There’s nothing like a weekend trip home. You’ve got fam. Good food. Lots of good times. And don’t forget the religious reminders along the highway that always make me feel so EXCITED for life. If you can’t read the second picture, it’s the Ten Commandments. Don’t worry, Adonis was driving, I was in the passenger seat going nuts.
I’m headed to the Allied Media Conference this June. Here’s a short clip of what to expect.
I am submitting this essay for consideration to be included in an anthology that explores the catholic women’s experience. Copywrited, 2007.
There Are No Memoirs
What would you say if I said that I feel forgotten by God?
Would you say that it’s ludicrous because God never forgets? That I must not have strong faith? That I should pray more frequently? Or would you say that I am an ill-hearted pessimist hoping to smear the windows of the pretty blue churches?
What would you say if I reconsidered and posed that perhaps it isn’t God who is forgetting me, but rather, it is I who is allowing me to be forgotten? Is it then my lapse? Would you abandon your once ready pep talk about God’s eternal memory and reach in for a different sermon index card with “Spiritual Motivation!” in the headline instead?
What if neither of those are the answers? Suppose what I have to say is not really a memoir of statements or a collection of unreleased womanly truths about Catholicism. What if in my chance as a Catholic, first generation Filipina – who was told to shut up; who wept into the hard wooden pews; who was told to give and give until my soul bled; who mind-cursed at priests; and was told to be a sacrificial lamb for others and to forgive regardless of apology – I chose not to provide a self-testament, but a question?
Simply put, I just don’t have the desire anymore to tell the highlighted stories about my life, about the cultural split of being raised in a White western society by immigrant parents with inflexible Filipino Catholicism, or how my first and only love once left me to go to seminary. I’m too drained to once more expand upon my experience with church scandal and betrayal, symbolism, and pain. A hundred times already have I expounded upon the circular journey of finding strength and resilience in the Catholic Church. No one really listened before. So, why ask now about my seemingly unsettling identity as a Catholic Radical f(P)eminist of color? Would anyone, anymore listen? Would one more narrative really crack the walls of the church?
In my ephemeral, naïve days, I believed, yes. I believed that solely because it was my story, my voice, and my life it actually would crack the church walls from the inside. However, that kind of belief system breathes egocentric air and the church has had its full of pompous, one-way leaders who believe their footpath is strikingly similar to the road to Calvary. That kind of leadership resembles mixing oil with holy water. Not even with a thousand furious stirs, those two elements will not fuse.
In the place of a one-dimensional scorecard, I began spending more time sifting complexity, paradox, and metaphor. Asking questions swallowed me to a deeper space. I began asking questions. Not the lamenting or accusatory questions that prompt defensiveness and spit dogma, but the arrowed questions that cannot and should not be denied. The kind of questions you must never attempt to swerve around or risk silencing. They are the hinting questions that indicate perhaps most of our problems are not that we ourselves are terribly wrong, but rather we have narrowly shortchanged the creativity of our Creator. Where is the sin in truth-seeking and truthful inquiry? I figured that if the Church will not take my answers, then the Church must take my questions.
It is my prayer, my winged breath that my questions rock the core of so many leaders who have painted the Holy Spirit as a flying dove with a scroll in its mouth delivering its message to the “Chosen.” It is my desperation, not my hope that carries me forward. It is desperation for change, for urgent change because the young are being kidnapped far too swiftly and easily by indifference. Because the elderly are being treated as fragile and dying plants that simply need nutrition, not love, attention, and presence. Because more and more people are hiding from relationship, retreating from genuine struggle, and plugging their ears with devices to channel out any chance of forming community. We are becoming weak with excessive bravado and we are foolish to believe compassionate understanding alone is enough for the ostracized to feel embraced. I am desperate because so many believe contemporary faith is having answers in the face of adversity, numbing pain with pretension, and relieving any discomfort with pills, falsities, and cowardice. The absence of conflict is not an answer. That’s emptiness. Exonerated answers or pretending to have the answers only obstructs the hearing canal of our faith.
This is my experience as a catholic woman: to be fierce, not certain; to resurrect despite being discounted; to be transparent, not invisible. I do not believe one documented essay can uphold or attempt to record my life experience or that even a collection of Wisdom will save me or reveal something unknown. It is my desperate prayer that my question, my burning confusion will light someone else’s way so that our reflections are not about ourselves and our journeys, but more about providing light so I can see your face and you can see mine.
Before you is a question, not a statement. It is a 28-year-old offering, not a gift, of possibility and what could be, not what actually is. I can only share my Divinity, not in certitude, but in faith that it will be received, hopefully considered, or maybe even celebrated.
