CONFESSION OF A MARRIED STUPID

I was so ashamed. So very ashamed. And so mad at myself, very, very mad. How could I be so irresponsible like that?

This happened after someone told me I owed their family in 2005 more than Forty Thousand Pesos. Of course, I was shocked and did erupt almost, as, for an ordinary worker like me, the amount is no joke.

Initially, I vehemently denied, and that, my friends, is my bad side in fact. When I am innocently accused, I furiously react without checking the facts. Well, after tracing back history of correspondence I found out it was not really my personal loan. It was just that at the time I only tried helping and saving a desperate common relation.

So there, I was greatly humbled, no, humiliated, because I lectured my debtors about paying back dues. And here I am, a “personal loan” I facilitated for another eleven years back did I inadvertently overlook. What a shame, how fiendish I am. Another proof I’m a very sinful man.

I’m the only one to blame for it, but what can I do, compared to my siblings, I’m the dunce in the family. I am so quick to assume about almost everything and we all know that assumption is a sign of stupidity.

Therefore I appeal to all my friends, especially friends with benefits, who have constantly poured me all their lives, their genuine generosity from then on. I beseech you, while I’m still alive, let me know if some if not all of those things were, in fact, my loan because I suspect they’ve already reached millions. I don’t have to name you one by one here, you know who you are. Besides, the list is endless: I grew up with friends around and afar.

I’m now confused: I’m always that restless about my P500 debt. And yet, for a staggering amount of forty grand, I easily forget? But I am happy there’s positive side in this: this means my memory gap is selective. Like, I forgot another instance what was the cause, or a certain purpose, but I remember I paid up that’s family’s family once using an envelope.

From now on, I will write down all my received cash and kind and have the list with me always, in joy and in strife. Even if they said “it’s a gift,” there must be a great deal of latitude of interpretation for it like a suspicion of a wife. As I can never be certain if it will cause love or rage. Just perfectly like the uncertainty we get from marriage.

Ahh, marriage is indeed a leap into the dark, or even into something darker: you could never really know another person until after you had lived together.

Anyway, like the way I reluctantly pay my marriage vows so far, to such forgotten ‘debt’ I will pay. If I fail in this lifetime, I’ll urge my children to pay, as my God had said in guarantee: “I will repay” (Rom.12:19).