day,
my truth does not become more valid
just because someone else finally sees it.
It is already valid.
Even if it is unseen.
And maybe one day,
when they are older,
when they have lived more,
when they have experienced silence in their own lives,
they will understand the difference between
what is said
and what is withheld.
Until then,
I carry my truth quietly.
Not because it is small.
But because it is mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment