Por Qué

Inside my head, I’ve built another life—a place without maps, only sensations. In this imagined world, I run barefoot, drawn instinctively toward light, water, and wind. My body responds to the elements, my mind softens, and something ancient within me begins to stir.

Slowly, those scattered sensations began to take shape. A street here, a window there. Walls rising, paths winding, light falling across stone. What started as feeling became form, until, without meaning to, I had built a city.

Over time, this city I’ve created has started to come alive whenever I speak Spanish. It breathes when I think in the language—not as a means of translation, but as something more elemental, more embodied. Spanish stopped being a bridge to something else and became a kind of home once I learned how to let meaning live inside the words themselves. I stopped reaching for equivalents and began to feel the language from the inside. And it was in that quiet shift—when I began to think within Spanish rather than across it—that the city in my mind began to truly breathe.

For almost a year, I tried to bring this alternate universe into the physical world by attempting to move away from my own country and start a life in Spain. I wanted the slow mornings. I wanted the cafecito. I wanted to take siestas and feel the blaring heat on my skin—maybe even tan, something my Asian mother would absolutely lose her mind over. I wanted to walk on cobblestone streets and pensar—to think about the history, the loss, the power. To reflect on how I, in my own quiet way, might reclaim something for the Indigenous Filipinos who were wiped out, forgotten, overwritten. I gave this dream my full heart, believing that maybe this imagined world could finally become real. Something I could meet in person. Something I could stand inside.

And maybe, if I keep trying—if I keep building toward it—I can create something that lasts. Not just for me, but for someone else, too. Maybe I can leave behind a trail of breadcrumbs for another Filipino, dreaming up their own alternate universe. Maybe it won’t look like a city the way mine does. Maybe it’ll take another shape entirely. But the longing, the search, the quiet hope—maybe that part will feel familiar.

The documents were difficult to obtain—it felt like jumping through endless hoops just to get a single piece of paper. They were expensive, and I found myself caught between two bureaucracies—Filipino and Spanish—each as frustrating and tangled as the other. It was months of stress, tears, anxiety... and long nights of extra work just to fund the move. And the documents? They were only a morsel of the journey.

No one ever talks about this part—the ugly, exhausting side of chasing a dream. It felt almost hostile at times. Both governments were unkind, unwelcoming. Almost unwilling to help.

There are hundreds—maybe thousands—of people who’ve built cities in their minds, just to imagine a better life. I was just another one of them.

But in those long months of preparation, despite everything, I held on to the hope that one day—when all the documents were finally submitted and assessed—I would’ve done something real. I would’ve taken one true step toward bringing my city to life.

But even after all the paperwork was finally submitted, the wait dragged on. The embassy had my passport, and with it, it felt like they were also holding my breath. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. My days blurred into one another, my mind circling around the same anxious thoughts. I felt like my heart had turned into a pufferfish—swelling with tension, on the verge of bursting from the pressure.

And then, quietly, without ceremony, the answer arrived.

No one ever talks about the sadness that comes with a visa denial. Maybe because not everyone in the world ever has to experience it. It’s a unique kind of grief—a letter that only people from third world countries really understand. A cold, official document telling you why you can’t enter a country you’ve dreamed of living in. As if the invisible borders on a map had suddenly grown into real, solid walls—ones you can’t climb, can’t pass, can’t talk your way through.

And I just sat there, holding that piece of paper after the mailman handed it to me. Half relieved. Half devastated. Suspended in this strange, quiet moment where it felt like the world around me was melting.

Not everything works out the way it should. The visa was denied. A chapter in my novel of dreams was abruptly shut.

And the city? This philosophical metaphor for freedom—for understanding and accepting myself—it stays in my mind. For now.

It took me a few months to mourn the loss. I had built a city in my mind—my own cobblestone streets and stone walls. Something alive, something ancient. A place that needed no translation. Even after the visa denial, the city remained. I thought I would simply let it go. That I’d stop thinking in Spanish. That I’d move on, continue with my life, maybe take a break from all the dreaming, the building, the wondering.

But then I thought of all the people who had made this city possible. Within this imagined place, I had built real relationships—across countries, across time zones. I had come to understand and accept another culture. I met modern-day Spanish people who were kind, joyful, and in many ways, quietly apologetic for what their empire once did to mine and so many others. They showed me that the city doesn’t have to die just because I couldn’t physically be there.

