3AM THOUGHTS
I grew up in a home shaped by absence.
My father came from a broken family. He was a drummer, always speaking of his own father—my grandfather—as one of the greatest to ever hold sticks. A man who played in bands, traveled the world, lived on the road. But when I asked if he had ever truly known him, my father would simply say, “I never met him. He’s probably dead.” That was all I had—half a story and a name I never knew. I grew up untethered, unaware of where I came from.
When I was thirteen, a lump appeared on my father’s neck. It turned out to be cancer. And while he was biologically my father, emotionally, he was a stranger—perhaps even a villain in the story of our family. He inflicted wounds that ran deep, and when my mother had to leave for work overseas, I ended up in my aunt’s care. My father grew weaker as I grew older. And by the time I turned fifteen, he died—alone.
That period in my life was surreal. He died on a Saturday. I was back in school on Monday. I didn’t tell anyone. I sat through a quiz like nothing had changed until my aunt showed up, and I was pulled out of class. I remember the stares, the whispered speculations—some said I was attention-seeking, others just looked at me with pity. But none of that mattered. I just wanted the day to be normal. To keep pretending life was untouched.
But deep inside, something had broken. I felt it—the incompleteness, the ache of not knowing who we really were. My father wasn’t a good man to us, but I often wondered if he had simply become what he himself had suffered. A child abandoned. A boy forced to carry silence.
When I turned twenty-two, I went looking for answers. I searched for my grandfather for the very first time. Since my father was his junior, I searched for the name they shared. Facebook gave me a face—dark-skinned, a drummer, from Ateneo. It all lined up. I sent a message.
And he replied.
I’ll never forget the sound of his voice. That first call changed something inside me. For the first time, the story began to make sense.
We reconnected. He wasn’t perfect—far from it. My father was his firstborn, and he had four other children from different women. But I wasn’t there to judge. I told him everything about my father, what kind of man he had been to us. My grandfather listened, and he carried a quiet guilt. He believed he was to blame for what his son became.
Now he’s gone too. But as I stood by his coffin, I felt no resentment—only gratitude. Grateful that God had allowed me to find him, to look him in the eyes before his final rest. The lies I had been told, the void I had lived with—they no longer held me. I was free.
For a long time, I coped with loss by pretending it hadn’t happened. Every death, every departure—I met with the same numb resolve. But I’ve changed. I’ve learned to let go.
With age, I’ve learned to step outside myself and see things more clearly. When life gets hard now, I no longer run. I stay. I feel. I face it.
Our parents’ pasts, our grandparents’ mistakes—they do not dictate our future. We can choose differently. The road is not easy, but it is not impossible. And their failures? Their missteps? We carry those not as burdens, but as warnings. So we don’t have to fall the same way.
We can break the cycle. We can begin again.
Life is tough, but so are you! You got this! Believe in yourself always. 🙂
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You’re so cute!
Hello kweezy hey I’m reu jae remember … I’m always on your fb stream when you get live… I can’t wait to hear the live streaming of eye see you… I have a lots of thoughts about your story…
Hello Reu! Thank you for being here too! Will have storytelling stream soon! 🙂