Originally posted 02 February 2003

I am the only one among my old neighborhood barkada who hasn't given birth.

My first barkada was pretty small; it was just me and two neighbors. Eveline was two years older and Marie was five months younger than me. Eveline's mother tended to walk out on them at odd times, saying she was sick of the humdrum life of a housewife. Eveline's father was a seaman, so that meant Eveline had no choice but to take care of her younger brother and sister herself. (They lived with her grandmother, so she wasn't completely alone.) Marie's family was much less problematic, but her father (a bodybuilder, no less) was very strict and was known to beat her or her brother up in times of extreme displeasure. I had been the goody-two-shoes from the start, the most sheltered but also the most driven. I guess it doesn't really surprise the people who knew us from the start that I'm the only one still in school.

Eveline moved away when I was fourteen, to be closer to her aunts and uncles so that she and her siblings would be relatively more secure. Marie soon became the neighborhood flirt, although nobody believed her when she said she had already been courted by 42 guys two months into her freshman year of high school. And then she stole a potential boyfriend from right under my nose. Needless to say, I found new people to hang out with after that.

Eveline visited me every now and then. I kept her posted on how Marie and I had grown apart and she told me about her new boyfriend, but she never told me she was pregnant until after she gave birth. Eveline was seventeen then, but she married the guy right after she turned eighteen. Marie and I had patched things up between the two of us by then, and we went to the wedding together. I was even one of the bridesmaids. Eveline's husband is great. He's responsible and an all-around nice guy. He's only a couple of years older than Eveline, but he already had a job even before they started dating. I think very highly of him.

I only wish I could say the same about the father of Marie's daughter.

Marie introduced me to her boyfriend (who was incidentally nicknamed Boy) one or two years ago. I didn't think much of him. I thought he was a jerk. Marie told me that he regularly rated his feelings for her on a scale of one to ten: he usually gave it a rating of eight, but he sometimes said it was two. Once, he even told her it was negative two. He wasn't much to look at, and I'm sure he had no future to offer her. He hardly went to class, plus he was a heavy drinker, a chain smoker and a drug-user. I have no idea why she even bothered staying.

When Marie overstayed a vacation in the province last year, there was no doubt in my mind that she was pregnant. Like Eveline, she gave birth to a girl on a December and, like Eveline, it was out of wedlock. Unlike Eveline, she was legal when she got pregnant, but she and Boy aren't getting married anytime soon. She broke up with him when she got pregnant. (His family sends money to Marie's ATM account, but it's hardly enough for half the baby's expenses.) It's just as well. It's pretty clear he's not going to make a great father. He'd just make Marie's life miserable.

When I tell my college friends about it, I always joke about picking up some random guy because of all the peer pressure. When I was growing up, I always thought that the three of us would get married at the same time. Our kids would grow up together, play tag in the street together and tie up the phone at night talking to each other.

Don't get me wrong. I am relieved that I don't have kids yet! Anyone who knows me knows that I've a head screwed on straight and that the chances of my getting pregnant are slim to none. Anyone who knows me also knows that it's going to take a miracle or Brandon Boyd (either way, they're synonymous) to convince me to settle down and do the family thing. I've taken care of two cousins and one brother already; I'm currently on my second brother and third cousin. If I have to take care of another one, I will insist on moving out.

You could say that I'm a quintessential career woman wannabe. When I was seventeen, I had it all worked out. I would study like crazy, intern at the Inquirer or at PCIJ, and work for a couple of years, scrimping and saving every step of the way. I would get a scholarship to study abroad, most probably in Australia because my aunt works in the Australian Embassy. I would either be a foreign correspondent for some big-time wire service or write for TIME or Newsweek. (I was further encouraged when I saw a letter from TIME Asia editor Anthony Spaeth posted on the Journalism Department's bulletin board. He was recruiting juniors and seniors, but I was only a sophomore then.) I even decided that I had to learn Chinese because most of the Asian desks of wire services and international magazines are in Singapore or Hong Kong. My life goal was to anchor for CNN.

Right now, my plans have been altered a bit. I'm definitely not as diligent a student as I wanted to be, but I'm extra-grateful because I didn't plan on getting a scholarship from the Inquirer. My contract with the Inquirer guarantees an internship, and even a job if they like my work enough. I'm still bent on learning Chinese; in fact, I want to learn as many languages as humanly possible. And writing for the wires or the aforementioned magazines would be wonderful, of course. But I don't really want to anchor for CNN anymore; what I really want is to work for National Geographic, and I've already mentioned that in a past entry.

Whether it's for print or TV, it doesn't matter as long as I'm there. I want to cover environmental issues and nature; I want to go in-depth and, in the case of TV, I want to be the one (well, one of the ones) behind the camera, behind the scenes. All it took for me to fall in love with the idea of making documentaries and TV features was to watch Supernatural on Animal Planet. There's something about the way a cheetah's muscles ripple as it races across the savannah that is absolutely beautiful and almost poetic. Add to that 360-degree shots, suspended animation sequences and creative chiaroscuro, and you have what I consider to be The Matrix of nature shows.

My aunt from the embassy knows I'm passionate about the environment and has recommended that I apply for this graduate program in environmental advocacy in the University of Melbourne. And that, as the Aussies say, is simply brilliant.

All right, that's enough digression. So how does this relate to my friends' having kids? I guess their getting pregnant while I was caught up in making elaborate plans for the future made me wonder if I had my priorities straight. I distinctly remember writing in my journal during freshman year that it was out of the question for me to have a serious relationship before I establish myself in my field because it would only distract me. And most of the entries here and in my Humanities I journal make it rather clear that, given the current statistics on divorce and the fact that I've taken care of enough babies to satiate any maternal desires I may have for the next couple of decades, I am not interested in marriage and a family of my own. Was I - am I missing out on life?