ate doesn’t need help. ate figures it out. ate always figure it out. so i figure it out. always alone.

being an eldest daughter in a filipino household isn’t as easy as people think—especially with the responsibilities that come with it. i have a job that i did not apply for, that had no interview, that does not pay dividens in return for my labor. you are born first, and you understand intuitively that a part of your life will be a constant, uninterrupted training of how to read people’s panic before your own, swallowing your own worry so that someone else’s world will not cave in on itself, how to be the second mother without any of the authority but all of the blame.

all of the blame

because that is what we are, isn’t it? to serve our siblings with enough devotion. the ones who are supposed to have all the answers because we’re the oldest. but sometimes, wala rin tayong alam.

i remember when my younger brother broke a glass in the living room. i was in my room doing homework. but when my father came home and saw the shards, his eyes didn’t go to my brother. they went to me. “ikaw ang ate. bakit hindi mo binantayan?” and i do not know what to say, except maybe that i am sorry. i am ten years old. i was doing long division.

because ate’s not doing her job properly. that’s always the verdict. the jury is always in the session. you are always found guilty.

you are the one who helps your siblings with their assignments. the science project that was due tomorrow, which they only told you about now. you are the one who organizes their notebooks, who fixes their grammar, who prints and staples and buys the plastic cover to put everything in, all while sitting patiently by and explaining things to them twice, three times, while your own homework and projects wait on your own desk. you do it because you are the ate.

ate is the first draft of everything

you are the first one to have an early curfew. it’s so early that you haven’t even enjoyed the moment yet, and they’re already calling you to go home, you get the text. “Umuwi ka na, galit na tatay mo.” you don’t get to stay long enough to feel like you belong. your siblings, meanwhile, have a later curfew than you.

your siblings got a gentler version of the rules that my parents ironed out for them, mostly through relentless push and pull from you. you are the one who fights the battles that your siblings can’t, who takes the punishment that your siblings don’t have to.

i want their paths to be smoother than mine. but sometimes i wonder if anyone realises that the smoothness was bought with my bruises. that the ground is soft because i bled on it first.

a birthday party. a fiesta. a binyag. the house is loud. the karaoke machine is already playing even though people are still eating. and your parents are deep in conversation with the titas and titos. finally, just adults among adults.

but then your mother looks at you and gives you that look that goes, “ikaw muna.”

your parents are present but they might as well not be there. because suddenly, you are the parent.

you are the one who prepares the rice for your siblings. you serve each of them based on what they want. you tell them to eat first before they play, but they’ve already run off.

you are the one who wipes the sweat off their faces, grabbing the towel from your mother’s bag, realizing only then that it is your bag that your mother carries.

you are always the last to eat. by the time you sit down, your rice is cold. the crispy part of the lechon is gone. no one saved anything for you. no one noticed you haven’t eaten yet.

you are the big sister who is old enough to be their mother.

and no one tells you that this is how it will be. no one tells you that you are expected to know this intuitively, that the burden you carry is a silent one because people do not acknowledge it, but it is always there nonetheless, this feeling of being someone who has to serve, who has to sacrifice, whose needs must always be deferred because you have been doing that all your life.

it is in the way you sit quietly in the room while your cousins are playing tumbang preso outside because you are feeding your youngest sister one spoonful after another, cleaning the drool from her chin, and shushing her when she cries because she missed mama. and i wanted to miss mama too.

you wish you could run outside and scrape your knee just so someone else would worry about you for once. but you are not the child. you were never the child.

the problem was that i thought that someone would love me back. that the universe was some sort of cosmic dispenser where for every action, there would be a reaction, and for every sacrifice i made, someone would acknowledge it, maybe even reward it. but no, everyone sees you. you only see yourself through their reflection.

i am learning to be my own ate. to advocate for myself the way i do for everyone else. to stop carrying the fatigue like it is some badge of honour at a family gathering. “ay, si ate, ang sipag talaga!” is not a phrase i want etched on my tombstone. i am learning to let people be disappointed in me. it is the hardest thing because it is the role of the eldest daughter to never disappoint anyone.

we are the non-stick pans of the world and nothing is supposed to cling to us. but i am allowing people to cling to me now, to sit in their disappointment in my presence, to let it fester and rot if they want to. i am saying no and not following it up with a five-minute explanation of why my no is valid.

i am learning to forgive my parents for having been my first drafts for having treated me like a practice child. that is not an excuse, but it is something to consider, isn’t it? that they were trying to learn how to parent, and i was the collateral damage.

i am also learning to forgive myself too. to treat myself like an adult because i am one.

ate does not need help. at least, that is what we tell ourselves. ate always figure it out on her own. so i figured it out. alone. always.