“I feel like, all my life, I was just surviving,” I told someone, surprised and ashamed by my sudden frankness.
It was 2 AM. The lights were low. The after-dinner prattle had lulled. We were in the middle of our Go match—a game of gaining territories wherein part of the strategy is invading the opponent, which even here I fail at defending—when the conversation branched from board games to geriatrics to mental health. When I had gone to bed later on I almost regretted having said it, because I knew my tears belong to the least of things I have control over and that is what was gonna happen next instead of finishing our game. Because tomorrow might get awkward. Because tomorrow I would want it to be the first thing both of us will forget.
I was thrashed out with guilt because certainly, life wasn’t all that bad. I mean it’s been pretty decent. I mean, three acts of indecency shouldn’t overshadow the rest.
But when I said it, in my head, I was just so tired. So tired of the mad nights. So tired of dealing with anxiety, getting through depression, and fearing the next bout of panic. I want to be tired of doing the real work, the actual living. But it’s always about fearing the next bout of panic and trying to manage in between.
One time I was playing The Witcher on Switch and while foraging in the forest near a village, a pack of wolves approached. Instinctively, I ran away to find my horse and cantered toward the safer road with my companion. I kept checking the map to see if there were no more red dots. When I was in the clear I realized it was out of character for Geralt of Rivia because he’s supposed to kill monsters and get paid for it, not cowering for getting outnumbered. Not running away like that. But that’s all I want and all that my mind was conditioned to do. When I’m having bouts of panic all I want is to get out of my body, to run away. Be no one if not somebody else.
I wonder how my life would have turned out if twenty years ago I had been able to run away like that.
“Twenty years of keeping it to yourself. Definitely, it affected the default mode of your brain. What you really need is closure.” That’s what my psychologist said. That is what all those trauma books said. That the body keeps the score. That my bones know what I was so ashamed of admitting. I defied the age-old maxim that the truth will always come out in the end because I did not want the truth; I wanted to forget. I was afraid that by unveiling that part of history I would only make it officially my reality, but what is real anymore? If when I would picture myself growing up, with all the happy memories I’ve had, I would question if any of it was true.
I did what I was told anyway, bewitched by the freedom it seems to promise. I just wanted all of it to be over. But what I thought was closure was actually a digging of all the repressed emotions that got buried alive. When you reveal something you concealed for so long, you don’t just reveal the truth of what happened but the truth of how you feel about what happened. This is twenty years of denial disguised as emphatic forgiveness. This is twenty years of trauma I thought I had recovered from. Twenty years of pain I suffered alone.
To survive means there was something to endure, something to suffer from. To utter those words comes with the admittance that I have been wounded. And though we all are, that’s one thing about trauma, of living still in its pain: it warps your mind, it makes you at some point impenetrable to the relief of knowing we are all in this together. It makes you enclosed in your agony.
In my heart I was grieving for my inner child, bereft of her chance at radiance. I was grieving for that little kid whose innocence was tainted with someone else’s malice and lascivious intent. I was grieving for the girl who once thought no one would ever understand her and no one should even bother. I was grieving for the time someone told me it felt hard to reach out to me because I seemed closed off when all I ever desired was that spring relief that comes from reaching out and being reached. I was grieving because I know I can’t blame them, because sometimes it’s also hard to reach myself. I was grieving for not knowing how to respond to someone who once asked why my tweets were too dramatic. I was grieving because I, too, have always questioned my melancholy. I was grieving for knowing not all the time I would be met with compassion. I was grieving for all the time I’d been hesitant to express my pain in words since then when writing felt closest to healing. I was grieving for letting myself be silenced, once again—out of fear, out of shame. I was grieving for the woman who grew up jealous of other women’s confidence and their knack for establishing boundaries, in awe of how they arrived at that. I was grieving for not knowing the boundaries. I was grieving for all the moments I asked myself why was I too meek why was I too awkward why am I like this why am I like that? I was grieving for shame itself, for thinking at some point that I was just some damaged good. I was grieving for every relatable passage from any trauma-related book, for the mere reason that I could relate.