My question, among many, remains: What is so consuming in the church that it cannot hear my screaming?
picture taken from amazon.com
How I wish those letters were referring to Los Angeles Airport, LAX. But, no, we do not live in a life where my blogging concerns the details of luggage delays and incredibly long minutes of terminal waits. How I wish I could write a comparitive dissertation on mainstream airports such as O’Hare, LAX, La Guardia, and Reagon.
LAX refers to the non-shocking but heartwrenching story of the Duke Lacrosse/Nifong rape case. In case you haven’t heard, all charges have been dropped against the three young men. Read more about it here, thanks to The Primary Contradiction.
Aside from the clear multiplicity of stories this case has birthed, the one I find myself most fascinated by is the intersection of media, journalism, and the public perception of rape and sexual violence.
In other words, in lay terms, I cannot fucking believe how ignorant people are about the effects of sexual violence and trauma on survivor’s lives, choices, and memory.
I mean, SERIOUSLY, do people honestly think that women with “questionable” histories who dress in “sheer red negligee” go around saying they were gang raped for shits and giggles? Because it is SO much fun to be publicly humiliated and Wikipedia-ed as a result of reporting a sexual assault?
The plain and enraging fact is that no one – not media, Nifong, or even Finnerty and his crew (if they’re truly “innocent”) – know the truth. The truth, of sexual assault, is often buried in the moment it occurs. Every rape is different, every assault is different, and I happen to believe that this woman was assaulted. By who, when, where, and how, I will never know. But after working years in the field of sexual violence, what steams me most is the arrogance and ignorance of the “spectators” who have the audacity to supposedly determine culpability or innocense based on MEDIA’s perception of the events?
Just because we have cell phone records and time lapsed photos that contradict the times where she said she was raped, strangled, and sodomized does not prove a violent act never took. Anyone with half a brain could reflect on the last time you were inconvenienced and draw a clear relationship between forced human memory and actuality. Ever wait in line at the grocery store too long when someone couldn’t find the right change? In actuality, “price check on aisle 3” takes:
a) less than 2 minutes
b) ten minutes
c) at least 10 minutes
In the moment, I say B, or if I’m really pissed, maybe C. In retrospect, it was probably about 45 seconds. So, A is the reality. But, when you are running late because your boss is expecting you back at the office in 3 minutes or when you need to use the restroom, the 45 seconds are about 5 minutes. Five minutes feels like 10 minutes…and so on and so forth.
My point?
My point is that even under the most mundane conditions, our ability to measure time and its relationship to memory is skewed by one’s EMOTIONAL STATE. A recount of how much time something took is different in how it FELT. Often, in trauma, there is no distinction or memory. So, take that and apply it to, oh, I don’t know, someone pushing a penis, hand, or inanimate pointed object into your vagina or anas. It just might be that details and ability to recollect are less than precise. It just might be that drugs, alcohol, and perhaps general life experience and past abuses have prevented a one-way, linear avenue of clear communication that so many people demand to satiate their own demented conclusion of truth and justice. These elements might radically change time tables, causing eyeballs to sway to and fro.
We get so caught up in the search and the weight of “facts;” facts which usually tip the scale toward the accused and away from the accuser, that the understanding piece of the nature of sexual assault is swept under the rug. THE “TRUTH” OF SEXUAL ASSAULT DIES IN THE MOMENT IT HAPPENS. The details of what led up to “it,” who wore what, what drink was poured and how much fade in the human act of violating another person’s essense, their own body. There are necessary and appropriate places for wondering how the puzzle pieces fit, but a major, major problem is that general perception is tainted by our own gendered views of propriety.
For instance, in my experience, everyone always points to the woman in cases of college acquaintence or date rape. A woman makes a stupid decision, like, trusting a stranger at a party. Dumb decision, yeah. Who doesn’t do their share of stupidity? I drive drunk sometimes. Isn’t that more dumb, mindless, and idiotic than kissing a good-looking, perceivably good person who likes you? Do I or the other person deserve to have our bodies violated against our will? Does one decision warrant the most heinous human act of violence? Well, she should have known better to go home with him. I KNOW. SHE TOTALLY DESERVED TO BE RAPED. [read: intense trademark AWE sarcasm]
How much more does a lifetime of circumstances, a lifetime of choices that we do not approve of, taint our ability to see truth? She’s a stripper. Single mother. Black. Student at a less prestigious school. She supposedly stripped less than 2 weeks after the alleged rape. If she was really raped, she wouldn’t go back and do that sort of thing again. Or, SHE MIGHT HAVE NO OTHER OPTIONS AND NEED TO FEED HER CHILDREN.