They reminded me that the city can stay alive—not only in place, but in connection. It can remain in my mind, because across all the borders, something real had already taken root. Something that still breathes. So, with another visa—a more common one this time—I returned to Spain. Maybe to finally see it the way I had always imagined: slow, sunny, and free. I came back as a tourist, just another holidaymaker. And on that first day, as my feet touched the ground, it felt like something was being gently tied up—loose ends from a dream that never fully came true. Maybe now, I thought, I can finally begin to stop mourning the loss.

And I—a Filipino—imagined an alternate universe in that same country, one where I could finally be free. I dreamt with both eyes open, holding on to the vision as tightly as Spain once held on to my homeland for over 300 years.

In all its 300 years of suffering, and now, more than half a century into the modern world, I gathered hundreds of documents and marched into the embassy, hoping for a chance at something more. Something new. Something of my own.

And even though that chance was denied, something lingered. The dream didn’t vanish. It shifted. Because now, standing in the very country that once denied me, I see the strange paradox of it all—how the place that once conquered us could also be the space where I’ve begun to reclaim parts of myself. Not through conquest, but through language. Through connection. Through living memory.

I’m still walking through the version of Spain I once built in my mind. Slowly. Cautiously. As a visitor, yes—but one who knows exactly what she’s looking for. The door has been opened now, and the ancient language lives in my mind. It continues to reveal pieces of my history—slowly, gently—as I discover more words and learn how to string them together into meaning. Spanish is still foreign. Still borrowed. But I’m no longer mourning the fact that my body and the language cannot live in the same place at once.

Because I’ve come to understand that the dream doesn’t have to end. The chapter doesn’t have to close.

I’m keeping it open.

To exit now means something different. It means I get to keep moving.

Hace dos años, vi mi primer partido de fútbol femenino. Normalmente, no tenía interés en el deporte. Pero en ese momento, el partido era gratis en la tele. Es una explicación sencilla, y fue un día muy normal.

Ese primer partido no fue solo un partido para mí. Me senté frente a la tele, con los ojos bien abiertos. Cuando vi la final de La Roja contra las Lionesses, mi vida cambió para siempre. Es una sensación difícil de explicar. Los movimientos eran como poesía y las jugadoras parecían bailarinas con el balón. No podía creer que en ese momento sentía felicidad, catarsis y un poco de pena… emociones muy profundas.

Al final, La Roja ganó el Mundial. Y yo… esperé las entrevistas con las jugadoras sobre las tácticas del partido. Cuando empezaron, no pude oír nada… o mejor dicho, no entendía nada. ¿Por qué? El sonido de la tele era solo en español. Yo pensé: ¿por qué no hablan en inglés? … Pausa.

Bueno.

La escritora probó escribir en otro idioma. Esta vez, en español… o algo así. Me di cuenta de que la pena en mi alma es solo un vacío de conexiones con otras personas.

Quizás, si tengo algo con qué llenarlo, ¿seré más feliz?

Lo busco… o las personas tienen razones para aprender, para viajar…

In the eyes of many, I am what they call a high flyer. I’ve made something of myself. I’m more successful now, maybe even richer. My English is better—noticeably better. It’s refined, deliberate. I’ve shaped it to be clear, smooth, unaccented. Western. If you closed your eyes and heard me speak, you might think I grew up in the United States. I have that unmistakable twang, that well-trained rise and fall in tone.

But the truth is—I’ve never been there. I’ve never even set foot on American soil.

What I am is a functioning polyglot. I carry two Filipino languages in my bones—Bisaya and Tagalog—one learned at home, one learned in school, both layered into me since childhood . I move through English at a C2 level, with ease and grace, because it’s the language that gave me room to expand. I’ve studied Spanish enough to carry myself in conversation, and Mandarin floats at the edges of my memory from two long, effortful years of study. My brain doesn’t cling to just one world—it’s learned to switch, to adapt. It has developed what I can only describe as a kind of inter-culturality. A mental agility. I don’t just speak languages; I speak contexts. I read rooms. I shift between cultures, wearing whichever identity fits best—or threatens least—in any given moment.

And sometimes, I wonder if I’ve shifted too far. I wonder if I’ve crossed a line that makes me feel distant from my own people. Too Western, they say. Too liberated. Too sharp-tongued, too unafraid. Too much. I started to feel it myself—that ache of not being able to fully belong. So, I tried to close the gap. I went back to the culture I feared I had drifted from. I watched more Filipino media. I immersed myself again in Tagalog and Bisaya—not just to understand, but to feel. I memorized lines from sitcoms, soaked in songs on loop.

I wanted to understand the jokes. I wanted to laugh with people, not after them. I wanted to feel like I was speaking with them, not at them.

