I think I am beautiful. I have a beautiful body, which I think is very dangerous and invites advances that scare me. But in private, I love my body for its beautiful brown skin and long legs. I love my petite body, it is very feminine and sensual. I can be powerfully beautiful if I want to be.
I love thinking about the spirits around me that guide me and protect me and keep me strong through hard times. I like to call upon ancestors to be with me when I feel weak. I feel stronger when I think of them. I feel that there is more to life than being around people. But that in my solitude, I am most content and secure, to live in my imagination and be with my invisible companions that know me without me having to explain myself. I can write and say things out loud because they hear me and they don’t judge me or try to critique me or take things the wrong way because they know I’m just trying to figure things out.
I love animals and the feelings of deeper communication I have with them. This sense of overwhelming love is accompanied with understanding of their truth, not hidden by a façade. Their love is strong and I trust them easier, than people. Animals are simple. Their characters are not fake but, their true spirits showing.
I think a part of me is struggling to love myself and be secure in myself because I feel I need to check the way my true self shows. I am hesitant to be my true self because I don’t want to come off too perky, too ignorant, too internally oppressed. Especially in this environment of critique, I feel like I need to be careful of what I say. My truth becomes target for scrutiny. I try to dig deeper to find a more solid sense of self. That’s what I’m working on when I am silent. Yet, I feel like I need to talk. But that’s not true. I feel like I need to prove my bravery in participation and hold on to what I said as some kind of measurement of how I did participating. This is some kind of insecurity. Inferiority complex, competitiveness. Comparison to others. Desire to be wanted, idealized, to be successful, to live up to expectations that I am doing something worthwhile. Some kind of marker that my path to struggle is worthwhile and not some kind of mistake. Or that I am not doomed to despair by feeling this life as the only kind I have interest in. One of those doomed geniuses. I am depressed because all of these markers of internal oppressions that was part of my life that I cannot erase. The violence, the ignorance, the passions I have, the dreams, the comfort, the safety in nuclear, comfortable, middle class family, the guilt of being fed and safe unlike many others and how that continued because I kept quiet. But also the guilt because I was part of violence and didn’t say anything enough. I wasn’t arrested by the cops enough. Yet, I feel the pain enough.
Although it wasn’t blatantly directed toward me like constant sexual abuse, or stalking in racist community violence, but just as traumatic feelings I experienced growing up seeing violence play out in relationships idealized to be safe and loving. Thinking about cultures that don’t critique it, but perpetuate it. Me being in it, complicit in being of that culture, not feeling anyway to release the pain of being part of pain. So I am depressed. I am envious. I wish I was better to escape this pain, for a moment, a chance to feel free from my self, this life I was born into, this mediocre, middle class life of a kinda pretty, exotic looking girl to you—what the fuck does she have to cry about—this is what I have to cry about—being lied to that my life is a cover up for hundred years of pain that my body gets to remember living in luxurious sheets, lying in this medicated part of the world, sensitized with the desensitized, separated from the world that people call death, every fucker for themselves world. My life is just one of those sporadic moments of accidents. Out of the blue, a pang of pain, a random slap in the face in the nice family behind the white picket fence dream. I grew up in a suburban Hawaii, took a trip to the Philippines and hated it. Slept all day in my aunty’s bed listening to R&B rather than listen to them speak flip and eat their fucken kalding. Or fucken dog. Those sick bastards. This is my life of lies, of lying that I love myself. I love myself so much I shut up when my dad insults my mom for having a protruding tummy, telling her she isn’t beautiful. I shut up because I love myself to not get my hair tossled in the violent wind of papa’s Pilipino machismo, the wind of anger the tornado of culture and memory whirring in him of his father’s spirit that spite him because he stuttered as a young boy. This violence I sit pretty on my fucken pedestal. But as it wobbles of all the commotion under me, I am fearful where I am above. I’m fucken scared you bastards. Scared of being pretty, old me, pretty, educated, world traveling, yoga doing, spiritual practicing me. All lies to cover up history that pricks through this silk blanket of sleep. Dreams poke me. Don’t be surprised that I look like such a sassy ass bitch.
