This is where I exhibit Narcissism albeit vindicated

 In the feeling out stage of starting a blog, I think it's appropriate, as stated in the introduction, that I should try to get closer with my audience. Establish that relationship and let it grow. I guess to do that, I'm devoting a section of my blog to building that bridge, and showing people the history behind me, RC Marcelo. Welcome people to Narcissistic Facts.

  For this session, I'm dedicating this to my Family and my city, who will always be there for me, willingly or unwillingly. Tonight I will spend sometime describing the city where I live, Makati City, after all, the getting to know process starts somewhere, so might as well start in the nearest one, my home.

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Makati is considered as the Financial Capital of the Philippines, a city bustling with hectic work days and a very busy nightlife, a place where life never seems to stop. You always see people shuffling about in this city, wherever you walk, sooner or later you end up walking in a group. It is like the city that never sleeps, the city lights never go out even at the dead of night, as if to convey that at Makati there is always someone “home”. I can also assure you that there is never a dark corner in Makati—at night the lights are so bright that you could still see the clouds floating amongst the orange lit sky. However, surrounded by the ever present buildings and the scores of people, I still see my life in Makati as somewhat lonely.

I started to study in Ateneo during my first year in Grade School, meeting new people and gaining friends along the way. As luck would have it, I never met anyone that lived anywhere near Makati during my stay in the Grade School. So when my friends and I talk about where we lived, I was almost always the odd-one-out. It was not really a bad thing, actually it kind of made me special. You see, people, well my classmates for that matter, regarded Makati as a place where the rich and affluent live, so I was then labelled as a rich kid, even though it was contrary to reality, and rich kids usually become one of the popular kids in those days. Every day, I was constantly bombarded with questions by my friends who have yet to step foot in Makati, because at that time no one really went to Makati for reasons other than work. I enjoyed this attention for the most part of my pre-pubescent life, however the more I bragged about my hometown, the more I realized I was isolated from everyone. Once I got home from school, even after a day’s worth of having fun with my friends, I was all alone. All alone since, in the overly populated Makati, there was no one I could call a friend. Knowing this loneliness and feeling it day after day, I started to treasure my time in school more, since that was the only time I could be with my friends.

As you can see, my friends hold a very special place in my heart, they’ve actually become the main reason why I am very excited when it comes to going to school rather than staying at home, but this is not to say that my family was neither nether loving nor caring. Actually, I have very fond memories of my Family here in Makati. I remember attending the same pre-school as my older sister, I could even still remember some of the teachers that I met over there. I also have memories of when my mother or father would bring me to work, it must have been the only time in my life where spending hours in a dull gray cubicle seemed so exciting. Lastly, I also remember the family excursions we had, such as spending an afternoon just browsing around in the local market or our frequent trips to the bookstore—those memories bring a very warm feeling into my heart. However, as the years passed, memories like these start to occur rarely. Ever since, I started school proper, I spent more time in school than at home in Makati, more so when I started to attend Ateneo. So the certain memories I had in Makati seemed so hard to recreate. When I reached the third grade, I felt like our family had gone very distant from each other. My brother, even though he studies in Ateneo also, is already in his last years as a middle school student, my older sister studied in a school in Pasay, and my younger sister just started to go to pre-school. Everyone seemed to live their own life separate from each other, the rare times we spent hanging out with each other was spent usually teasing or fighting each other—it was at that time where sibling rivalry was at its peak. In addition to that, since all of us were already studying, my parents had to work even harder. My father became a public servant, a drop in salary and a rise in work hours, and my mother, to cope with my father’s drop in salary, also opted for an increase in work hours. I remember that they usually arrive home by nine or ten and that they also started to work on Saturdays—my father would go on to work even on Sundays. The busyness, that Makati was admired for, became a part of our lives, so much so that we didn’t have enough time to be a family.

Living in Makati during these times was horrible at first, as I have stated the numerous fights I had with my siblings usually left me alone, solitarily walking in our village for hours on end, as if to find somebody that I could at least talk to — there was no one. However, when I look back to it, going through all of these, the loss of friends, fighting with siblings, and the somehow absent parents, had made me into a stronger man. I assume all those times I have spent alone actually made me more tolerable of others, tolerating others is better than experiencing that loneliness again, after all, once you get mad at everyone you know, you run out of people to love. The absence of my parents strengthened my love for them, I was able to see how hard they worked just for my siblings and I. Loneliness has its own way of stealthily covering your body, all of a sudden you just feel it and there is nothing you can do to stop it. However, once loneliness grabs you by the heart, you do not feel yourself endeared to the loneliness, instead it makes you take notice of the ones you really love. So even though loneliness is ruthlessly painful, at the very least it makes you realize who can make all that pain go away.

I don’t want to be a downer or anything, after all I don’t want you to experience the same thing that I did. It may look like I have led a gloomy life, but I assure you this is not the case. Once I reached High School, my brother and I became closer with each other, he helped me with my studies and even trained me in football. My sisters did not seem so distant anymore, since both of them transferred to a school just inside our village. My parents took a one year sabbatical and once they started working again, they learned to balance work and family time. Actually, right now our family is really close, we rarely fight anymore in our home. Life seems incredible right now, as if the loneliness that I felt before makes the days that I have now seem so much brighter. I noticed that I never really got into talking about Makati that much. Yes, I know that Makati has much to offer, a pleasant environment surrounded by brilliant structures, shopping malls that people can declare as world-class, and also wide array of people that you can meet here in Makati. However, amidst the ever present magnificent buildings and the scores upon scores of faceless people going about their daily lives, I find that the only thing I really care about in this city is my family.