They told me I was a funny girl. In the context of being Filipino—I am.

But when I switch back to English, something else happens. The words come faster. The thoughts are clearer. I’m more precise. More articulate. I express myself better in English, and I know it. It’s the language I argue in. It’s the language I cry in when no one’s listening. It’s the language I use when I need to make myself heard without apology.

My English is so good that I married an Englishman. When we argue, when emotions run high, I don’t stumble. My fluency sharpens. My tongue does not falter. “You’re not really Filipino,” he says sometimes—not with cruelty, but as a description. “Your values… your thinking… you’re more Western than you are Filipino.”

Others have said the same thing. And every time, it slices a little differently.

As if I am not one person. As if I am two. Split. Compartmentalized. As if the versions of myself are separate containers I pour into depending on the room I’m in.

But I don’t see it that way. This is not duplicity—it is survival. It’s my mind doing what it has always done: adapting, negotiating, trying to find the safest place to land. Saying what needs to be said. Speaking in the language that people will take seriously. Becoming what is most believable in the moment.

Sometimes I wonder if this is just the legacy of colonialism. This instinct to be pliable. This learned desire to please, to bend, to become whatever version of myself others can accept. Sometimes it feels like servitude dressed up as sophistication.

And I grieve that.

Because how sad it is—that even as a young, successful, and dare I say, bright woman from the Philippines—here, in the city where I live now, in Taipei—when I say, I’m Filipino, people fall silent. It’s subtle, but I see it. I feel it. The shift in posture, the pause in conversation, the soft recoil of expectation.

Because in this place, “Filipino” carries a label that doesn’t belong to me, but sticks to me anyway.

Here, we are seen as caretakers. Housekeepers. Factory workers. Illegals. Underpaid teachers shuttled from one cram school to the next. The loud ones crowding Zhongshan Street on weekends, carrying remittance envelopes and karaoke dreams. We are background noise. Disposable labor. A tolerated presence.

And when I walk into the Filipino corner store, when I quietly buy Silver Swan soy sauce, I feel myself become invisible. No accent. No polish. No C2-level anything. I am just another body among the many. Just another annoying Filipino.

I carry that invisibility with me.

Even when I speak fluently. Even when I earn well. Even when I hold degrees and visas and a western surname. Even when I speak Spanish or smile politely in Mandarin, or write essays like this one.

I carry the shame that was never mine to begin with. And this shame—it is deep. It doesn’t just sit on the surface of my skin; it seeps into the parts of me that I wish could be proud. It catches in my throat whenever someone tries to guess where I’m from. I smile, politely, tightly—bracing.

My mind races. Please don’t say it. Please don’t guess it. Please, oh god, don’t say you think I’m Filipino.

Because once they know, the story shifts. The shape I take in their eyes changes. Suddenly I am no longer the funny girl with the perfect English or the clever one who navigates cultures with ease. Suddenly I become someone else. Someone smaller. Simpler. Easier to categorize.

The other day, I spoke to another Englishman—a friend of my husband’s. We were talking casually, light conversation, until he mentioned how he once had Filipinos clean his apartment. “They do such a good job,” he said. “There were four of them. They even wiped down the walls. I paid cheap. They work very hard.”

They. As if I am not one of them.

As if I am standing safely outside the story he’s telling.

But I’m not.

I am them. I am of them. I carry their blood, their laughter, their language. And yet, in that moment, I was just a third body in the room—something neutral. Something disassociated. It felt strange, almost surreal, to hear my people spoken about that way. Admired, yes, but only in the way one admires a service. A convenience. An efficiency.

He meant it as a compliment.

But it landed like an erasure.

And in that moment, I felt stripped. Exposed. As if all the languages I had learned, all the accents I had refined, all the jokes I could tell—they didn’t matter. Because before I am anything else, I am Filipino. And to many, that means one thing.

Subservient. Cheap. Grateful to be here.

But I refuse to let this be the ending to our story.

Because the narrative doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t have to be this way.

And I am tired—so tired—of having to prove, again and again, that being Filipino does not mean being small.

Being Filipino can mean so much more.

It can mean me.

Someone working hard—not to be better than my own people, but better than the limits the world keeps placing on us. Someone who has learned to speak the language of power while still humming the songs of home. Someone trying, every day, to be more than what the label suggests.

In the distance, thousands of miles away, around the globe, Filipinos leave the country of their birth—not because they do not love it, but because it has failed to love them back in the ways they deserve. We leave to survive. To send money home. To seek something less cruel than what we’ve known. We scatter ourselves across the world like seeds—planting care, labor, strength, warmth.

