what i finally found

"My freedom and  my home". A souvenir photo from the Titanic Artifacts Exhibition, Las Vegas, Nevada

January 11, 2014 question is: "Today you lost ________"

Everyday it is getting tougher and tougher posting answers according to my 365 Q & A book. The challenge here is not knowing what a particular day holds for you to be able to prepare answers or posts in advance. You need to go through the day up to the end of it and answer the question the best you can. That is a little difficult considering how some questions are not particularly apt to the happenings of that day.

Take today's question for example, I don't have anything in particular that I lost today. I wish it was weight but no such luck. And I have not been losing in any of the Scrabble games I played these days with my husband and friends, just yet, either.

But thinking of what I lost today made me think of all that things I have lost in life. There was a point in my life when it felt like I already lost everything. I lost my first son, he died because of what they call "accident" inside the womb when he was 8 months old.

As if losing my first son was not enough just 2 months after that I lost my father, too. It was a really big blow for me because I had always been a "daddy's girl" and I knew how it felt like to be really loved because of him.

Then my mother died a few years after. Through all my trials she had always been my only support. It was only my mother who I know accepted me fully as I am at the time and will see after my welfare in genuine concern. It was tough losing her after having a lot of trials already. Even if I have 2 siblings, when our mother died never have I felt so alone. She used  to be my link to my brother and sister, when she died I felt alienated. I knew I already lost my family.

As if those were not heartache enough I have an ex-husband who had never been supportive. He never believed in me and my art. I had always been criticized because I could not measure up to how "great" his  mother is as a home-maker and mother for him. I know I've done a good job with my children nurturing them and guiding them with regards to the right values formation and direction in life but all he can see was the house that should have been as his mother kept it and the food the way his mother has always cooked it.

He never supported my career and stopped me from working. It is not as if what he was earning was enough to support even the basic family needs. It had always never been and if not for my very tight budgeting and seeking help from relatives and friends, my eldest daughter would not have been able to finish college and we were only paying half of the tuition fee since she was a consistent Dean's Lister at the time.

I lost my dreams, too. When I was a child, I just wanted a  happy home. I wanted  the ideal. That was why I never had a boyfriend before my ex-husband. I want the first to be the last. That was also the reason why I put up with being a stay-at-home mom and just doing a little freelance work. I want to keep the family - have a happy home.

But then the home was never happy with him in it. When things did not get his way, it will not matter whether it was Christmas or my birthday or any of the children's birthday, he will say derogatory and hurtful things not even connected to the point of argument and he doesn't care where we are and who heard it. He even threw things when he was angry. That was why I never bought another airpot again.

He even hurt people physically, too, at least me and my children. There was one time when he hit me with a squeegee mop handle around 8 or more times in front of my two daughters and the maid because I threatened to leave after he slapped me in front of them, too. When argument starts he always criticize my parents on how they raised me. He slapped me on the face the first time I answered back and said things about the way his parents brought him up, too. But I did not exaggerate, I just told him what I observed and what he even acknowledged before as true. He probably got offended when I said it in front of the maid and the children. And when he spoke about my parents they were all exaggerations and are mostly untrue and what makes it worse is the maid and my daughters were hearing them that was why I answered back.

After the mop hitting incident, instead of me leaving the house he left for a week but his parents contacted mine and my parents asked me to take him back for the children's sake because I don't have a job to support them all by myself. But then he was never sorry he did that to me. After that whenever there was an argument, he will say he will not work anymore end of discussion, he always won. And when ever I told him I will find a job, he kept saying that if I work he will stop. And he knew that if I start working again, it will be a lot lower than what he was getting and would all the more be not enough to support the family.

I felt I lost not only family but friends, too. Whenever I go out to visit  my parent's home when they were still alive which was about 1 to 1 1/2 hours commute time due to traffic. He always called my younger sister who used to live with my parents and asked her what time I will be home just when I got there and was just about to enter the house. So that kind of stopped me going there much because it was tiring and useless staying there for so short period of time after long hours of travelling. My siblings felt like I was never there when they needed me the most and there was not much family togetherness on my side of the family but he can always go to his parents' house, bring the kids there (at least the 2 youngest ones) and stay there overnight whenever he wanted.

He didn't like me going out with friends either even if they were just for a get-together like birthday or Christmas parties or any celebration even if it was just within the neighborhood. Even if he is not in full possession of information about people around, he always found something not nice about them that makes it not okay for me to be with them. He said things like that neighbor is an addict just by their appearance or that neighbor is whorish just by way they dress or that neighbor is a member of a syndicate just because he saw a group of male neighbors getting together and there were not even proof. There was even a time when my female neighbor friends celebrated a Christmas get-together and the venue was just right in front of our house and he would not let me attend. He told me he will not open the door if I did. So I got alienated with my friends and even neighbors, too.

He was always the one threatening to leave me. I have never told him I would leave him even at the time when I actually left. He always made it a point for me not to forget, in all  arguments, that he was the one working hard to feed the family and what I do for the family is not important - like I can be easily replaced by a maid. He even told me that I would be the loser if he left  me after all the sacrifice I did to keep the family. He can pretty much say what he wanted to say to me be it something to degrade my parents, or lower me and my children's self-esteem. He always frighten me and my children by threatening to throw our things out of the house and sometimes he did. He had trashed my important files on our computer, too, to save disk space, like only his files were the only ones that were important. There were times when he gave me the dirty finger or throw anything he can get a hold of at me not caring whether or not it would hit me and I got hit a couple of times right in front of the children when he was angry. So I lost his love and respect, too.

The last straw was when he started taking the children to his  parent's place and he never told me where it was because they just moved to a new apartment. He lost his old mobile phone and never gave me the number of the new one so I could not contact them when they were there. He brought them there to spend the Christmas break and the school vacation. He was able to take the 2 younger ones but the eldest always opt to stay with me. My eldest is no longer a juvenile and is working already and pretty much independent so he can't just force her to do as he told. I felt that taking them as he did, I am beginning to lose my children, too, because according to my younger daughter who went with them, his mother and sister were saying nasty things about me.

So I don't have enough means to support myself and the children because at my age it was hard already to get a job in my line as graphic designer in the Philippines because companies prefer younger applicants. So I lost time, too. I can never go back to the time I could have had a better career and grow from there.

It was no longer a home, too, where  he threatens to throw all my stuff. I no longer have the happy home I dreamed of, and I could not envision myself being happy growing old with him.

At that point, I felt I already lost everything. That was when I started to feel free because there was nothing else to lose. So it was true enough what Aleksadr Solzhenitsyn said. "You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again."

So to answer the question, thinking about this question so much, I lost a day of blog because it was already on the 12th that I was able to post this.

But contemplating on all the things I lost and missed in life made me all the more thankful for what I have found. I finally found my home.