UNWANTED MOTHER

My mother is the most annoying person in the world.

I bet you yourself will not survive even a day in the same house with her and I am 100% sure my father will agree.

She is such a dork.

She is a control freak especially when it comes to money.

If you accidentally spill a teaspoon of powdered milk, she will nag you about the price of powdered milk the whole day.

If she gives you seventy pesos for transportation allowance, you have to tell her how you spent it up to the last peso. So if you happen to think spending the extra two pesos on cigarette is okay, think again. With her you are obliged to return the change.

So if for some reasons you got in on a wrong bus and have to ride again without getting your money back, be prepared for a whole day of nagging. You are lucky if you come home late because you will be able to sleep for a while. By then you will have enough strength to listen to a whole day of nagging the next morning.

She has this talent of making you feel guilty for things that are not within your control.

Like if you are washing the dishes and she asks you to pick up dirt on the floor -

If you stop doing the dishes to clean the floor, she will get mad at you for not washing the dishes right away. "I told you not to leave anything on the sink!" then she gets angry at you the whole day.

If you continue doing the dishes and postpone the cleaning of the floor, she will accuse you of ignoring her even if you explain to her you will pick up the dirt after you are done with the dishes. "You have no respect for me!" then she gets angry at you the whole day.

No, she does not have alzheimer's.

She also makes you feel guilty for things that normally makes a person feel good like - food and "looking good."

She will cook ulam good for twenty persons then she will stuck everything in the refrigerator and make it last for one or two weeks. This way she can save on the gasul and the tricycle fare bringing it home. She makes sure you only get little ulam like a piece of galunggong every meal. If you happen to be really hungry and ask for a second one she will accuse you of gluttony.

If you let a friend eat in the house, she will tell you "why can't your friend bring his own food?" My brother hated her for hiding food on shoeboxes.

Highschool time was the worse. Every girl on that age wanted to look pretty to attract friends and boys. How can you do that if you are always dressed like a boy!

Yes, she hardly buys me any dress, she makes me wear my brother's old clothes!

And I never get used to applying lotions and anti acne creams because she says it's not within our budget.

I had a feeling she's making me look ugly intentionally.

She always tells me looks are never important - because if you are pretty, boys will only try to fuck you in highschool then end up marrying a virgin ten years later because they look down on women who started fucking at fourteen.

I was never close to my brother and father but I have always been one of the boys - Sadly my mother does not believe in that..

That's why I'm forced to be with girls who does not like me either because we don't share the same interests.

I'm forced to sit in a room full of girls who loved talking about shallow stuff like shopping and who's dating who. I hated waiting for them outside the girl's restroom- waiting for them to finish doing the perfect pony tail only to remove it shortly and get inside the restroom again to comb it for a another quarter of an hour! Damn I hate girls!

But they are the only ones I'm allowed to be friends with.

If I go somewhere that interests me, my mother will accuse me of doing that only to attract boys. She doesn't want me in the billiard hall; or out in the house playing chess with the neighborhood tambays; or watch a really good rock or metal band.

She says women should stay home and do all the housework. I find it so unfair she does not allow me to do the things really i want because she thinks I cannot do it.

She does not believe I am a writer.
She does not actually believe I can play keyboards in a rock band.
She thinks my singing, dancing and acting is not good enough
She even thinks my english is also not good enough so therefore instead of wasting car fare applying in call centers, I should start work as a sales lady in the nearest SM department store even if I am a college graduate.

She does not believe in anything I tell her I can do.

She would rather have me stay home and do housework.

She is very strict and unsupportive with the things I like.

I really hate her ways.

But her students love her.

Valentine's Day, Teacher's Day, Mother's day, Christmas, Graduation - She always come home with a big bag full of gifts from her students. I am also very happy during these days because most of the gifts end up being given to me. This is the only chance my mother have to give me gifts because she cannot really afford to buy me any.

Yes. She is an underpaid highschool teacher.

She may be the most annoying mother, but she is the best teacher in the world, not only inside but outside school as well.

She may be a micer but it is only because she wants to make sure she can send us in a good school because she does not want us to experience what she has been through.

It's a shame I complain about not having money to buy lotion because during her years they don't even eat three times a day. They can't afford even a toothbrush, so she lost most of her teeth in her teenage years and she was very sad about that.. Like me, she does not have nice clothes too.

But if there is anyone more exposed to discrimnation and not having enough riches to buy friends, it was her because they were so poor. They live in a squatter's area. Clearly, she is not a happy teenager herself.

But she worked very hard to get out of there just in time for us not to experience it anymore.

She made sure we are well read. She borrows magazines and books for us to read. A newspaper daily is not within our budget so she only buys it on sunday and borrows the rest of the week's broadsheet from the library every saturday.

Her being a control freak made me very good in whatever work i get into because I finish every work faster than anyone else, while most other employees are laid back wasting company time or making petiks. I do that not because I am afraid of my boss but because I have been used to working that way. I am also very good on making the most of limited resources. I have a very good mentor on quality control and she is my mother.

She may be unsupportive of the things I like but actually she is just trying to protect me from this sick sad unfair world.

She does not want me to experience rejection so she always suggest that I apply on jobs where i am over qualified. (Obviously, I never followed her advice)

She discourages me from making friends with rich people because she thinks most of them have a low opinion of people from our class so chances are we will only be used.

She assures me I am beautiful and i sing better than the ones we see on TV but no one will give me a chance, because we do not have prominent political or showbiz friends who can help me succeed or atleast protect me from abuse.

She may be a negative thinker but she is correct most of the time and she is only doing so because she does not want me to fall from great expectations because life is not a fairy tale.

She may have made me feel inferior from all the rest but because of this hard truth that she shared with me at a very young age, it made me work harder to be where I am right now.

Not everyone may agree but I learned this fact the easy way.

You do not measure a mother's worth by how much she is loved.

You will only know how well she did her job by measuring how much she is not needed anymore.

My mother has transformed me into a very strong and independent woman.

I don't need her anymore,

I fact I don't really need to win this contest. I can afford to buy her anything she wants, she's not so hard to please..

..but publishing this article will mean a lot to her.. it will let her know how much i love her and it's not every day i get a chance to express it..

and this is the only way i can convince her i can actually write. She still does not believe in my skills up to this very moment but i don't mind having her as a critic. Besides, she made me strong enough not to care.

I love you nay c",)