But right now, when I think of this particular home, all I remember are the things that my sisters say to me, and they are not exactly good things, nor the right or justifiable things, because they were things not scientifically verified but were born out of their own ignorance and biases. I remember, too, the things that Pa keeps saying to me nowadays, which reminds me of the things he used to say to me when we were children crouching in fear of his voice and his temper. I also think, every time I think of this home, all the things that my Ma doesn't want me to say; for Ma always wanted me to shut up to keep the peace in the house. You see, even in my early days at home, I was already cast as a troublemaker, a rebel. Later, I'd learn, the activists have a name for this kind of peace: it's called the peace of the graveyard. The peace of the dead.
So, it’s only now, decades later after I left home and returned, that I begin to understand. I was never really free to say anything at home. Not when I was growing up, not now, when I am [supposed to have) grown up.
No matter how Ma used to expound in the classroom the concept of a liberal philosophy, for I can think only of first taking that concept from her before I learned about it from other people.
But at home, no one
actually talked about things even when the family was in a grip of a very difficult problem because it was a home that never tolerated discussions. It was a home ruled by many tyrants or one tyrant, depending on the way you see it; and when you started a discussion there, everyone thinks you're starting a fight, and that's the reason I was a perennial outcast, always the odd one out, in that home, where I never really belonged. No wonder then, that at 17, when everyone had their lovers and boyfriends, I ran away from home looking for freedom; and luckily, found it somewhere else.
No matter how Ma used to expound in the classroom the concept of a liberal philosophy, for I can think only of first taking that concept from her before I learned about it from other people.
But at home, no one
actually talked about things even when the family was in a grip of a very difficult problem because it was a home that never tolerated discussions. It was a home ruled by many tyrants or one tyrant, depending on the way you see it; and when you started a discussion there, everyone thinks you're starting a fight, and that's the reason I was a perennial outcast, always the odd one out, in that home, where I never really belonged. No wonder then, that at 17, when everyone had their lovers and boyfriends, I ran away from home looking for freedom; and luckily, found it somewhere else.
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