I love thinking about the spirits around me that guide me and protect me and keep me strong through hard times. I like to call upon ancestors to be with me when I feel weak. I feel stronger when I think of them. I feel that there is more to life than being around people. But that in my solitude, I am most content and secure, to live in my imagination and be with my invisible companions that know me without me having to explain myself. I can write and say things out loud because they hear me and they don’t judge me or try to critique me or take things the wrong way because they know I’m just trying to figure things out.
I love animals and the feelings of deeper communication I have with them. This sense of overwhelming love is accompanied with understanding of their truth, not hidden by a façade. Their love is strong and I trust them easier, than people. Animals are simple. Their characters are not fake but, their true spirits showing.
I think a part of me is struggling to love myself and be secure in myself because I feel I need to check the way my true self shows. I am hesitant to be my true self because I don’t want to come off too perky, too ignorant, too internally oppressed. Especially in this environment of critique, I feel like I need to be careful of what I say. My truth becomes target for scrutiny. I try to dig deeper to find a more solid sense of self. That’s what I’m working on when I am silent. Yet, I feel like I need to talk. But that’s not true. I feel like I need to prove my bravery in participation and hold on to what I said as some kind of measurement of how I did participating. This is some kind of insecurity. Inferiority complex, competitiveness. Comparison to others. Desire to be wanted, idealized, to be successful, to live up to expectations that I am doing something worthwhile. Some kind of marker that my path to struggle is worthwhile and not some kind of mistake. Or that I am not doomed to despair by feeling this life as the only kind I have interest in. One of those doomed geniuses. I am depressed because all of these markers of internal oppressions that was part of my life that I cannot erase. The violence, the ignorance, the passions I have, the dreams, the comfort, the safety in nuclear, comfortable, middle class family, the guilt of being fed and safe unlike many others and how that continued because I kept quiet. But also the guilt because I was part of violence and didn’t say anything enough. I wasn’t arrested by the cops enough. Yet, I feel the pain enough.
Although it wasn’t blatantly directed toward me like constant sexual abuse, or stalking in racist community violence, but just as traumatic feelings I experienced growing up seeing violence play out in relationships idealized to be safe and loving. Thinking about cultures that don’t critique it, but perpetuate it. Me being in it, complicit in being of that culture, not feeling anyway to release the pain of being part of pain. So I am depressed. I am envious. I wish I was better to escape this pain, for a moment, a chance to feel free from my self, this life I was born into, this mediocre, middle class life of a kinda pretty, exotic looking girl to you—what the fuck does she have to cry about—this is what I have to cry about—being lied to that my life is a cover up for hundred years of pain that my body gets to remember living in luxurious sheets, lying in this medicated part of the world, sensitized with the desensitized, separated from the world that people call death, every fucker for themselves world. My life is just one of those sporadic moments of accidents. Out of the blue, a pang of pain, a random slap in the face in the nice family behind the white picket fence dream. I grew up in a suburban Hawaii, took a trip to the Philippines and hated it. Slept all day in my aunty’s bed listening to R&B rather than listen to them speak flip and eat their fucken kalding. Or fucken dog. Those sick bastards. This is my life of lies, of lying that I love myself. I love myself so much I shut up when my dad insults my mom for having a protruding tummy, telling her she isn’t beautiful. I shut up because I love myself to not get my hair tossled in the violent wind of papa’s Pilipino machismo, the wind of anger the tornado of culture and memory whirring in him of his father’s spirit that spite him because he stuttered as a young boy. This violence I sit pretty on my fucken pedestal. But as it wobbles of all the commotion under me, I am fearful where I am above. I’m fucken scared you bastards. Scared of being pretty, old me, pretty, educated, world traveling, yoga doing, spiritual practicing me. All lies to cover up history that pricks through this silk blanket of sleep. Dreams poke me. Don’t be surprised that I look like such a sassy ass bitch.
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