I was listening intently to the workshop facilitator, he was intense and passionate yet almost oblivious to the power his words held. I knew he was about to say something important. And then it hit me, that question, “is there anything in your past that you have intellectually set aside — and yet, emotionally, you know it’s still there, bothering you, blocking you, preventing you from being your best self?” It hit me like electricity zapping into my chest. It zapped to life something I held dormant inside.
I know myself as someone who, if the situation called for it, can be very clinical about things, even with my personal experiences. Given, however, that chance to go back and fetch some unprocessed memories, and the threat that perhaps unconsciously, my blocks come from those I’ve arrogantly intellectually set aside — I was just so ready to admit that yes, there is this one simple emotional memory that is still there lurking, bumping, jiggling inside me. And now it is making its way to my consciousness — and I am just guessing — for a reason.
What is that emotional memory?
It was this: an aunt, chubby, with fair rosy white cheeks, but pimply, shiny and oily, her head crowned with brown curly locks, and her puckered lips unnaturally bloody red, exaggerated with cheap chappy lipstick, talking to my mother, saying, almost complaining, this fateful remark:
“Bakla ba yang batang yan? Bakit parang ang lamya yata?!”
Yes, my aunt was referring to me.
She was referring to me, at 6 or 7 years old. Yes, me.
… me, who from then on, started to resent her presence, and her voice, even if she was mouthing about something so different from that fateful remark.
… me, who started getting jitters when I knew I would be attending family gatherings because that meant being in the same place as her.
… me, who at that tender age, started to overcompensate, to unconsciously put myself on overdrive so that when they talk about me, they will say something else other than my being gay.
… me, who then eventually went to become the “family genius”.
… me, who is the only one in the clan that would be able to win 2 high school scholarships, and eventually go to the prestigious Philippine Science High School.
… me, who is the only one in the clan that would eventually go to the flagship campus of the country’s premiere State University.
… me, who is the only one in the clan that would eventually graduate with honors and more.
… me, who is the only one in the clan that would eventually be applauded by an international audience of Ph.D.’s, industry experts, and topnotch academicians when I presented my graduate thesis work, that eventually was published as a paper in a respected scientific journal.
… me, who is the one in the clan that would eventually be the family’s “poster boy” of success, everyone’s go-to-relative when their pockets run empty and the needs pressing.
… me, the boy who was still my aunt’s prisoner many years after hearing those fateful words.
It took just that powerful nudge, an invitation to look back and examine my blocks. It made me recognize the existence of that one emotional memory that made a prisoner out of me. While it fueled my drive to success, I realize that that happening now deserves to be put to rest. That from now on, I shall be operating on a much more aware and purposeful level. That success to compensate for my sexual preference should be no more; that my journey in this world should not be about hiding my homosexuality by the bigness of my success — rather, I should travel my journey simply to be the best I can be, to do the best I could, for my own growth, my self-actualization, and for sustaining my capacity to help, to give of myself, to be a relevant, significant, contributing, and functional member of the society I am in.
I wrote this post in the hopes of paying it forward. I am so edified with the process, and thought that maybe you too can learn a thing or two about yourself by asking that same question. “Is there anything in your past that you have intellectually set aside — and yet, emotionally, you know it’s still there, bothering you, blocking you, preventing you from being your best self?”
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