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My mom's family is huge and since she's too young to take care of me, she had to leave me with my grandparents' so she could join my soldier father's deployed areas elsewhere in the Philippines.
Growing up with Extended family is quite fun. I got to play with cousins, aunties, uncles, grandparents and neighbours. But there was also a downside of it. You would have to deal with their unending demand to help and to do this and that. Point here and there.
This tiny me managed to help my grandparents at a very young age. My grandma and some of her children are quite famous for selling homemade delicacies and they're known for that in the neighbourhood.
I can't remember exactly how many people had lived in that 2-storey house but it's quite a lot of families. And among all of the cousins, I think I'm the easiest to be called out to do things for them.
I had to wake up early to clean the surroundings, help my grandma wash the buckets and containers of clothes, as well as going out with another cousin to sell the delicacies house to house in the neighbourhood.
I was working from Mondays to Saturdays sell in the neighbourhood before going to school. I had to go to the market and helped my aunt with her small shop selling cooked foods and snacks every Sunday.
Do I hate them? NO. Because it taught me to be who I am now. A strong and hardworking lady.
If there's nothing to do, I got to play with other kids in the field and even adults would join us the fun!
I remembered that we'd sometimes sneaked out of school to go swim in the river. Haha!
Yesteryears are more fun when you get to work your ass off and I don't know if I remember getting tired. But it's more fun than the digital kids these days. We got to play slipper games, Patintero, and Chinese garters like the videos below. Note: I don't own the videos but I thought it's worth sharing for visuals.
Cousins and neighbours got together for Christmas carolling, Christmas, New Year, Fiestas celebration and a lot more.
There is the dark side of each story and mine may not be different from some of the people out there.
I was young, naive, innocent and ignorant so are my younger cousins.
I don't know where my male cousins learned those things but they did what they did. I just followed what they asked me to do and when I realized it now, that's actually considered child sexual abused.
I don't know if they learned that thing from the adults, I have no clue but I felt terrible and disgusting when I think about it. Somehow I hated the thought of being one of the victims of a child abused.
My father had no clue that I was a victim too but I can't tell him. Why? I remembered confronting my Dad during our heart to heart talk about why he did what he did to my mom when she's too young. I think it's gonna be pointless for me to do that and he's already old. So, let's just say let bygones be bygones but not really because it had a tremendous effect on me.
Yes, I'm a victim. My mom is a victim. Probably, my grandmas, aunties, other female cousins, female neighbours are all victims of sexual abused too. But none of us, none of them talked about it.
I should have joined the #metoo movement right? But I didn't.
I thought sexual abuse is only from yesteryears but I was wrong, there are more cases these days and that's really disgusting.
Do I hate the abusers? Yes and No.
Yes: Because they made me their sample experiment and I hated that. When I think about it, it just disgusts me.
No: Because they're innocent like me and for sure they're clueless on why they did what they did.
I hope we all realized that we did something wrong and that we should repent and I wish them all peace of mind and happy family.
If you're a victim like me whose keeping silence, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