And slowly, after years of being erased, we begin to draw ourselves back in. We fill in the lines. We reclaim the shape of who we are. We color our bodies back into the self-portrait of the world—not as background, but as subjects. As people who belong.

Strangely, speaking Spanish doesn’t hurt.

It brings me peace. It brings me closer. Not to who I am exactly, but to something I can’t quite name — something just out of reach but deeply familiar. The sensation is soft, almost sacred. When I speak Spanish, I don’t feel particularly intelligent or accomplished. This language doesn’t define my intellect. But it does something else — something more powerful. It connects me.

It connects me to people I wouldn't otherwise understand. It opens doors to conversations I’d never be invited into if I stayed in English or Cebuano. It’s like I’ve quietly entered a club — not by birthright, but by effort. And that’s how language works everywhere, isn’t it? You speak it, you belong. Whether it’s French, German, or Chinese — the password is pronunciation.

But what’s strange is how easy life feels inside my Spanish-speaking mind.

Not easy in the sense of problems disappearing because I still have all the same worries, responsibilities, and complexities. But in Spanish, those burdens fade into the background. Maybe because my Spanish isn’t advanced. Maybe because my thoughts stay simpler. I don’t spiral. I don’t overthink. I don’t carry the full weight of the world the way I do when thinking in English or Cebuano. There’s freedom in limitation. There’s joy in not knowing too much.

My Spanish mind is a gentler version of me. I smile more. I remember funny moments with friends. I focus on what I can say, not everything I can’t. It’s a temporary kind of clarity. A kind of simplicity and pause that I very much need from the usual intensity of my life.

I don’t have to explain myself deeply in Spanish. When I say “Estoy cansada,” I don’t have to explain why. When I say “No pasa nada,” it becomes true and it feels like nothing really needs fixing. My emotional range narrows, but in a way that feels safe. I can’t articulate complex anger or shame. But I can say I’m happy. I can say I’m tired. I can say I love something. For now, that’s enough.

But there’s a poignant undercurrent to all of this. Because I know — that this simplicity won’t last. The deeper I go into Spanish, the more truth I’ll uncover. Not just vocabulary or verb tenses, but the truth of what this language has meant in my history. I’ve already started to feel it : the ache of recognition when I spot a Spanish word embedded in Cebuano, knowing it wasn’t a gift but a residue. Knowing it came from hundreds of years of control. The commands of colonizers still echo through our speech today all broken, borrowed, but present.

I feel it when I notice how many Spanish verbs have slipped into my first language. Words like halza (to lift), sige (to continue), mandar (to command), lahos (from lejos, to pass through), cerra (to close), and abri (to open) — they live in my mind, spoken as if they’ve always belonged. But they weren’t born here. They were planted — imposed by a language that arrived not to coexist, but to overwrite. And I can’t help but wonder what words we lost to make room for them.

Even the language I speak, what do I call it, really? People often say Cebuano, others say Bisaya. The two are used interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing. But they don’t. Cebuano is actually the Spanish word for Sugboanon — the people of Sugbo, now known as Cebu. But most of us just call it Bisaya, because that’s who we are, and that’s how we know ourselves. Still, the use of Cebuano persists, another reminder of how colonial labels become so normalized that we forget their origins. Even in naming our language, there’s a filter ...a small erasure, as if we always need an easier explanation for others, or a word that fits a colonial history rather than our own. It’s a quiet kind of grief. Not because I lived through Spanish colonization because I didn’t. Neither did my grandparents. But I carry its residue. I feel it in the way we beso our tías as a gesture of so-called respect, in the cadence of borrowed prayers, in the Spanish names we sign on government forms. Even now, 500 years later, we speak with an accent shaped by empire. There’s no clean break from that. No easy way out. No undoing. And yet I keep learning. My eyes are open. I want to keep seeing.

Because in choosing to speak Spanish now, I reclaim something. I don’t learn it to forget. I learn it to remember : clearly, painfully, completely. To understand what was taken, but also what remains. To feel fully what it means to be Filipino in a world shaped by so many others.

Spanish doesn’t hurt. But it humbles me. It holds joy and sorrow in equal measure. And somewhere in between, in that fragile, flickering space

In a year, I found myself in Spain.

Not in a dream. Not in a hallucination. But in the midst of real stone, air, and sand. When I glanced outside my plane window, it almost felt surreal, like a fever dream. The clouds had carried me to a place where the language I’d learned to dance with now echoed in the streets. A country that once ruled the world, now a piece of my imagination made real.

