cathlea cathalei

     I read a post on Facebook about a woman riding a local bus, fell asleep and woke up and realized that the man beside her is already touching her. She didn’t know what to do, she even pretended to be asleep, hoping he’d stop. She did however, fought back but that’s after he touched her so many times during the span of her commute.

      I had a similar experience on a bus 2 years ago, sadly, we say na dapat 'ganito' ginawa mo o 'ganyan'. I AM TELLING YOU, that’s not how it goes.  I can relate to this girl na pag nandun ka na sa situation, di ka agad makakalaban. Hindi kasi ito violent attack na physical tulad ng suntok or an attack that calls your attention like 'holdap toh- akin na wallet mo'. This is COMPLETELY different. It is so discreet it confuses the victim. I questioned myself like her that time if:

'Ako lang ba toh?'. 'OA lang ata ako'. 'Is this really happening?' 'Is he intentionally touching me?' 'I don't want to make a scene'. 'What if Im wrong'. 'Someone help me'

     There should be seminars that focus on these discreet attack. Training a mindset to deal with it properly and make the pervert stop.

     This is different. 

     The people who never experienced this kind of vile victim cornering and harrassment can never understand how it feels like na sana may mas nagawa pa kami when it was happening.

     Recently na lang ako naging palaban like knocking my shoulder to a groin of an old pervert because of self defense krav maga and the trust I have for myself na pag nanlaban pa toh, alam ko makakalaban ako.

     But we need a practice, a seminar, a kind of self defense tactics for women to snap out of it when it is happening already and fight back. I am an advocate of self defense for women because I had numerous bad experiences like these since I was a kid. You have no idea. This needs to be dealt with.

-Aki

         Lately I easily lose my temper on simple things. I get irritated when somebody shoves me accidentally during commutes, finding a spot to tie my shoes in crowded gym lockers, machines that works slowly, traffic, rain and even just people talking too loud in the office. I would normally throw a fit on bigger stuff like dealing with perverts & the likes but not on small stuff. I figured maybe because I stopped writing. I stopped writing down anything in my mind even in private, like my journal, because I’m too busy with bigger things. Writing helps us sort things out, it is also an outlet and often times it makes me reflect and maintain intrapersonal stability of character. So lets keep writing and reading. Oh! How sometimes its hard to balance what is healthy for my introvert side. Can you relate?

Aki

          Back when I was younger, my mother tells stories about how she and my father met and when they finally married each other. I would always listen intently with my siblings and dream and laugh about the details they share. But I remembered she told us a story about her long time childhood love, back when she was in High School, who she named Anton. This is a funny story as it had been stuck in our memories.

         She would describe him as I would describe a series of little boys in my memory that I claim to love when I was a child. She told me they never had a conversation nor she got too close to him. She would always wonder from a distance how to be Anton’s girl one day. We can all relate to this right? 

          Anyway, during their High School prom, there was a segment of the program when all girls are lined up and all the boys would ask each and every girl to dance with them. My mother’s eyes were gleaming as she tells the story in detail as if she is reliving the moment. “We had small name tags then to put our nicknames on”. She said laughing, “Everybody in the school knows me as Corazon, but I used my family nickname instead and wrote ‘Nott”. Her expression changed a bit when she revealed that when the exciting thing was about to happen when Anton would finally ask her to dance, he skipped the line and went for the other girl beside my mother instead. She said, she never understood why he did that. Anton danced with all of the ladies except her. She was waiting for that moment but it never happened that night. 

        My mother actually just speculates that maybe Anton freaked out since he had the name tag “Ton” and my mother has somewhat a reversed version of his name as ‘Nott” but she was known as Corazon. “Maybe he thinks I was too desperate. But I didn’t know he’s going to put ‘Ton’ ”. I believe that no man has ever figured my mother back then because she was quiet, demure and conservative. Her story stuck to me as it was on her with all the WHYs she and I could think of. 

          Years had passed, I already have a job and I had more brothers and sisters. My mother needed to visit her province to see my grandmother because she was ill. She headed to the province first before the rest of our family because my siblings needed to finish the weekday classes. And when we got there to see our Grandma and celebrated a bit for family reunion with relatives, she told us her sisters has news with Anton. I was like “Oh, yeah that one. The one with the big WHY. Haha!” , my mother smiled mildly but with still eyes, “I guess we will never know now. he’s dead”.

       I was taken aback learning about the news, as if finding out a death of a character from a childhood storybook. Apparently, Anton was hit by a car few weeks before my mother visited her hometown. 

I felt bad. 

The stories from childhood, unanswered question in our heads as to why he didn’t took my mother’s hand to dance that night would always be a mystery to all of us. I don’t vouch for them or their ‘supposed’ love story.. I was curious for his reason. An answer. A small closure. It kinda felt like the cliff-hanger of our childhood storybook from my mother’s experience was actually an ending after all. I guess not every almost lover has an almost closure and that’s why I go get an answer for every bit of ‘whys’ with my relationship to friends, lover & family. You’ll never know what will haunt you.

Aki

             An ability of anything or anyone that bounces back after it was stressed, compressed, bent or knocked down, but still goes back to its original form. I believe that people change and I also believe in the fact that we don’t. These aspects co-exist in every individual that most times people feel lost.  

            As complex beings that we are, it is essential to take a step back when everything is overwhelming, though that doesn’t mean you stop following your dreams. Choose to listen to the voice that cheers for you mid-day than the ones that tell you what you are at 2AM. 

            Resilience is practiced and attained every day depending on what you tell yourself when you’re with other people or on social media and what you tell yourself when you’re alone. Depending on the faults you’ve done and learned from and the right things you chose. To the bad experiences that are burnt to your core or the good memories that shape your morality, and that of what challenged who you are.

Resilience is a skill attained depending on your experience.

Feb 16, 2017

--Ernest Hemingway

Or I’m just really getting old. :|