I was grieving for the recurring dreams that still haunt me in my sleep and even worse for remembering them when I wake. Later, I would feel like vomiting. The only time I remember ever feeling like vomiting was when I had diarrhea during high school, a fever during elementary when the typhoon flooded our house we had no electricity for days, when I had alcohol in my system during some occasions, and one time last October. But this one’s different. At night and I would feel like gagging. In the middle of the day and for a brief moment I would lose my appetite. It comes always with recurring dreams or a certain memory. It comes with the visions in my head that randomly flash and takes a long time before blacking out. Nauseating fixed visions I’d rather forget.
Anger is the blood of the wound. It is what makes me think this entire idea of forgiveness is absurd. With all this, how the hell do I do that? “If you confess your sins,” the bible says. But what about those who don’t? Those who deny it? How do I say, still I forgive you? If it feels equal to saying I love you, how then do I say it?
I am aware that I am still immature in this anger. This feeling is new, and it hurts sometimes not knowing how to keep the love in motion in a certain direction. How to contain it? Where to pour it? Here. Here. Hear. But isn’t an immature response better than twenty years of feigned indifference? Margaret Atwood wrote forgiveness is a power both to will it or withhold it, but I am weakened by withholding it yet powerless to bestow it. Like wanting to fly but never having the means. Like wanting to cry but never having the tears.
Because I was angry. But really, I was just grieving. For everything that got destroyed when my brain was just trying its best to protect me. For my five-or-so-year-old self who already experienced how someone could fake kindness to get to their true motive. For being the object of that motive. For time, because there is no undoing. For not running away. For enduring.
I am aware of the vagueness that comes with this particular pain—the pain of all my pains. Maybe someday I will meet my current self for an apology, and both of us will be graced with forgiveness that comes with clarity.
When we went to the sea of clouds, we got lucky the rain stopped just before we reached the area. It was minutes past sunrise. The road was still a wet asphalt and I could immediately smell the earthy scent of the ground when I slid out of the car. We bought coffee and sikwate and headed over to the place where people gathered for the view. There wasn’t a crisp layer of orange far ahead unlike before. The sky was overcast and the clouds were puffy, like eyes that were swollen from crying. For the second time around I was suffocated, not out of panic, but for an entire panorama of nature’s calm grandeur.
My mother said before, “This is probably the most beautiful place I’ve gone to, here.” It struck me—my pain and this beauty.
For a moment, the sea of clouds became a sea of fog and I was reminded of what Annie Dillard wrote:
When you see a fog move against a backdrop of deep pines, you don’t see the fog itself, but streaks of clearness floating across the air in dark shreds. So I see only tatters of clearness through a pervading obscurity.
What clearness is in this fog of forgiveness? How do I ease the anger? Stop the bleeding? In my previous line of work, we press on—cotton balls and all, like puffy clouds on mountaintops. Anger is the deepest form of compassion, David Whyte once wrote. I was angry because I was grieving. I was grieving because I was hurt. That’s already two things clear. Maybe someday I won’t have to question if happiness was real or forced or some kind of illusion my mind convinced me to believe so it could survive. Maybe there was only life, all its thorns and roses. Arriving face to face with the truth carries with it its own obscurities, but maybe that’s how living the questions feel like. Seeing through the fog whatever clarity is there hasn’t reached me yet. I don’t have all the answers and I doubt I ever will. Just like I doubt I ever will forget. But after the fog was a clearing from which I could see the clouds over the mountain ridges again.
Twenty years of bearing this story untold. Twenty years of torment. Twenty years of never forgetting. I’d like to believe only beauty can come out of this.
“But you survived,” he said. With the most compassionate eyes. I guess for now, that will have to be enough.
it's not easy to experience or process the flood of emotions that rush out once you open that gate, or unearth those memories that were buried alive, as you so beautifully put it. but, perhaps some hope can be taken in the fact that you reached a place where it was finally possible to acknowledge, if not yet accept, what happened. sending you love always x
You are such a beautiful and gifted writer. Sending love.