If I had to choose a personal issue, that I have dealt with at various points in my life I would have chosen several things. But right now, something that seems to recur throughout my life would be stress; to me, it’s a word that many take lightly and for many years I have taken it lightly as well. Before I would say it was just something my older sister said now and then but while growing up the meaning of stress became much more apparent. I would call stress: “unnecessary hassles caused by those around me”. Every day would be a balancing of homework, chores, being the obedient child, keeping the broken family together, and sometimes, maybe doing the things I want to do.

Despite what friends and family think my actions of being the good kid that got things done was not an act of my own; much of the time I felt as though I had to. With the pressures of living up to my older sister, she was rising the ranks becoming a 1% in the field of molecular biology. The idea that I would be making trouble in an already chaotic household was reason enough that my childhood self stayed so silent. Along with the thought of losing more family than my young grandparent-less self already had. Nowadays I am not sure how it all ended like this; sometimes it’s hard to see my family as a family anymore. I try my best to keep the family stable but I wonder what stable really is. My sister says our parents are the reason she feels so unstable, tired, restless, and stressed. As the first child to a family like ours, she saw the domino effect of our parents' marriage slowly fall before her, and now constantly has to deal with the aftermath of its destruction. Each parent profusely yelling or passively aggressively hit her through text messages. When I think about our parents my mind drifts to an anti-bullying ad shown at school. It said “a large percentage of bullying happens because the people doing them were hurt by someone else”, as a kid I held these words close to me and now I believe that the same idea can be applied to my parents. 

My dad had an alcoholic father, because of that he was raised catholic which he grew to hate. He learned and spoke teachings that he thought were bogus and lies. So the moment he found Christianity a much more open version of catholicism, he changed, or at the very least said he had. From a child’s point of view, he turned oppressive and verbally aggressive towards us when we didn’t do something like want to go to church for the 11th week in a row. As time went on his outgoing beliefs became his life. Or it has been, he once told me a story of a woman who loved him back in high school. He loved her and was even planning on marrying her, but one day she did something that was so-called non-christian. By smoking a cigarette with some friends before she was legally allowed to. My dad broke up with her and the world just moved on till a few years later, she came up knocking on his door with chocolates and flowers in hand. She apologized, saying she hadn’t touched a cigarette since the day he left her. Instead of my dad accepting he said: “no, once you break a rule like this how could I trust you again”. The story he told me was the embodiment of his flawed ideas. Sometimes I wonder if he believes in a true second chance. Even now he strives for perfection worthy of heaven, but he doesn't realize the things he is breaking on his way there. He made worship his life but left a broken son who hasn’t said a word to him in years. Another son who still strives to become worthy of heaven on his own right, a daughter forced upon all his dreams, and a girl still afraid to grow up. Two wives who hate to say his name, and all that’s left is me, a boy with the same name, made to be the perfect porcelain doll who never broke a word he said.

To me, he said things like “they aren’t worthy of the grace of God as you and I, my son.” to only me he says that I haven’t broken his “laws”, when I never spoke up, never talked back and questioned god. He judges those on if they follow his word or not, blocking those out that are trying to tell him right from wrong like they are broken, and that is why I'm the only one left. So now I travel every weekend to visit him. Try my best to help and be a caring son because being silent you know how afraid you are of loneliness. I don’t think I’m caring enough to say I went there for his sake, I might have been at first but these days I go because the other household is full of too many problems. With my more rebellious sister going out, starting problems with boys and work mixed with my mother making random plans, assigning me tasks while trying to keep her straight.

As for my mother, I can understand her reasons. Before my dad, she was just a young town girl, living on the Islands of the Philippines, as many she started without much, a few coins if even to pay for food. She studied and worked hard but the moment she met my dad was her downfall. She was in awe of seeing a white man for the first time but was still polite as the oldest on the female side of the family. So when a rich white man offered his hand in marriage to my mom, a young lady who was trying to help her parents pay for her younger sisters and brothers to go off to school, it’s no wonder she accepted. To feel a sense of relief after years of being the best is a feeling we all want to feel. When she said yes, I don’t think she was expecting the next 20 years to be full of arguments and dread. Not everything is so easy, if it were why would our lives be so sad? 

I don’t blame my parents for what has happened, for the fact I can barely reach deadlines for school, but it’s hard not to find anything else, everyday I feel like I’m losing control. So, I walk out every weekend. Trying to live out a fantasy, of making sure the tumbling bridge of a family does not collapse. But I don’t think It’s enough that we will surely fall. To me stress was built on the base of my broken parents, my mom gave up her life of peace just to get a feeling of relief, my dad blinded himself from what he really thinks, and now we all strive to be perfect, rising out of our broken dreams, and tumbling over our own words. So when I spend so much time with a man who calls me son, a man that can’t even look me in the eye anymore. I cannot tell if I am the same kid I once was that thought stress was just an on and off of mental pain. Because now I think that stress is an everbearing pain that just stacks until you fall. Until the bridge falls, when will I know I’m falling too?