The thing about growing up is that one learns to grow guts to face bigger life issues. The catch is, as one grows up the fears become more and more real. Once, when i was in grade school, i kept a expense log book (actually, it was just a school pad) where i account everything that my mother gave me, from the daily allowance to the writing pads. Although i never learned to love expense accounting and avoided it in my adult life, that school-pad-accounting helped me prioritized on my material needs and learned to save up for my wants (like P5.00 corndog for recess on fridays). I was haunted by a baseless idea that i was making our family poorer by just existing.
The demography and economics i dealt with in university provided bases for my fears.
I am now in the stage where my contemporaries are getting married, busy being stage parents, busy climbing up the ladder of success, and making long term plans. The only long term plan I know how to make is the one that makes use of people's tax money. I am in the stage where majority of my contemporaries have social security, health insurance and housing loans. I am supposed to have those kinds of things, too, but somehow i overlooked them, thinking that all those "preserving the culture" and saving the world researches were more important, even if they were barely enough to pay the rent. And this again, because the only plan I knew to make I cannot even use to fix my life.
It appears now that there is high probability i will die poor and homeless.
Last night, I struggled to sleep and woke up to a nightmare that I thought was real. In the dream, my kid and I were in a sort of festival and he somehow slipped from me, and I couldn't find him anymore. I searched and searched for him, I even sought help from the police but it seemed he just vanished and he's just nothing but a statistics. A boy of 5, missing.
In the jeepney, I thought of my death. My left lymph nodes are little swollen; I'd probably die from an ear cancer. I have not pooped for days. I'd have colon cancer by the time I am 35. My kid would end up collecting trash to buy food. The guilt is even more unbearable. My head hurts thinking about this.
