A Maladaptive Juvenile's Memoir

Against Acrimony of a Tenebrous Episode

A memoir

I arrived a little late and the people now are standing as they sang Lord have mercy. I started climbing the round staircase that stood just beside the stand for the holy water. As I elevated further from the ground by the steps that I took, I can hear the echoing voices by the choir. As I finally entered the door of the porch meant for the church choir, it took me a while to adjust from the light.
I greeted everyone with a slight bow as a sign of respect although we usually greet each other verbally but speaking will be useless with all their voices booming. They returned the greeting by smiling as they sang. I threw a glance to my peers who were in the same grade as I am however, happened to be my seniors in this singing group as they joined way before they even had their beards growing. It's been almost 8 months since I first got in by an impromptu invitation from the choirmaster. It's not that I was a talented songstress to have been recruited in an instant but it was actually because they were falling short of new members who would eventually carry the task.
For the past months, I got used to different presences that goes by different ages that sat along us in the three-step riser. From the old folks that always sang with their vibratos in almost every sustained note to my energetic young-adult colleagues to the elementary kids that sat with us because their parents who happened to be the senior members can't leave them down with the rest of the crowd to the choirmaster's little baby that the adults had on their lap every time they had the chance during the mass.
Furthermore, for the past 8 months, I still didn't know the names of most of the members. I'm utterly clueless on how to address them since I was never proficient in socializing. I easily forget names, even faces that I just encountered and it's lucky if I get to familiarize myself fully with names in just three times of asking but it never almost happened. I just suck with names but I also mess up when I try to deal with people too.
I am not a home person and played outside a lot with other kids until I reached adolescence and it was like that ever since. Even at home, I don't really mingle and talk with my relatives and vice versa unless we got a good thing to discuss over. Proximately, one of the reasons why I only have few friends to recall is that most us my relatives have the same feel-free-to-talk-to-me-if-you-need-something-but-don't-disturb-me-when-you-don't or leave-me-alone-if-you-don't-want-trouble attitude. I never treated my elders like they were my peers (except for my mother. We argue a lot but we also get along with few stuff so I get to talk to her casually at times) since I was taught that younger ones need to set limits and mind our respect when we speak to them by addressing them properly which is why I always hated when anyone younger than me who doesn't do so.
It was almost the usual scenario amongst us however the present and the previous week was somehow a little bothering---not exactly seriously bothering but a little peculiar probably because I can't even help but to notice a kid whom I guessed to be aged around 7 to 8--- I don't really know.
His presence stood out one, because he was the only one who sang out of tune. Our choir, had an air of prestige around it. Among all the choirs that alternately serves the mass, it's the one that rarely messes up, at least not with the songs that we sang almost all of the time. We do mess up but with the songs that we just learned for perfect attendance during rehearsals is almost impossible knowing that the each of the adults have personal businesses and commitments all throughout the week. Connection is the ticket in becoming a member after that, talent, the reason why I can't help but to smile at the boy who sang without helping but to rudely create his own rendition of Glory. Second is in contrast to other kids, he wasn't a relative of any of us at all. He had the absolute guts to climb the staircase and mingle with us casually unlike others who gets intimidated to join us.
I took a glance at the boy's round face. He had the usual native fillipino moreno skin-tone and wore a pair of baggy clothes, a loose polo shirt and khaki shorts. Asked about the whereabouts of his mother or anyone who went with him in attending the mass, he told us that his mother sat down somewhere among the plenty fuses that I unconsciously doubted. Who on earth won't wonder where her kid went and wouldn't bother to look for her kid who disappeared from time to time during the ceremony unless her kid is a troublesome confused moody teenager who was just pulled by his or her mom to attend the sunday obligation?
It's still fresh in my memory and I can still remember how our adults gently had a word with him after he took part of the communion which---he wasn't supposed to, at least yet. T'is the third thing that made me grow conscious of his presence.
The kid seems to be pretty confused why the adults want him to refrain from partaking the eucharist which according to them due to him being not ready. To his defense, he narrated that he already had his first communion however, we doubted that since we noticed the manner how he received the eucharist. He pulled out his hands and extended his palms right over left towards the minister, which is apparently incorrect and somehow, spokenly inappropriate since kids who just received their first communion are taught that they should receive it by mouth. Even to this day, with my age just reaching 18 a month ago, I'm still receiving the unleavened sanctified bread with my mouth. The adults didn't buy his words, there's just too much contradiction.
The adults gave up and turned a blind eye when he did it the second time around. Maybe it also because they became soft when he innocently said, "God is in my heart now" after praying on his knees. That simple sentence also made me question myself, how much do I long for God? How strong is my faith? To how much extent am I willing to go through for Him? Yes, he was a kid but that kid made a 18 year-old like myself question a big part of my catholic identity. Why am this weak?
