Losing Hope

Youngblood : If only

Renee Margarita P.
Inquirer News Service

WHEN you're down, they say, you have nowhere to go but up. Yet I feel otherwise. Yesterday I went down and now I have sunk deeper and deeper, as if the pit I fell into wasn't deep enough to swallow me alive. I am 27, jobless and penniless, with nowhere to go.

At 20, I felt I had it all. Just days after graduating from college, I landed a job in one of the biggest multinational companies. A few months later, I owned a sleek black car with my name on the plate.

I was the daughter for whom all the other moms envied my Mom. I was smart. I never gave my Mom any problems when I was growing up. I had a few boyfriends but never did anything that would put our family to shame. The first boy I had a relationship with was very decent. I never broke my curfew and I never failed to give my parents a gold medal every recognition day or graduation day. Vacations were always spent with family. Even if we had maids, I always did my share in keeping our house in order.

I was the idol of my two siblings and I was a model to all my peers when almost every girl my age was getting pregnant. When I got my first paycheck, I took my Mom and my siblings shopping. Months later, I was proudly giving big gifts to my parents and paying the tuition of my siblings and giving them generous allowances. In short, I was everything a good daughter could be.

So how did I end up broke and unhappy? I met a guy when I was 24 and, for the first time in my life, I stopped thinking. Then I shamelessly put aside my family and thought only of myself.

When I got big incentive bonuses for marketing programs I had put together, I would buy tickets for my beau and me and we would fly off somewhere. I thought I didn't have to feel guilty because, for four years, I had given away my income to my family. It was time for me to enjoy.

There were years when I would go home only on Christmas Day with a pair of jeans or a shirt for my siblings just so I could say I had given them gifts -- a far cry from all the well thought-out gifts I had given them in the past. I used to spend a lot of time choosing their gifts, and they told me they always looked forward to getting them. I loved them so much and I wanted to see their happy faces every time they opened the packages. But when my boyfriend became the center of my life, I stopped being a good daughter or sister.

Now when I look back, I realize that during the years I was sharing all I had with them, I was not doing it for love. I showered them with generosity only so that they could be proud of me. When one gives out of love, one doesn't get tired doing it at all.

Two weeks ago, because of my wrong priorities and because of my selfishness, I lost everything. My boss and I had a fight, and I quit my job. The only thing I had left in the world was my job, and I threw it away.

Now I have nothing. My bank account is empty and the telecommunications company and the credit card companies are threatening to sue me. Without my glamorous job, without my car, I am nothing. I have alienated myself from my siblings. All I feel now is regret, regret that I didn't value the people who mattered: the members of my family. I also regret that I didn't save when I was earning a lot. I lived for the moment without thinking of the future.

Do I still have hope? I don't know. I feel so tired. I wish I were just imagining things. I wish that when I wake up tomorrow I would be 24 once more.

Renee Margarita P., 27, used to be a product planning manager of a leading pharmaceutical firm.