UNTITLED

UNEDITED SAMPLE LITERARY ARTICLE
By Francesca Gabrielle Rodriguez Trinidad
IV - Albert Einstein


Family. What is it with the word? As I glanced the dictionary and searched - a family is parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not, and I thought to myself - what a shallow definition.

I don't know if you had been through what I have with my family. Have you been slapped at the face and shouted at as if you were a total stranger who had ticked her off because she was simply in a bad mood? Were you left by your father and then got the chance to see him for the very first time, lying in his coffin? Have you ever felt like you were doing the best that you could with your family's well-being in mind, but then just like any other time, you were confronted because your parents thought it was wrong without even being asked for the reason why you did such an action? I have.

Day after day I would arrive the house with either the sight of my mother totally mad or with the where-have-you-been look. After half-explaining myself (I often don't finish my explanations since my mother considers them as lame excuses), my mom would shout, shout and shout at me while bombarding thousands of questions. Where were you? Why did you come home so late? Why didn't you call? Who were you with? It is so ironic. I live near school and still, my mom will not understand why I come home at a late hour. If you try explaining to her, she'll ask a trail of questions after. I don't know what it is with her, her impatience and her nagging.

My brother, the perfect picture of a total suck up, would be the apprentice of my mother. My mom would normally ask him to go to my school to check if I really was there and doing the project for English or performing for the speech choir in Filipino. My mom was a total skeptic, and my brother was the investigator.

My step dad is the only patient one in the family. He can calm me and my mom down whenever we have those heated arguments, the only problem is, he is hardly around. We still get to talk though, but most of the time, it was during those days when I got into a fight with mom and he would try to fix things.

With this combination in the family, it is hard to envision a sort of perfect family life. I never really expected perfect though, but I have always envied my friends. Their parents would always allow them to go to places which I could only dream of – Star City for example. If I told my parents I would spend a day there with my friends, they would act as if I were going to Alabama to run off with some lunatic. I don't really understand the reason why they are so protective.

All I know is that, my family isn't really what I want it to be right now. IMPATIENT, CLOSE-MINDED AND OVERPROTECTIVE. Sometimes I wish that I'd be free of them for just one day, just one day would be enough.