Chapter 5 – “No Huge Changes”

After our father left us, there were only four of us. From that day on, my mother stopped mentioning about my father, he who brought hardship on her. In her eyes, she only saw a selfish man that only cared for himself. My older brother on the other hand also held grudges against my father because of all the punishment that he received in the past. For me and my sister, it seems like our father just disappeared out of thin air. It was so fast that we even forgot how it was to have one in the first place. At a young age, life did not seem that bad at all even though we lacked money and were below average standard. Our mother made it seem like that. We always got food on our plates and unlike other kids, we also got the freedom to do whatever we wanted. This was not because our mother lets us do so, but because it was difficult to control us. Sleeping time was at 10 pm, we slept at midnight. Most of the parents would only let their children stay outside until 8 pm, but we stayed until 10 pm. We were quite rebellious.

Even though our father was not there for us, we still had relatives living in the same city. We used to hang out with our relatives that were the same age as us and met up quite often through family dinners. The adults were usually gathering up to talk while the kids were playing Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2 on Super Nintendo. We also used to pretend that we were in the movie Starship Troopers. My uncle would pretend to be Rico while all of us were his soldiers answering to his command. I remembered that we were yelling out “Yes, sir. Yes, sir” like in the movie whenever he said, “Is that understood?”. Those were fun times.

To be continued...