...i'm my mother's daughter

what do you get after a korean drama Cinderella's Sister marathon that stops at 4am then resumes at 7am the morning after? an all-out self-realization of the complicated relationship between a mother and a daughter. I'm only at Episode 12, but i am really digging this drama. It's about a girl who got so messed up by her mother that she's become this cold-hearted bitch, any semblance of warmth has been freeze dried from her body,.. she can't reciprocate affection, much less give a hug to anyone(physical contact *shudders*) even if the receiving end was the biggest, fluffiest bear from Planet Cute making a peace sign.

my dad, mom and i were watching it together, for a while.. my dad actually gave up because he didn't 'like' the girl anymore because as my father said.. "ano ba yan, ang hirap pangitiin". Even after 8 years of being adopted by the nicest man her mother has ever come in contact with, her guard is still up, thinking that, anytime, this will all be taken from her and that this man is like all of her mother's previous good-for-nothing, abusive boylets.

And so, my realization starts.. (cue in background music). I know how it is, to go against your very nature. You see, we are not an affectionate family. My first instinct at an impending argument is to shut it down. Immediately. I'm the type who walks away in the middle of a haughty conversation. I can eat, sleep, watch tv (and actually laugh if its a comedy) 5 minutes after one of my "walk-out" sessions. As much as i love my korean dramas, i hate them(drama) in real life. My sisters and I are pretty much the same. We shout, curse the high heavens at each other, then we're okay 5 minutes later. Not that we actually faced the current issue at hand, goodness no. We just do what we do best. Push it aside and move on. No use talking about our "issues". We are the oldest dogs around, and we definitely can't learn new tricks. Do we blame our parents for our behavior? I can't speak for my sisters, but I do. I do blame them, particularly my mother. It's hard to change when you've been trained to react a certain way for 23 years. ( i subtracted 7 years, or until i had actual memories stored. I would like to think i wasn't born this way, and that ignorance is bliss)

I may not have realized it before, but I am my mother's daughter. Not in the sense that we are alike (or maybe we are) but, I turned out this way because of her. My mother takes the Bee of all Drama Queens. Do you know how many times she has threatened to run away from our home? ( I don't, i've lost count) Well, i can count the time when she actually made it past our gate and into our neighbor's house. (Once). I remember one time, my sisters and i were all watching TV in our room, then our father walks in. "maglalayas na naman daw yung mommy mo", he says. My sisters and I just looked at each other, then continued watching TV. Then my sister speaks up "Who is she kidding. As if magcocommute sya". I think my contribution to this conversation was something like "Ihatid mo daw sya daddy sa pupuntahan nya hehe". We may seem like kids spawned from hell but when your mother is prone to hysterics and drama.. the line becomes fuzzy between a REAL issue versus a petty one. And so, I have turned up allergic to conflict. And at times, insensitive. I have been in situations where I was like "Oh, that were real tears?" or "ahh, galit ka pala saken?" or "Did I just stomp all over your guts and puked on them?"

Poor raymond. He gets the brunt of my bad behavior. (I don't even want to imagine how my respective sister's spouses handle them). My raymond who is the complete opposite of me (emotionally). He's the "let's talk about it guy". One time, we were in the middle of fighting and I was stubbornly still washing the dishes while he tried to talk to me. He said "Could you quit what you're doing and start talking to me!" and I was like "Haven't you heard of multi-tasking!?". poor hubby *hugs*.

Growing up, I made a mental list of stuff I wouldn't be once I become a mother. How i wish, I made an ACTUAL list so i can still remember the specifics.. now, Dear Blog, i will post as much as I can remember, so when I'm at wits end raising 2 teenage boys, I go back to this list and read what I wrote when my biggest worry was only whether my children pooped today or not.

Dear future geri,

please don't be a hypocrite. case in point: My mom, dad and I had a recent conversation over the perils of showbiz relationships.. about KC and Piolo of all things. Dad said "pumatol pa siya eh may anak na". Mom said "siya naman lalake eh". I didn't understand this at all and asked what she meant. She said since si Piolo naman daw ang lalake, okay lang na sya ang may anak. Kaysa naman daw yung babae ang may anak tapos papatulan pa. ("Huh!?") I couldn't help myself, I told my mother.. "Don't be a hypocrite" and she said "Paano ako naging hypocrite." I said: "so kung may pamangkin kang babae, tapos ang boyfriend eh meh anak na, okay lang sayo kasi lalake naman sya?". She said: "syempre hindi, iba naman yun, showbiz ang pinaguusapan natin." I said: "yeah, mom.. that's the definition of a hypocrite".

please say sorry to your children when you're at fault. my mom and I, in our EPIC fight (where it started with her saying "kahit gusto kitang isuka, hindi kita masuka kasi anak kita").. I was just the most evil of all daughters.. i talked back to my mother, MUCH MUCH more than my usual talking back. (that says a lot) I had a line to her that goes.. "yeah, of course you're not sorry. You're perfect. You've never been wrong, You've never had to apologize for anything". So Dear Future geri, know when you've wronged your children. You're human, you can commit mistakes. and you should know how to say sorry.

please work. don't stay at home your whole married life taking care of the children. don't have a midlife crisis and start looking for a "job" at 50. just work now, so at 50 you'll enjoy the pleasures of staying at home.. and not the other way around when you'll think that staying at home is boring and you've come to realize that you're completely dependent on your husband.

Please be affectionate to your husband and children. Shower them with hugs and kisses. Tell them you love them. Everyday, on the phone, before you go to sleep. Tell them how much you mean to them. and don't be afraid to demand them to tell you how much YOU mean to THEM.

*sighs* that's all I can remember for now. Of course i don't blame ALL of my bad behavior on my parents. (yeah, my dad too. we got it from him, the 'emotionally stunted' part. we can be DENSE) I'm an adult, I would like to think that I have control of my life, hence, my attitude. I have tried to change my ways. sometimes I can crush my first instinct.. sometimes i fail. But just realizing this makes me want to try harder.. My mom doesn't even tip the scale of the worst-mothers-out-there book, not by a long shot. I probably took a lot of her goodness too. So I am my mother's daughter, both the good, and the bad.