I should have thanked God

This week’s winner

MANILA, Philippines - Ma. Layla Rosario G. Obtinalla grew up with her maternal grandparents in Batangas City “because both of my parents had to work abroad.” She is from UP-Los Baños where she finished her BA Communication Arts degree in writing. She has a five-month-old baby and “I’ve been with the Red Cross since my college years and for me it has been really fulfilling.”

Kids lead a simpler life than grownups. Adults have all the problems and complications. Or so I thought. After reading Judy Blume’s Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret and going back to my fond memories as a kid, my insights took a full 180-degree turn.

Margaret’s story is something everyone who was a teenager once upon a time can relate to. Except for one interesting thing: she practices no religion. Being born to a Jewish father and a Christian mother, she had parents who saw fit to let her, when the right time came, choose her own religion. (If only all parents were this cool.) After moving to a new neighborhood, she discovers that teenage life may not be as simple as it sounds or as it looks. The whole drama of family decision-making, what to base your judgment on, choosing friends and even the physical changes of growing up…I concluded that whoever said teenage life was simple must be from another planet.

I was brought up a Catholic. I was baptized wearing a fancy white dress with strangers holding me as a priest poured water over my head. My family took me to church every Sunday and I did the sign of the cross because I was told it was what Catholics did. The problem is I did these things because I was told to do so or because I was too young to protest and ask why.

I have no complaints about being a Catholic because I believe that we just call Him various names and worship Him in different ways but there can only be one Supreme Being who is constantly guiding us from above. I just wished that I had the liberty to be able to find and practice a religion that best fits my beliefs and can help me nurture my spirituality more. All the more, I want a religion I know from the very root, so that I can firmly plant my faith into it with no one to challenge it for I am willing to bet my life on it. I admit that my religion isn’t perfect but it is comforting to know that I also have what Margaret held on to from the beginning — faith.

Every time she utters the phrase, “Are you there God, it’s me Margaret,” it’s like talking to someone she is not seeing yet she firmly believes exists. Her mother taught her that God is a nice idea and that He belongs to everybody. If only all religions were like this, co-existing peacefully with no one dragging down another, each respecting the faith of the other. But that’s easier said than done.

Margaret not belonging to a religion is a big dilemma even for a teenager and then there are the other problems of growing up. Peer pressure. Who was not a victim? I was told that there are only two types of kids: the one who bullies and the one who gets bullied. Funny thing is I just realized that the ones who bullied me then were from the circle of so-called “friends.” For instance, we had these “friendship rings” in different colors and because no two girls could have the same color, I had to settle for a color that I didn’t like. I had to wear pants to a party because my group chose to wear pants. Looking back, I can say that I was forced to write “pink” as my favorite color in autograph notebooks because they all said so. All these things for friendship just so I could have a group to belong to. Funny to think that teenagers form a group based on their shared interests when in fact it could be that because they are a group, they are forced into having the same interests. What I still can’t explain up to know is why my friends and I all had the same crush — just like Margaret and her friends Nancy, Gretchen and Janie. We did not have a “boy notebook” like they did but we did tell secrets and it’s funny to think that we would pretend to not be affected by that fact when we were all secretly wishing that the other girls would find a different boy to like.

From religion to peer pressure, the book also focuses on the way teenagers learn to form their basis for their judgment of other people. I was laughing at how the other girls would tell Margaret to stay away from this girl because of some bad rumors. It’s just the way things are too, in real life. Sometimes we quickly judge a person based on other people’s judgment.

I feel for Margaret when she says the bad things she thought she knew about Laura could have come from people who were lying. I had my own share of misjudgments and the worst thing you can do to the person you have judged is to act as if you knew these things for a fact and pass the information on to others. The bottom line is, whether you know a person very well or not, it is always better to not judge.

When I was a teenager, I often wished I had a fast-forward button and become a grownup, but now, I wish I still had my carefree teenage years. Come to think of it, teenager or grownup, life is complicated. The things that made you want to hit your head against the wall when you were undergoing puberty may seem simple now that you are an adult. But there is one thing I am sure we should be thankful of: the wisdom that each of these experiences gives us.

I really should have thanked God when I had my period for that moment was His way of telling me, “Your childhood years have equipped you with enough wisdom. Live by your faith, continue to learn and remember to love others and not judge them. Now, you are ready for the real battlefield.” And sure enough, it was bloody.