A MILITARY WIFE

My name is Lea Blanc. I am twenty-one years old, and I come from a small, unknown city, the kind of place that never appears on maps and that people only pass through on their way somewhere else. I currently work as a cashier in a department store here. It is not the kind of job I dreamed of when I was younger, but it pays enough to keep me alive, and these days, I have learned to be grateful for even that much. I consider myself an orphan. Not because my parents have passed away. They are both very much alive, but because they each have their own families now. New spouses. New children. New lives that did not have room for me. So here I am, left behind like a chapter they decided to skip. Some people grow up in complete families, with parents who show up, who stay, who choose them every single day. And then there is me working double shifts, walking miles to save a few pesos, sometimes skipping meals just to stretch my salary until the next payday. Life has been a bit unfair, to say the least. But I have stopped asking why me. The question never brought me anything but silence. If you ask me what I look like, I can proudly say I am not the prettiest but at least I know I am not the ugliest either. Kidding aside, to be honest, I am not pretty, not sexy, and definitely not brainy. I am just an average girl with a little extra weight and a lot of insecurities. I try to hide behind jokes. Haha! (Oops, why am I laughing at my own self-deprecating jokes? Tsk. Not healthy. Maybe I really should see a psychiatrist? ) Humor has become my armor. If I did not laugh at myself, I would probably cry and I have done enough crying in my teenage years to last a lifetime. Right now, I am walking on my way to work. Yes, you heard that right walking. Every single day, I walk just to save a single penny. A 15-peso fare feels like a luxury I cannot afford. Let me break it down for you: one-way fare is 15 pesos, so that is 30 pesos round-trip. Multiply that by 30 days, and that is 900 pesos a month. (Correct me if I am wrong, I already warned you, I am not brainy nor pretty 😅) Nine hundred pesos may not sound like much to some people, but for me, that is grocery money. That is rice for two weeks. That is the difference between having a little left over or ending the month with nothing. I walk about one kilometer every day, sometimes more depending on where my shift takes me. It is really no big deal anymore. I have gotten used to it. My life is already full of sacrifices, so a walk every morning feels like a small thing. The streets are familiar to me now, the uneven sidewalks, the early morning vendors setting up their stalls, the jeepneys packed with passengers who can afford the fare. Sometimes I watch them from the sidewalk and wonder where they are going. Are they going to jobs they love? Are they coming home to families that are waiting for them? I try not to compare, but sometimes the comparisons come uninvited. If you ask me how life is, I will tell you it is not easy. But I know you want more than that. You want to know how I am really doing. The truth is, some days I am okay. Some days I feel nothing at all. And some days, the weight of everything presses down on my chest until I forget how to breathe. What most people do not know that I do not easily share is how many times I used to think about ending my life before. My teenage years were a nightmare. I was miserable in ways I did not even have the words to describe back then. There were nights I would lie awake in the dark, counting all the reasons I had to stay, and sometimes the list felt painfully short. But thank God truly, thank God He did not let me do it. Looking back, I do not know what held me back. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was a tiny, stubborn voice inside me that refused to give up. Or maybe it was grace, the kind you do not deserve but receive anyway. Whatever it was, I am still here. And some days, that alone feels like a small miracle. My teenage life was really a nightmare for me, and I am not yet ready to share all of it with you. Maybe there will be a right time for that when I am fully healed, when the wounds have scarred over enough that I can speak about them without breaking. For now, I just go with the flow of life. I wake up. I work. I walk home. I sleep. Repeat. It is not a glamorous life, but it is mine. Sometimes I wonder what my life would look like if things had been different. If my parents had stayed. If I had been able to finish school. If someone had believed in me enough to say, Go ahead, chase your dreams, I will be here when you fall. But I cannot spend too much time in that world, what if world because it only makes the present feel heavier. I have learned to focus on what is in front of me: the cash register, the customers, the long walk home, the small victories like having enough left over to buy myself something warm to eat. I am not bitter, though I used to be. I carried anger for so long it became part of my bones. I was angry at my father for choosing his new family over me. I was angry at my mother for doing the same. I was angry at the world for being so casually cruel to someone who had done nothing to deserve it. But anger is exhausting. It eats at you from the inside. So slowly, without even realizing it, I let it go. Not because the people who hurt me deserve forgiveness. Maybe they do, maybe they do not, but because I deserve peace. And holding onto anger was not giving me peace. It was giving me sleepless nights and a bitterness I could taste every time I smiled. Now, I try to focus on small joys. The warmth of the morning sun on my face during my walk to work. The kindness of a customer who smiles and says thank you like they actually mean it. The feeling of my paycheck in my hands, even if it disappears too quickly. I have also learned to be kinder to myself. When I look in the mirror, I try not to focus on the extra weight or the tired eyes. Instead, I see someone who is still standing. Someone who has been through things that would have broken others but chose to keep going anyway. That has to count for something, right? I know I am not pretty by the world’s standards. I know I am not the smartest person in any room. I do not have a degree, I do not have a family waiting for me at home, and I do not have the luxury of dreaming big without worrying about how to survive tomorrow. But I have something else. I have resilience. I have a stubborn, quiet strength that has carried me through the worst days of my life. And I have been hoping for the kind that does not shout, but whispers. The kind that says, You are not done yet. There is still something ahead for you. I do not know what tomorrow holds. Maybe more of the same. Maybe something different. But for today, I will walk to work, I will do my job, I will count my blessings even when they feel small, and I will keep going. Because that is what I do. That is who I am. Lea Blanc is not an orphan, though I often feel like one. Not a victim, though life has tried to make me one. Just a girl from a small, unknown city, walking one kilometer at a time, trying to build a life that feels like her own.