Everything in this house was shared. - By Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera

Written By: Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera

Category: Creative Non-Fiction

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Delve into the intricacies of familial bonds through the poignant lens of Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera's creative non-fiction piece, "Everything in this house was shared." Featured as part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, this touching narrative explores the theme of shared spaces and possessions within a family, inviting readers to reflect on the intimacy and complexities of growing up in a household where everything is shared yet uniquely personal. Valera's work is a testament to the power of memories and emotions woven into the fabric of family life.

About the Work

In "Everything in this house was shared," Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera captures the essence of familial love and shared intimacy. This piece is an eloquent reflection on the dynamics of growing up in a household where everything, from personal space to possessions, is shared. Through vivid imagery and a thoughtful narrative style, Valera invites readers to ponder the meaning of belonging, the nuances of love, and the comfort found in familiar chaos. The work resonates with authenticity and emotional depth, making it a memorable exploration of family life.

Everything in this house was shared.

Original Submission by Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera

Everything in this house was shared.

In our family, very little was ever mine.

This was true of clothes, mostly. Shoes. Bags. Toys. Things that arrived in the house still carrying the faint excitement of being new, but somehow never quite belonged to me. My ate would get them first. A new dress, a pair of shoes, something she had pointed at in a store and wanted badly for someone to buy. She would wear it until she grew taller, older, bored, or simply tired of it. And then, one day, it would appear in my closet.

“Sa’yo na lang.”

That was usually how it happened.

Not with ceremony. Not with a ribbon or a paper bag or the particular kind of excitement reserved for something purchased specifically for you. Just a quiet transfer of ownership, as ordinary as handing someone a plate after you finished eating.

I learned early not to ask whether something had been bought for me. It usually hadn’t.

And perhaps because of that, I became strangely good at receiving things without asking where they had been before me. I learned which clothes still carried the shape of my ate’s shoulders. Which shoes had already softened around someone else’s feet. Which bags had little scratches that were not mine. I learned to tell myself that new did not necessarily mean better, and that something did not have to begin with me to belong to me.

There was a particular kind of childhood in that.

One where you understood, even before you had the vocabulary for it, that resources had histories. That things moved through a family. That nothing was wasted if someone else could still use it. Perhaps this was practical. Perhaps it was simply how our household worked. Perhaps there were perfectly reasonable explanations for why the new things always seemed to arrive in someone else’s hands first.

Still, there were moments when I wanted to know what it felt like to receive something that had my name on it from the beginning.

Not ‘her old one.’

Not ‘she doesn’t use it anymore.’

Not ‘it still looks good on you.’

Mine.

Something that had never belonged to anybody else.

I don’t remember ever making a great tragedy out of it. Children are strange that way. We adapt to this shape of the rooms we are given. Eventually, you stop noticing the corner where you keep bumping your shoulder.

And ours was a house where you learned quickly that there were very few corners that belonged only to you.

Privacy, for one, was mostly theoretical.

Doors were suggestions. Rooms were shared territory. Conversations travelled through walls whether you wanted them to or not. Someone could enter your space without knocking and somehow still be offended if you looked surprised. If you were crying, somebody would eventually notice. If you were angry, somebody would ask why. If you were on the phone, there was always the possibility of another voice appearing from somewhere nearby.

There was no such thing as having a secret thought for very long.

We knew one another’s schedules, habits, moods, arguments, mistakes. We knew who was annoyed with whom before anyone announced it. We could tell from the sound of a cupboard closing whether someone was merely putting something away or was, in fact, ‘putting something away.’

Even silence was public.

And breakfast was rarely quiet.

Some families wake to the smell of coffee and the soft clatter of plates. Ours sometimes woke to somebody shouting from one room to another.

‘NASAN YUNG—’

‘BAKIT MO KINUHA—’

‘AKALA KO BA—’

‘OO NA!’

A question shouted from the kitchen would receive an answer from the bedroom. Someone would complain about someone else. Someone would laugh. Someone would yell louder because the first person apparently had not heard them. Chairs scraped against the floor. Spoons struck against the bowls. The television talked over everybody. Somebody would be looking for something that was directly in front of them.

Our breakfasts were not peaceful.

They were loud and alive.

Sometimes the shouting was funny.

Sometimes it wasn’t.

Sometimes it was the kind that made you want to disappear into your food and become very small until everyone had finished being angry. Sometimes it was simply the household’s peculiar dialect: a way of communicating that sounded violent from the outside but meant something entirely different when you had grown up inside it.

In our house, “nasaan ka?” could mean ‘I’m looking for you.’

“Kumain ka na?” could mean ‘I remembered you.’

“Umuwi ka na.” could mean ‘It’s getting late, and I want you home.’

Even “Ang ingay mo!” could be followed five minutes later by someone saving you the last piece of whatever was on the table.

Love did not always arrive quietly.

Sometimes it slammed a cabinet.

Sometimes it complained about the electric bill while putting food on your plate.

Sometimes it asked why you were taking so long in the bathroom.

Sometimes it told you to bring an umbrella because it looked like rain.

There were days when I wanted a family that spoke softly. One where people knocked before entering, where everyone understood that a locked bathroom meant ‘please give me a moment,’ where breakfast was eaten without arguments echoing from one end of the house to the other. I wanted, perhaps, the kind of home where privacy was treated as a right instead of an unusual request.

But I think there is something peculiar about growing up in a family that shares too much.

You become fluent in one another.

