Matandang Dalaga

Growing up, my parents pounded the idea that I should strive to buy my own house as early as possible. It's the best investment I can ever make, they said. I can end up jobless and afford nothing but a darn NFA rice, water and salt but at least I know I won't be homeless. I took their advice. Two years after graduating, I made a downpayment to a house and lot. It took me 10 years to pay it off. It's 160 sq m in a low cost housing subdivisio. When I bought the house, I was earning Php 16,000 a month. Php13,000 went to the house. I couldn't even afford to have dinner. I'm freakin' serious, I was eating twice a day. Once a day if I need to spend on something. A nice park was 15 minutes away from my house, I couldn't event afford to get it, gaddumit.

I remember reading a book by Dale Carnegie titled How to Win Friends and Influence People. One of the things the most important tip I got from that book is to understand how people has the innate need to feel important. People, he said, go through life looking for validation. One way to make them like you is to give them exactly what they want, the feeling of importance. Then there's that movie, Devil's Advocate, when Al Pacino's character said that vanity is his favorite sin. It has since been stuck in my mind. People like feeling important, they like looking good, they like people paying attention to them, and they like being validated. It's probably why most people get married. People always need to feel they matter. A marriage is that, an assurance that someone promises that you will matter, that whatever you do, it matters to that someone... an assurance that no matter what happens in the future, someone will be there with you. 

 I was a job hopper. I didn’t stay for more than two years in my younger days. I worked for the former President, then for a TV station, then for a non-profit organization, then for a school, and then for a mobile content provider. I finally made a long stop in an advertising agency. I was in the Account Management department for more than five years handling high-profile clients. I enjoyed the people I worked with but I hated the job. I was surrounded with bosses who stuck their claw in every high profile project even if they didn’t have anything to do with it. Day in and day out, the bosses kissed the asses of clients who were also just kissing the asses of their bosses. We weren’t in the bottom of the food chain but we were pretty low, low enough that we needed to make ourselves believe we were doing something important in the interest of keeping ourselves sane.

I have to have children. Otherwise, no one will take care of me when I grow old.  That's right. People should have children so that they'll have someone to take care of them when they grow old because children are born to become their parents' caregivers gaddamit. But of course I can't tell my parents that whenever they remind me that I need to have children or grow old alone and sick with nothing but effin' YouTube and pirated DVDs to keep me company lest they will think I will not take care of them when they grow old and get sick.

One thing I realized after being single (not married) for more than three decades is that there is no one else that is harder to live with than myself. At night, when everyone else is gone, it's just me and my evil conscience talking with each other. It is now just a matter of whether or not my evil conscience can deal with the choices I made the whole day. God knows there were many nights when my evil conscience almost gave up on me, disgusted at the situations I put myself into, revolted that the decisions I've made. Most of the time, those revolting decisions involved men and relationships. I've done things or allowed things to happen without really thinking about how it will affect me in the future or how it will make me feel when the relationship is over and I'm over the guy.

We’ve all heard it before, how money shouldn’t be an issue in relationship. Love is supposed to conquer all and it is also supposed to be enough of a reason for two people to continue working it out. It is not hard to believe. There are many couples who really started out with nothing and ended up with more than most at some point in their life. There’s Manny and Jinkee Pacquiao who had to shack up with their in-laws for several years before Pacman started hitting it big. I know a female TV producer who is married to a doctor. She was the provider for more than a decade until her husband became a specialist. It is only recently that the tables have turned in their household. My female cousin was already earning a 6-figure salary when she met her now husband who was then barely making 20,000.