As I landed, a strange sense of normalcy washed over me. I was so far from home, yet it felt as though I could melt into this place—disappear into its rhythm.

And for the first time, I used my Spanish in the course of an ordinary day. I didn’t feel the overwhelming nervousness that once made me forget everything I knew. It wasn’t flawless. My grammar stumbled, and when the taxi driver asked me to fasten my cinturón, I had no idea what he meant.

But I said hello to the concierge and asked for the Wi-Fi password while he explained the hotel policies. I spoke with the breakfast lady, told her our room number, and asked her to add the charge to our bill. I approached the metro staff to ask for directions to the nearest exit. I even had a conversation with our Airbnb host about my love for football.

I was speaking Spanish—on a regular day. And I couldn’t believe how natural it felt. It didn’t feel like a foreign language on my tongue, but rather a language I was simply still getting used to speaking. I was in there for a week. Then, Spain was no longer just a destination I had once planned on traveling to; it became a place where I lived each moment fully present. I kept exclaiming "I'm here" as I wandered through the narrow streets of old towns, looked at strangers' faces, navigated through the metro with ease. And slowly, without realizing it, I began to feel less like an outsider. There were still moments of hesitation—phrases I fumbled, customs I misunderstood—but the nervousness I once carried had been replaced by a quiet confidence.

In those brief moments in Spain, I could feel my sense of self shifting. It’s not my second home, as I’ve only been there a week. Maybe this is just another chapter, still open for me to continue writing. Maybe it’s a dance, one I need to keep learning the steps to and listen to the rhythm better. Maybe it’s a fever dream.

Inspired by the Women's World Cup last year, I decided to spend my Christmas break learning Spanish with a teacher I found online. I wanted to delve deeper into what this language and culture meant to me, and how they would become part of my life. This was a decision I was willing to turn into a long-term commitment. At this point, I knew three things: 1) basic Spanish greetings, phrases, and numbers, 2) "usted" is formal, and 3) I couldn't pronounce the rolling "r."

When I met my Spanish teacher for the first time, I was excited and nervous. I was... jelly, quivering in anticipation and uncertainty. Looking at her through the screen, I didn't know how to start the conversation... or the lesson... or anything. Was I expected to speak in Spanish now? Should I speak in English and hope she understood? My heart raced as I scrambled to form sentences with the minuscule amount of Spanish I remembered from college.

Maybe it is appropriate to start with football or soccer as the Americans call it. A sport that's long been alien to me, could now possibly be one of the most fundamental things that turned my life around completely.

It started with the women's world cup, just a year ago. On pure coincidence and availability of the channel, I watched the final game of the tournament. It started with me rooting for England, my husband's home country. It started with me wanting the English girls take the trophy back home for the first time in 58 years. I was ready to see them win. It seemed like they were a crowd favourite.

It started with England coming out dominant. These girls looked like they were going to win it. In a matter of minutes, I became enamoured with the way the ball was being handled across the pitch. The red and white players' kits just became a blur and I was just looking at bodies kicking one ball around. There was so much running. So much passing. So much excitement. The display of strength and agility was impressive. Then Spain scored the first crucial goal in the 29th minute. A young Spanish girl has scored only her second goal for her country in her whole life. It moved me and my heart swelled with joy for her.

It turns out, that would be the only goal of the match. And Spain won their first women's world cup. They lifted the trophy, and I was moved again. How am I feeling so much for a sport and for women I had no connections to? And why did I feel so much happiness for a young Spanish girl that I didn't know?

It was a curious moment. I wanted to make sense of it. She stepped up to the podium, this girl who scored the winning goal. I was so excited for her and so happy for her.

The television was on and she was there live on the screen, teary eyed and still catching her breath. There was a single microphone in front of her and I could hear her voice. I could hear sounds. But nothing was processing in my mind. I blinked, trying to understand her words. Yet, I struggled to understand her emotions - her triumph, her joy, and her underlying fears. In that moment, I felt a great divide that separated me from the intense feelings while watching the game. It was an inexplicable void filled only with unintelligible sounds. I realized then that none of the Spanish team - the winning team, spoke any English. Should they speak English? Was it even reasonable for me to expect them to? It struck me then that I couldn't fully comprehend the depth of their happiness and their struggles because I couldn't understand their words. And in a matter of seconds, the language barrier became too wide, forming a poignant moment reminding me that their language and all its nuances conveyed messages of triumph, passion, resilience, and determination. And I couldn't receive the message in the exact moment that they said it to the world.