You know the sound of someone's footsteps before you see them. You know when the refrigerator opens because someone is looking for food and when it opens because someone is avoiding a conversation. You know who will fall asleep first during a movie. You know who will complain about the heat and who will open the fan. You know who likes the crispier piece of fried chicken and who will quietly take the smaller one.

You know things without being told.

And sometimes, that is its own kind of intimacy.

The strange thing is that even now, when I think about childhood, I do not remember the hand-me-downs as much as I remember the hands that passed them to me.

I remember being told that something was mine now.

I remember trying on clothes that had once belonged to someone taller than me.

I remember the little thrill of discovering that something old could still feel new if you had wanted it long enough.

Perhaps I was learning something without knowing it: that love does not always arrive in its first form.

Sometimes it reaches you after being worn in by somebody else. Sometimes it comes with scratches. Sometimes it is slightly faded. Sometimes it is not exactly what you would have chosen from the shelf.

And yet you wear it.

You keep it.

you grow into it.

And maybe, in our family, love was like that too.

We did not always know how to give each other things in the neat, individual ways people are supposed to. We did not always know when to knock. We did not always lower our voices. We did not always understand that someone could love you and still need to be left alone.

We shared space because there was nowhere else to put ourselves.

We shared food because there was always someone asking what was left.

We shared stories because keeping things to yourself was nearly impossible.

We shared anger.

We shared laughter.

We shared the television remote like it was a constitutional dispute.

We shared everything.

And then Christmas came.

Every year, somehow, Christmas arrived at our house with the same impossible confidence, as though the year had not been difficult, as though everyone had not spent months getting on one another's nerves, as though the walls had not heard arguments and apologies and doors being closed a little harder than necessary.

The house would change.

Lights would appear.

Food would multiply.

Someone would be preparing something in the kitchen while someone else complained that they were preparing it incorrectly. People would come in carrying bags. Somebody would ask where something was. Somebody would shout for somebody else. There would be too many slippers by the door and too many voices in the same room.

And somehow, in the middle of all that noise, we would celebrate.

We would sit together. We would eat. We would open gifts.

And for one evening, it did not matter who had received something first.

It did not matter whose old clothes I had worn. It did not matter who had shouted at whom that morning. We were all there.

Sometimes I think that is the contradiction I have spent years trying to understand.

How can a house be so crowded and still make you lonely?

How can people know everything about you and still misunderstand you?

How can a family make you desperate for distance and make you ache for them the moment you have it?

How can the same people who make you want to slam your bedroom door be the people you look for when something wonderful happens?

I don't know if there is a clean answer.

Families, perhaps, are not clean things.

They are accumulations.

Old habits passed down like clothes. Phrases inherited without anyone remembering who first said them. Recipes changed slightly each generation. Grudges that outlive the reason for having them. Jokes nobody outside the family understands. Ways of loving that are imperfect because the people doing the loving are imperfect too.

We inherit more than belongings.

We inherit ways of speaking.

Ways of fighting.

Ways of forgiving.

Ways of staying.

And perhaps growing up means deciding what to keep wearing.

Some things no longer fit.

Some things were never ours to begin with.

Some things, however, are worth mending.

So when I think of those years now, I don't want to romanticize them. I don't want to pretend that being loved makes every difficult thing harmless. There were things I wished had been different. There were things I needed that I did not always know how to ask for. There were moments when I wanted the quiet, the privacy, the certainty of having something that was mine and mine alone.

But I also cannot pretend that the house was empty of love.

It was overflowing with it.

Messy, loud, inconvenient love. The kind that woke you up by shouting your name from another room. The kind that entered without knocking. The kind that handed you something only after someone else had finished with it and said, without ceremony, ‘sa’yo na lang.’ The kind that did not always know how to say ‘I love you,’ but somehow always knew when you had not eaten.

And perhaps that is why I still think of Christmas with them.

Because for all the things our family did not know how to give me in the exact form I once wanted, they gave me something else: a place to return to.

Not a perfect home.

Not a quiet one.

Not one where everything belonged to me.

But one where, somehow, there was always room for me among the noise.

And maybe that is why, every Christmas, when the house becomes too loud and the table becomes too full and someone is inevitably shouting from the kitchen, I find myself smiling.

Because there are some things you spend your whole life trying to outgrow, only to realize that they have grown into you instead.

The hand-me-down clothes.

The crowded rooms.

The breakfasts that sounded like arguments.

The doors that were never really closed.

The voices calling from one end of the house to the other.

The family that did not always understand the word privacy.

And still, when December comes, when the lights go up, when everyone gathers around the same table, when somebody shouts my name from the other room because they need help with something completely unnecessary, I answer.

I always answer.

Because perhaps home was never the place where everything was mine.

Perhaps it was the place where, no matter how loud the house became, there was always someone calling for me.

And at the end of the day, everyone is still home for Christmas.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, hosted by Hashtag Kalakar, is a prestigious platform celebrating the diverse voices and creative expressions of writers worldwide. This competition provides a stage for participants to showcase their literary talents across various categories, including poetry, short stories, essays, and creative writing. It is a celebration of creativity and storytelling, encouraging writers to share their unique perspectives with a global audience.

Thank you, Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera, for sharing "Everything in this house was shared" with the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Your evocative narrative offers a heartfelt glimpse into the shared spaces and intimate bonds of family life. It is contributions like yours that enrich the tapestry of our creative community. We appreciate your participation and look forward to seeing more of your insightful work.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.