Like strangers in their own land

Wednesday

11:07 pm

When I first set foot on Danish soil, I thought to myself, "this'll be a piece of cake", seeing how we're Danish citizens and knowing that the Danish system will take good care of us. Well, give it a week and then you realize it's not that easy. To register as a person who is going to live in the country again, you gotta have yourself an address. We were fortunate to stay with someone we have just met and I tell ya, me and my sister both feel a great deal of shame and gratitude towards the couple who glady lended one of their rooms to us. Seeing our mom leave in a train enroute for Germany (and then flying back to Canada) made my sis break in tears, even though we hate her for many things that happened in the past. Just before she left, she told us "you know, even if you hate me now, I know you'll always come back to me and say, 'sorry mom, you were right and I was wrong', and I'll know you'll miss me even if you say you won't." Naturally, I thought to myself "ugh, here we go again with this crap". I don't know what my sis thought about it, but her eyes started to become overly hydrated and I realized something. She already missed our mom. I can't and won't blame her or get mad at her for doing so, I completely understand my sister. She doesn't want to be here. I didn't want her to be here in the first place too. My sister felt alone, scared, and sad. There wasn't much I could do but try to talk her through it and get her to feel a little better about our situation. Flashbacks about the past started to seep through my thoughts about a similar situation.

My sister and I were in Manila's airport when we were told by customs that they couldn't let us through the gates because we all (yes, all 3 of us. me, my sis, and the customs guard) just found out that me and my sis have been illegally living in Philippines! Well would ya look at that. Since we were minors and couldn't be arrested, we just left in confusion. My sister then started crying the way she cried at the train platform. I could never forget such moments. It felt like as if my sister was totally breaking down and I had to do something about it, even though I was the younger sibling, I felt an enormous task upon my shoulders as I tried to comfort my sister back then. I had cried a little. Not like a short burst of sobbing, but a few, silent tears, running down my cheeks, followed by my nose running slightly. Knowing we had to keep strong, I wiped my tears with my sleeve and thought what we could do. I'm not going into much detail about it, but in due time, it shall come.

Back to the present, the day was mostly covered in clouds but it was bright nonetheless. it seemed my sister had decided to pull through and I told her to stay optimistic about our situation. This was the time to become adults. This was the time to man up and say "I will accomplish this myself with no help from parents and become my own person!"

Started walking down the street. We kept talking about our situation. "I don't feel like I belong here!" she said. "I don't feel home here in Denmark, even though we were born here, this isn't what it used to be." Of course it wasn't what it used to be. People and places change with time and there's nothing we can do about it. It's all a matter of taking life into your hands and making something out of it while we are given the chance. "We gotta keep a cool head on this. We gotta focus on what to do next and we'll just have to take a small step at a time. We can do this." I felt like an officer addressing to his worrisome troops in the field that now is not to give in to fear. I felt like I've truly become my sister's older brother. It's tough to not have someone to look up to much but later discover that that someone actually look up to you at times. I have felt, a tremendous amount of responsibility, being rested upon my shoulders.

We went back to our "hotel" where me and my sis sat on our beds. We began to ponder on the thoughts of actually doing paperwork by ourselves for the first time. We started getting that feeling again. That feeling where you feel like you're all by yourself. But I pressed on. I kept it in my head that we have to do these things and that's the way life was. Life is never fair. To some, it sucks so much ass that they kill themselves. They were weak, and it's sad to see that nobody strong enough came to help them up when they needed it most. Never give in to fears and doubts. Never....give up.