Chapter 2 - The Guilt

I started to sin about the time I turned twelve. I believe it was twelve, that was the time where I stopped going to school, although it could have been earlier, but twelve or so is about the age a boy starts to sin, so I am sure it was in there somewhere. I don't know when girls begin to sin, but I believe they do life much softer by their very nature and so need less of run things.

I sinned only in bits at first— small lies, little inconsistencies to teachers about homeworks and that sort of thing, I learned the craft well, telling my Mom I broke the umbrella she gave me a while ago because of a dog and so I tried to protect myself using that, but infact, I did broke it because I was playing it's handle to drag into the ground and ended it getting split apart. In my fifth grade I also remember the deceptives as well, never look in my teacher in the eye everytime she scold me, always speaking breakneck, from the diaphragm, never fable about the business deception.

"What's gotten into your head and throw those rocks in your classmate's head?!"

"I lost it."

"What do you mean you lost it? why did you throw such dangerous thing on the other side?! look what you've done!"

Yes, I accidentally throw the rock to the side of a crosswalk while my classmate was doing a backflip and hit it into his head. It was puring blood, a lots of blood. The rock was too big so I wouldn't expect it will cross to the other pedestrian walks, but it did, and it hit onto his head. That was probably my first time I got into a principal's office, I was frightened, horrified, and shocked, shocked that I can able to throw those big rock to the other side of the pedestrian walks. Luckily, the principal was not there for some sort of agenda, and I ended up being lectured by my advisor. I still remember the craft very well, always be self-deprecating, always be grateful when she calms her head and get tired of scolding, always be dramatic, and try not to use;

"I won't do it again."

They are so sensitive to that lines. Probably because they were sick of hearing that kind of apology every school year? or probably because I will still do other dumb things so it's kind of ironic to them?

I also used a great deal of cusswords, when I was on fifth grade. Not those churchly cusswords— dang and darnit, dagnabit and frickin' — but big, robust cusswords like the ones they use in PG movies. The one that guys would say only to each other. Cusswords are pure ecstasy when you are twelve, buzzing in the mouth like a battery on the tongue. My best friend at the time, Rex John, and I would walk home from school, stopping at some trees that we can find it cool to hangout with. He used to made fun of my classmate Karyl, because her last name was Catapusan. It took me a year to understand why the name Catapusan was so funny.

In daytime we used to beg the bakery near our boarding house to give us some toast or leftover bread because the money that my mother gave was already banged-up by playing video games in the internet. At night, we used to knock on houses to ask if they have garbages that we can throw it for them in exchange of money. This, to me, is a kind of job which you can be proud of when you were a kid. The taste of getting a money that your body worked out. Its not easy as what others will think, everytime we always turn left and right to check if the curfew was there and immediately throw those garbages and run like a wild men in the town.

There's a moment that we can't find any houses that we can offer a job with those garbages of them, my mom always told me about this kind of situation;

"There's sometimes a high tide and a low tide."

That was when there are times when she can't give us some money so I can't play video games, the only thing that left us is those peeved boarding house that we are living, that we can almost swim because of those rocket holes during raining season. The next day I decided to go to my mother's work, of course, to beg some money that I can use to play videogames in the internet cafe. I was gonna give her a surprise, but it doesn't really flow out that easily, as I crawl near into her window, I can hear her crying and arguing with her boss, I don't really know the exact start and pinpoint of their argument but lastly her boss told her something that, me too, I can't forget in my entire life;

"You will never be on a situation that you are right now and your kids without me."

The only words that my mother can talk back to those lines of her is that she's working hard in order to get the money, where, in fact, it's too obvious actually. But it's not, I wanted to tell her to fight back and bad-mouth those boss of her even if it will cost her to get fired by the end of the day. I wanted to tell her how cusswords melt patience of someone, but I couldn't, in the end, I ran and go back home.

All of this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from other planet, telling me there is a right and wrong in the universe. My life had become something to hide; there were pain and secrets in it. My thoughts were private thoughts, my sharp tongue, a weapon to protect the ugly me. I would lock my self in my room, isolating myself from my brother and my mother, not often do any sort of sinning, but simply because I had become a creature of odd secrecy. This is where my early ideas about Adult come into play, and that I wanted to change.