learning the hard way

bahala na, baby girl

the first time i learned the hard way

one of my earliest memories, i had to be around three years old. my mom was in the kitchen cooking and i was in the living room. i can still see the carpet so clearly, that greenish brown shag that probably felt way softer than it actually was. i don’t even remember what i was doing, just that i needed light. and instead of calling my mom, not because i was scared of getting in trouble but because i didn’t want to interrupt her while she was cooking, i decided to figure it out myself. i couldn’t reach the light switch, so i grabbed my brother’s old basketball, a rawlings, and in my little three-year-old brain i was like… perfect, step stool.

and honestly, it worked. i balanced on it, reached up, flipped the switch, and for a split second i was like yeah… i did that. and then immediately i fell. not just a little stumble either, i fell straight on my head. hard. it hurt like hell. i remember the dizziness, the room spinning, that weird disoriented feeling where everything just kind of blurs for a second. and even then i didn’t call for her. i just sat there trying to pull myself together like nothing happened.

because i already knew something else too. if she had seen me doing that, that’s when i would’ve heard it. “o sige! mahuhulog ka! bahala ka!” which basically means “go ahead, you’re going to fall, that’s on you.” it wasn’t yelled after the fact, it was always the warning before.

and looking back, that says everything. i wasn’t avoiding her, i was just already operating in that space of figuring things out on my own. but i also knew the warning would’ve been there if she saw me.

and i think that stuck with me.

i’ve always been the kind of person who tries to figure things out myself, who pushes a little past what i probably should, who thinks maybe this time it’ll be different. and sometimes it is. but a lot of the time i end up sitting there again, metaphorically on the floor, going… okay, i get it now.

and weirdly, i don’t hate that about myself. because yeah, it comes with a few hard landings, but it also means when i learn something, it sticks. just maybe

now i don’t need to hit my head every time to understand it.