See, I turned 18 this year. It's been a very hectic, yet awesome 18 years, and if I could turn back time, I wouldn't have lived it any other way. My life has been a real roller-coaster ride, and the people I've met and everything I've experienced in my life (the good, the bad, the ugly, and the hectically weird) have shaped me into who I am today, helped me grow and given me more wisdom than any 18year-old can ever ask for in their entire lifetime.
It's cool cuz a lot of my friends (and sometimes even people I barely know) like to come to me and ask for advice. I might have to thank YFC Youth for Christ for that. At my very 1st youth camp, in 2005, during the pray-over, when I was asked which of the 7 great gifts I'd want to be blessed with, I asked God for Wisdom, and it's amazing to find how much of it I've been blessed with over the years. Of course, it didn't come as easily as I thought it would. To gain this wisdom, I've had to face immense challenges and hard times, tears & heartbreak, sadness & happiness, or I wouldn't have any of it. This is one gift I treasure with my entire being. But anyway, I've drifted off topic... So these 18 years have been really something to look back on. My life has turned out pretty great, and I'm sure this isn't yet the best of it. This is the life I've known.
My name is Margaret Decena Alpajora. My friends call me Meg, and some call me May, because of the day I was born. I was born in Manila, Philippines on the 1st of May 1993. I've lived in Gaborone, Botswana for almost my entire life. I was told my mother (Marilyn Decena Alpajora, age 63) and father (Paterno Garrol Alpajora, age 51) brought me here when I was 6months old, after I was old enough to get on the plane. I've never once questioned this of course, and it was true, these two people did bring me to Botswana after my birth. I grew up here, with a pair of very loving parents (my teacher mom, and my engineer dad), my awesome big sister in South Africa (Anna Jailene Aguilar, age 39, Writer, and my inspiration), her son - my nephew (Ronnie James Botes, age 15) who likes to visit Botswana a lot when he can, and some really great amazing friends (everyone that's been close to me from the beginning of time up till now). All of these people have been so wonderful to have in my life.
I've lived a good life, not a wealthy one, but we've lived better than some of my friends and family living in some forms of poverty back home in the Philippines. I went to a good primary school, and soon moved on to get a good high school education. I graduated my final year (form 5) in 2009, and went on to the optional form 6, 2year, A-Level course (which I am finishing at the end of this year). We're still having a little bit of trouble with money, so getting into University is gonna be a battle for me. I want to go to America and double major in Journalism, and Music. But, I'm getting ahead of myself again...
The above is more or less a summary of the life I've known. There is so much more in between that has so much detail, so much drama, weirdness, craziness, fun, tears, heartbreak, laughter, sorrow and happiness that would take me a series of novels to tell you all about, but right now, a summary is all you need for what I'm about to say. As I said, I turned 18 this year, and I spent the month prior to my birthday in Johannesburg, South Africa, with my sister, her boyfriend Stephan, and Ronnie of course. Saturday, 16 April, we went on a roadtrip to Klerskdorp (the 3 of us, and Ron's friend Nick) and coming back from it, on our way home, my sister showed Ron something on her BlackBerry and told him not to show me. Then he showed it to Nick, and my sister showed it to Stephan. Obviously, I was curious as to why I was the only one not allowed to see it. They told me to wait until they could talk to me about something 1st before I could see.
Me being the kind of person with a very quick and heavy temper, I got mad at them and refused to talk to any of them, and no longer cared whether or not I saw what they were hiding from me, but the anger continued. Eventually, once back home, the anger faded and we jammed ps3 and chilled and looked at some old photos my sister wanted to show me of my mother's wedding to her biological dad (if you calculated my dad's age as compared to my sister's in the 3rd paragraph, you would have seen that we don't have the same father). Eventually the topic changed and I found out what they were hiding from me.
It was a message to my sister, from my grandfather, my real grandfather, the one I never knew I had. You might be wondering why I never knew about my grandfather. Well, I knew I had grandparents (dead all my life on my mother's side, passed recently of my dad's side), but see, turns out, these weren't really my grandparents. That night, on the 17th of April 2011, I found out about a family I never knew. My grandfather on my dad's side; Gil Watts, father of Victor Watts; My real dad. My grandparents on my mother's side...
Pat & Marilyn Alpajora, parents of my real mom; Anna Jailene Aguilar.
My name is Margareth Anne Victoria Aguilar Watts. I was born in Manila, Philippines on the 21st of April 1993. My fully Filipino mother had just finished her last year of university at La Salle. She had written her final exams while she was pregnant with me, at the age of 21, with all the support of her classmates and professors, and given birth to me without her mother's knowledge of me. My father was 18 years old, cute-faced, half American, half Vietnamese, and in a filipino Boyband (which explains my singing talents).
Of course it's not something small to find out that the person I thought was my sister my whole life is actually my mom, I have a half-brother who I've always thought was my nephew, and that my grandparents had taken me from her after birth, gone to Alabat to get a fake birth certificate on May 1, 1993, under the name "Margaret Decena Alpajora" and taken me to Botswana as their own child, because my "mother" thought it would become a scandal if anybody were to find out that my "sister" had given birth to me when she did, unmarried and jobless (especially with my dad still being so young), but after the initial shock (during which I could do nothing but laugh), it was cool.
They did it for her, and for me. I've lived a great life and like I said, I wouldn't have chosen to live it any other way (even though I'm a quarter American, and have always dreamed of going to an American high school and having a real fancy prom hehe). I still love everybody exactly the same way I did before I knew, and I still call them the same way too. My sis being my sis, and my parents being my parents, cuz after all they are the one's who raised me.
Apparently a lot of people have known. My older cousins, my younger cousins, my aunts and uncles, even some of my friends (cuz of Ron)! My "mother" didn't know that of course. She's been very afraid of it getting out, especially to me. They all thought I would freak out and that they would lose me or something. However, my older cousins have been telling my "sister" for years to tell me the truth, but she's been afraid I wouldn't be able to take it, and with me almost 18 already, she decided it was time, and we celebrated my real birthday there in SA with some Margaritas! ^_^
My father's side of the family, along with a lot of my real God Parents (what we Pinoys call Ninongs & Ninangs), has been kept in the dark from me all my life. I never knew a Victor Watts.
He's crazy & behaves like a total retard, just like me. An adult with a teenage brain, just like I know I will have. He's currently in a relationship with a Japanese woman named Sachi Ooking (and anybody who really knows me knows that I think Japan is the awesomest place ever, with the coolest people in the world), and is a Mixologist (fancy word for the cool Bartender who makes all the awesome mixed drinks). We don't talk much, but judging from all our posts, we're very similar. He's admitted to one of the people I keep closest to me that he was afraid I would hate him because of the fact that I've never known him, but I think he's awesome and I think it's great that I know him now. I hope to visit him during my Gap year, next year. That'd be awesome. He said he thinks I'm cool once. It made me smile =)
"I've come to the conclusion that I like you... you're kewl =P"So yeah, that's pretty much where I end this (for now maybe). It's late and my back hurts from sitting at the laptop too long. Hehe.
My name is Margareth Anne Victoria Aguilar Watts, and this is the life I never knew.
Bless Your Face
xxx ♥ xxx
