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15 September 2018

Dearest Katelyn,

           I don’t know what to say or how to say it. These past few weeks have been the highest and the lowest points in your life. Suddenly, you’re free—free to go where you please, to do what you want. You have a beautiful campus with beautiful people, and possibilities that make your life before seem dull. Yet here you are—lost, anxious. You have no friends here. At least not yet. Again, you cannot connect with them. It’s the way it’s always been. College was supposed to be different. Did you throw your life away? Will you watch it pass you by? You didn’t join any orgs this year. You are very afraid that that’s exactly what you’re going to do. You can’t commit, you say. You don’t know if you’re good enough. You’re not enough. Well, let me ask you something.

Look at the drops of rain outside. See the mud and the earth, the ants that crawl. It thunders and it weeps outside; the skies are gray. The windows clang against their metal frames. It’s chaos. But it is beautiful in spite of it, is it not? The wind is cool, your hair is splayed. The bed is warmer than it’s ever been. You count the splatters on the wall.

           Now think.

Do the showers make you weep, my love? The clouds and the dark grey? You cry for your future. You cry for your friends. You cry for all the things that worry you, and yet you never weep for joy. For laughter. For blessings. All you see are the problems, the work, the stress. But life is colored by the smallest things you take for granted—the sun in the morning, the blue of the sky. There is so much more to the world around you, and there is so much more to you too. There is a world within, the depths of which only you can know.

           I can see that you’re afraid. Behind the façade of indifference, you are lonely. You shut people out because you think you aren’t worthy of their love, that they’ll leave and replace you like they always have. Let them in. Take the chance. Get hurt. Be loved. Open yourself up to the fact that maybe you haven’t found the right people yet, but you’ll never find them if you don’t try. You’re more interesting than you think. Share that with the world.

           And for once, don’t center your life around grades. You’ve given up so much to get where you are—you lost your childhood, your friends, your happiness, your life. Give it a rest. Give yourself a rest. Join extracurriculars. Take chances. Your fear of failure will get you nowhere. Don’t sit and watch as the world passes you by. I know you’re lost. You don’t believe you can make it through life. But, Katelyn, you have found reserves of strength you never knew you had, in something inside you that you didn’t know was there. Do it again. And again. And again. Prove your mom and your sister wrong when they call you weak. You have it in you. I know you do.

           Life is beautiful. You don’t always have to be the best. It’s okay to make mistakes—what would life be without them? You’re everything you want to be, my love. You’re everything you’ve ever been. And you’re exactly where you need to be. Take it easy on yourself. Take it slow. Live one day at a time.

Breathe. Fail. Live.

I’ll be here every step of the way.

Out of all the features on this collage, here are the local aspects:

- Lea Salonga, the woman who inspired my love for singing and music, two things most important to me. - Eraserheads, one of my all time favourite Pinoy rock bands. Rock is something I grew up with and gave me an outlet for my emotions. - The San Beda pendant, something that keeps me safe and reminds me of my Christian identity. - Face – the nose, cheeks, and lips are from my close friend and mother, two people that helped me grow in two different stages of my life. - Street food that I grew up eating despite my mother’s complains.

Out of all the features on this collage, here are the global aspects:

E pluribus, unum.

What defines my lineage? Is it the eyes of my father? The jaw of my mother? Perhaps my teeth are like my grandfather’s, or my nose like my grandmother’s. What defines a person? A person is more than just their gait or their face, the lilt of their voice. A human being is the amalgamation of every trait, every feature, every microscopic imperfection that defines their physicality. And the internal self is the same.

Complex. Hybrid. One. 

The face of my personality is a globalized creation. I am made up of the things I am, the things I have been, and the things I want to be. I see the world with the blue of Sansa Stark’s eyes, in shades of innocence and hope, and the shattering of what I thought growing up would mean. The brown of Fanny Price’s eyes are my pride -- pride against the Filipino standard that dictates that introversion is a flaw, that women should be talkative and outgoing in order to be noticed. When I was 14, Jane Austen’s Fanny Price showed me that even the most quiet of girls deserves a happy ending. That sense of hope echoed within me, influencing the way I thought and saw the world. But soon, time forced me to leave the safety of my childhood. 

Victor Hugo’s Cosette is the backdrop of half of my portrait. She is my love for theatre, both foreign and local; she embodies my fondness for the French language, and the disuse of my mother tongue. She represents an awakening to the ills and the realities of the world outside. Cosette is a child growing up. She sees the problems of her nation -- the poverty, the stagnation, the disunity -- yet she feels helpless. The world of Les Miserables revolves around the men who drive the story’s narrative. Cosette challenges me to contribute to society, to change my foreign ideals in favor of a more locally-oriented one. She inspires me to never back down, even when I feel weak.

My globalized self wishes to speak with the voice of Peggy Carter. Unfazed by the limitations set on women in the time of WWII, Peggy drives me to smash the patriarchy with a stapler, whilst in red lipstick and three-inch heels. She is the voice telling me that the gender roles in the Philippines are passé. She is my sister, my mother, my lola. She is all the women who have been put down for their sex, but instead choose to stand up and fight back. She is who I strive to be.

Who I am is the opposite--I am a shy girl, more oriented towards the arts than to leadership or strength. The base of my portrait is the marble bust of Roman face. I adore the humanities. I could spend hours in museums inspecting each painting, every sculpture, immersing myself in a time long past. History is my escape. Sometimes I feel as though I am caught in the middle. My love for times before is often at odds with the world I function within today. The hand in the portrait represents this disparity. Memes meet marble. Feeds and golden filigree.

And lastly, the only thing in this picture that belongs to me. My nose. My identity.

For the most part of my life, I hated what I looked like. The women in my family are mestizas. My mother has the features of an American, with her delicate nose and her demure mouth. My sister has the alabastrine skin that bards sang about. Her eyes are a warm shade of chocolate brown and her nose is as pointed as a peak. Next to them, I was a half-baked potato: yellow and soft and round. Western standards determine beauty in the Philippines, and beauty determines worth. You have to be tall, and fair, and white. You’ll see it nearly everywhere you look, from EDSA billboards to your sachet of lotion. In my entire face, my nose was the hardest thing to accept. It represented the beauty that I did not have, and the Filipina that I was. To me, my nose symbolized more than just my features. My nose reminded me that I belonged to the Philippines, that I was ashamed of my country. And it took a lot for me to face that reality, but when I did, I realized that there is no shame in my Motherland. And much like how I felt towards my looks, I came to love my being Filipino, with all its flaws and limitations. My country may not be perfect, but its people are my people. It is home.

Including my nose in this portrait is an act of acknowledgement. This is accepting what I have. This is loving who I am. This is loving where I come from.

Many things have made me the person I am today. All of my faces, all of my masks have come from different places, different people. These influences have shaped me into the person I have grown into.  My flaws and imperfections strengthen me. Variety and unity define me. 

E pluribus, unum. 

MODULE 0- My globalized and localized self