She “wanted the money” she didn’t receive from the Duke folks who hired her to take off her clothes. See? She’s just a money-hungry liar who just wanted their money. She wasn’t really raped. or, MAYBE SHE STARTED STRIPPING TO FINANCE SCHOOL AND FAMILY, AND EVEN THOUGH THE WORLD IS NOW WATCHING, YOU ARE STILL IN THE SAME ECONOMIC DISPARITY.
The multiplicity of begging questions surrounding this case are clearly overwhelming. Was she raped? Who raped her? Did Finnerty, Evans, Seligmann have any part in it? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Not even the luxury box Duke parents who flipped their hands on 60 Minutes and called the accuser “disturbed” and cried over their sons’ unknown future. Are their lives forever changed and smeared because of this? Absolutely! But you gotta find another blog if you want sympathetic commentary for the millionaire families with tarnished lives.
In the future, these men will always be, perhaps unjustly, linked to the case and they will forever have to prove they were indeed “innocent” of the charges, and that the “fantastic lies” were indeed fantastically told.
But, my primary concern is not of the first class smear affairs. My focus is on the young women who will forever have those three children that lived through this and the murky mystery of what truly happened that night. My curiosity is peaked by the fact that she did not want to move forward in it and yet her name has now been released for all of America to know. My concern is not that her life will be spent defending her name and reminding innocence, but building a life without privilege and credibility when the world has already deemed you a liar, at best. I’m more concerned about her ability to heal her body, her self, a history of violence and, I believe, rape.
But WHO raped her then? I really don’t care.
You wanna have a go-round about whose got it worse? Tell the truth.
If you had to choose who you’d rather be in this case, now that “it’s over,” would you rather:
Have to rebuild a previously privileged life after a terrible ordeal and have family wealth, resources, and live with the sting of a pseudo “innocent” label attached to your name for the rest of your life?
OR
Have to attempt to heal from the physical, psychological, and emotional trauma of rape that will be with you for the rest of your days with the label of the “that stripper who said she was raped by those lacrosse guys…what were their names again?”
I took this pic several weeks ago in my apartment, on a day when I was feeling particularly restless for change and new possibility in my life.
I recently picked a new Contemplation card out of the pile. This is what it read:
REGRET
Should’ve. Would’ve. Could’ve.
Regret is like a noose around
your neck pulling you backward.
Let it go.
A new world awaits you.
Let it go.
A new world awaits you.
This is my 200th post. Celebrate.
What I have been thinking about is my future. What does the future hold for me? In many ways, this is not a big deal. People look for jobs everyday. Everyone faces this uncertainty at one time or another.
For me, I see this as a crossroad, an opportunity and in the words of a special man-hero of mine, Lloyd Dobbler, I say, ” I gotta admit I’m looking for something bigger. I’m looking for a dare to be great situation.”
Every day, every morning, I wake up and wish there wasn’t a laid out agenda in front of me. Is that living? Knowing everyday what is expected of you, what turns to make, and who you are going to be seeing? Am I nuts for thinking that I want my daily existence to mean more than a paycheck and saying all the right things? That I want a little unexpectedness in my life? That yesterday I almost wrote Adonis a love letter, but didn’t have the time?
To me, that is failing. Failing to have time to write a love letter is not the kind of life I want. The speed and substance of my life is what matters most. If we are to live our lives working, I want my work to reflect so much more than this.
We all deserve that. We all deserve to wake up and be excited that the person next to us is who we truly want, both we and the day are chosen, and the life we live belongs to us.
Pic off of bfp.
Rarely will I post a photograph that someone else has taken, but I love this picture. It’s poetry.
From The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum
A Filipina-American teenage girl was beaten on a bus for “looking Chinese,” and the driver, after she reported it to him said to “go find a priest.” Read the rage here.
Think this is a hate crime? Sign the online petition here. This goes to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force Commanding Officer Inspector Michael Osgood, and MTA Bus President Tom Savage.
Sometimes I find myself in conversations when people comment, “That still happens? Like, in New York?”
And I silently ask where is there a place in which there is no violence due to people’s intolerance for difference?
From Gallery of the Absurd.
Thanks to BFP and Athenaeum, I found out that Angelina is adopting yet another child. A daughter, from Chad, will be gracing the most famous adopt-friendly family in Hollywood. Not much of a Hollygossiper, but this cartoon got me rolling…
Laban means fight in Tagalog, the native language of the Philippines. Though it’s a little hard to hear and a bit fuzzy at times, this powerful video captures the spirit of so many women in the Philippines, my untouched homeland.