I never remembered myself being a regular patron of sunday masses during my childhood. It was a rare occasion to find myself and both of my father and mother come to mass together. I was clueless on what should I do in masses unless it was taught in school however, it's not that my family isn't a home for faithful or diligent catholics rather in fact, my mother prays a lot for the intercession of the blessed mother using the beads and my father is just too stuck up to the responsibility of feeding us and making a living by driving the tricycle.
I do pray but in the past, my religion and its senescent ceremonies, propriety, and decorums were strangers to me. Ignorant to the doctrine yes I was for I honestly didn't really felt the need to be aware of it and that I regret.
2015, 2016, 2017. For three years, I was utterly silently grieving. Having lost my best friend on the first mentioned year, my cousin and two of my uncles on the second, another uncle and another cousin of the third. It was painful that sometimes you don't know where will you place your melancholy. It was excruciating for me but it must be several folds more for the rest of the family.
It hurts even more when you witness them grieving in secrecy. No one mentioned anything almost like speaking about our losses were unspokenly taboos however, it always shows. The fact that no ones dares to talk about it means sprinkling granules of table salt to open wounds. No one was fine enough at that point.
Their eyes showed everything, almost a painted canvass that projects all the tranquil mourning inside. Emotionally, being happy is no where near easy but faking it might do and that is almost always the case with everyone. We get reminded of who we are missing out the pettiest things from time to time and it was really hard for us to progress.
Seeing once vivacious houses, turn to silent ones, seeing my cousins long for their father, seeing their mother struggling to cope and play with two roles, seeing my aunts and grandmother missing their kids, seeing them trying to hide that part of them, seeing my best friend's mother teary-eyed when she narrates her dream of her son, seeing her smiling yet her smile stained with the hint of sadness and silent sorrow when she realized that we're near to grabbing our diploma, all tore and tears me apart. Pride, grudges, hate, unsettled businesses, time spent unwell are just few more burdens dwelling for us to bear. It didn't help at all, not in any way that I can imagine. Guilty, I guess our tears were never innocent, our tears' salinity is a mixture of sorry's and regret which the former is something we never got to deliver and the latter we might never redeem ourselves off.
The last 2 Christmas's that went by looked fine but it was translucently not in my sight. You normally spend the season with family but how should we keep it jolly then? The incompleteness was too deep and wide to fill in nor to keep subtly concealed and patched up.
It was just too much. However, others are clueless to its aftermath on me. I became paranoid. I became anxious. Day in, day out, every night I am restless. I am too sensitive and receptive to what the people around me are saying. I internally made big deals out of petty words that my love ones spoke, thinking that what if it's the last thing that they'll ever utter to me. What if I won't see them again?
I kiss my parents every night, my mom, every day when I leave home, when I arrive or even out of the blue, I do it. I spill random I love you's because I am too terrified that I can't do it again or that they won't hear it again from me. I was just too f******g scared that I am afraid of myself sometimes.
Am I still normal for crying out of a sudden because random ill ideas of tragedy flows inside of my head from time to time? Do you think I'm being shallow for crying in front of my ex love interest because I was so aghast from dreaming a coffin? There are times that I loose my consciousness when I'm physically awake because my mind starts to wonder off and think of the people I left at home. Can you blame me for being a paranoid coward though? I'm just f******g scared and f******g scarred. Whom shall I call for help?
At night I pray for the safety of those I love. I beg God everytime that may He cast His coat of protection over them and that they may be far from diseases. I pray for them mostly, almost never for myself although I should diligently be.
I sin, we all do but I have so much that almost no one knows about it, ultimately the reason why I am hesitant in using my palms in receiving the eucharist for it is shameful to do so when I sin using my hands. My sinful self gets pretty parallel against Sinclair, a strayed youth from Herman Hesse's book Demian.
However, my prayers for my family pushed me to eventually get closer to God and due what I believe was God-directed circumstances, I found myself singing in my choir, for the church-goers, and for God. I low-key longed for reconciliation with Him. It was only the way that I know for me to be able to make it up for what I thought was irreplaceable or what I thought was a large empty void.
I didn't notice at first but the Omnipotent had been there as my life went, goes and will go on. My anxieties might go on for who-knows-when but I entrust every thing to Him, to God. I might still end up being uneasy afterall, still struggle and panic without others knowing but I know I'm not alone and there's someone who will calm this heart whenever it needs to be.
My faith is weak with all honesty it is yes however the thing I learned is that Lord never gives up on us and never gives up on healing our scars and continuously comforts us from our fears.Seeing that kid made me question my faith to God but I believe that nothing will ever make God question Himself why does He have His unconditional love for us and none shall make Him doubt His faith on us that someday--- maybe someday, His lambs that went astray will come back to Him.