MANILA, Philippines ?
Dear Emily,
I?m a 20-year-old fresh graduate. I?ve been having fears and frustrations about my stepmother lately. You see, she and her two daughters, aged 5 and 7, live with me. My grandparents, who?ve been supporting me all my life, went abroad to earn money for future emergencies and provide financial help to my step-relatives. My dad just disappeared and stopped contacting us.
I?ve been handling all the finances since my grandparents left. My stepmother has no job and has debts to settle, and she depends on us for help.
I?m frustrated because she thinks it?s very easy to earn money abroad. She doesn?t understand how hard it is for my grandparents. I guess it?s not her fault that she ended up in that situation, but I can?t help but think she could?ve done something to help herself up.
I feel like, when I get a job, I?m obliged to share my earnings with them.
I am coming off as selfish, but I have my own goals to live for, too. I can?t leave the country because I don?t have a passport yet and I have to be the go-between of my stepmother and my grandparents.
LIL
Why should you be responsible for your stepmother? Just because she married your father? Doesn?t she have any qualifications to earn money on her own? Can she even read and write?
In what cruel and hellish publication was it written that someone like you, who has barely entered adulthood fated to serve non-bloodlines like this woman and her children till kingdom come? Where does it say that you are not allowed to have a life of your own without them hanging by your tail?
She must realize that she has to fend for her own family despite your father?s evaporation. You?re not your father!
If she is not disabled anyway like, deaf, mute or quadraplegic, she can get employed in a store, sell vegetables, be a shampooer in a beauty salon, a laundry woman, or a city street cleaner?any work to put food on the table.
Make her realize that your grandparents are not going to grow old working and supporting her all her free-loading life. Has your father?s disappearance turned into a curse on them? If they?ve been supportive of her all these years, it was to atone for a sin they did not even commit.
Let her understand that it won?t be Christmas forever. If she has two hands, two feet, a body that can still breathe, and a head that can still think?she has no business being a parasite. The world doesn?t owe her a thing!
E-mail the author at emarcelo@inquirer.com.ph, Subject: Lifestyle, or send your letters to Inquirer. Log on to www.pbs.gov.ph and listen to Ms Marcelo co-host the program ?Kalikasan Vigilante,? 7:15-8:30 p.m., Monday-Friday, on dwBR 104.3 FM
