From this post, you’d know that I’m a sheltered kid in Davao City, and that my parents provide me with whatever I needed. This is why it was so hard for me when I adjusted to my new life in Manila.
I spent my first two weeks in a budget hotel in Salem Compound near NAIA Terminal 4 called Carl Andrie Transient House. It cost 1500 pesos a night that’s why my parents pressured me on finding an apartment to rent. haha. I didn’t have the time because I already had work and I’m still new to the place so I was scared to walk around on my own. My dad flew in town to help me with apartment-hunting and saw one near my workplace. Once we paid the rental fees necessary, my dad booked a 5am flight for the next day and told me I should have settled in before he left.
The sheltered does-not-know-anything Angel thought for a while and decided to buy two things – a mattress and some pillows. You have to understand, I was in highschool when our family moved into our house in Dumoy from Lanang, and that time all I worried about was packing up the things I would need for school and my clothes. Everything else was taken cared of.
This time, already on my own, I realized there are so much that I never thought was necessary.
All I had was a mattress, three pillows, and a luggage of clothes. I realized too late that a room is so much more than the bed itself. So I spent a night in this empty room, without an airconditioner, and a mattress that was covered in plastic instead of a bed linen, and no curtains. I only had one light bulb, yes the bathroom was so dark. I needed to buy all those things, plus trash bags, toiletries (no more free hotel stuff), and the list goes on.
It was this night when I realized I only thank my parents when they buy me “big” things like a laptop, or a camera, or a new phone. I don’t thank them for the small things they constantly provide me like the curtains, shampoo, plates and silverware, and all those small things that I thought was “just there”. New bed sheets and curtains don’t just appear every week, the toiletries don’t just refill themselves like magic. My parents work to buy these things to make sure I wouldn’t need to worry about them.
It’s only when you move out of your parents’ house that you realize how these things are also important, and so you must thank the people who provide these for you all those years when you were fortunate enough to not worry about them. The more everything feels like magic when you’re living with your parents, the more difficult it is to adjust when you start to live without them.
