Some Small Things # 4 - Monkey in the Middle

photo by David Monniaux

In the game Monkey in the Middle, as I know and remember, is played with two teams. One team takes opposite sides of a play area and throws balls at the "monkeys" in the middle. When a monkey is hit, the monkey must stay outside the play area until all monkeys are hit or until the opposite team just gives up.

I am a monkey caught in the middle of everything.

I was a monkey caught in the middle of my parents quarreling over my father's vices and my mother's credit balance. My father drank and smoked and strayed, but he loved his family as much as he could. I can't say the same for the mother who birthed me. She is raising me so she can live in luxury. She will die a beggar as she had lived.

I was a monkey caught in a crisis. My father's death took with it our trips to our houses in Tagaytay, Batangas, and Baguio - all of which were sold under false pretenses (reasons which I don't even want to find out). His death crippled us, made us poor. I hated him for dying only because all my dear mother's love was left to me.

I was a monkey before my sister left the house bruised and beaten. I watched our dear mother pull so lovingly at my sister's hair, wishing she had never been born. I hated my sister too for leaving me to hold out on my own.

I was a monkey, a mother's play thing, caught between her temporal care and eternal anger. On the rare occasions she would cuddle me and tell me she missed me, I would kiss her on the forehead thinking that one day she will die. That aside, the rest of her caring involved purple kisses from her broomstick.

Funny enough, I am a monkey still - a middleman for my sister who cannot talk to our mother, for my mother who cannot talk to anyone unless their backs are turned. As always, I am a corpse in no-man's-land.

Monkeys, as well as dogs, know how to bite when mistreated. But as the saying goes,

See no evil

Hear no evil

Speak no evil

Do no evil

So I've decided to distance myself from my family as much as I can while I figure out how to deal with my own problems and live life the way I know how to.

- - -

To a certain Phil. I still remember you calling me monkey back in kindergarten. Thank you. Now I have a laugh out of it.