So there’s this guy in Facebook who became my “friend” and we’ve been messaging back and forth for some days now. One of the questions he asked me was what made me come to Canada. I think all my wittiness dissolved to nothing and my fingers was poised on the keyboard to type some reply except when I read that question it kept on bouncing in my head until everything else dissolved to nothing but that question bouncing slowly like some screensaver in my mind.
Until now I don’t know how to start another paragraph. This is elementary. I should say, “I moved to Canada because...” and then I write the reason. But the reason eludes me. For sure, I was not coerced to go here. I have to remember what brought the decision to move to Canada, not for the guy, but for myself.
Eleven years ago the Canadian Consul in Cebu offered to send me to Canada to represent Cebu businessmen as an invitation of the Canadian government to foster ties between the Philippines and Canada. I remember like it happened only yesterday. I was sitting in his home office looking at the knicknacks on his table and wondering why he called me there when we hardly talk, only polite greetings when my parents would meet them for lunch or schmoozing with them at church. Then he and his wife told me about going to Canada for a month. I remember being suspicious, those were the years that my parents were using the carrot-stick approach on me. And after realizing the carrot wasn’t really a prize but a loan that I will have to repay sooner or later I knew this “free” trip to Canada was going to be a trip with hidden fees. It was their way of making me feel “guilty” since they gave me something, I owe them to obey. This has never really turned on my good side and I was getting the stick not caring about the carrot. And because they can’t make me obey them anymore their friends have come to the rescue. It was maddening, I have become suspicious to their and their friends concerted effort to make me stop “rebelling”.
His next words confirmed my suspicion. He looked at me straight in the eye and said, “We didn’t pick you because you are a good person, we picked you because your parents are our friends. You should be grateful to your parents”. Hearing those words burned like acid and I felt myself recoiling from them and all the more recoiling from the religion they and my parents harp about. I wanted to spit at him and my parents and the tell them how farce they are. Their words, actions, motives, and thoughts were shit. No, shit pales compared to them. I told him that I will not go to Canada and he can offer it to someone more “deserving” because I don’t want any expectations over my head. A flash of anger showed in his eyes and his faced tensed. I stood up and left. I remember being really incensed by the audacity he showed me, (I guess he felt the same towards me then too) trying to tell me he is so generous when the truth is he is the same as all of those judgemental Christians --- tagging, nagging, accusing, self-righteous. Of course the General was pissed when I got home, so pissed I thought she would break my arm just to make me go back to them and apologize which I will never do even if they burn me on a stake. In a few weeks I found out they gave the “trip to Canada” to some youth attending in their church. He came back, became arrogant, got a girl pregnant when he was only 18, got married, and turned out a failure even in my own standards.
See, my parents are born again Christians and so is the Canadian Consul and his family. But having lived with my parents 24/7 I had the bad example of a Christian --- good and generous in the outside, vindictive and abusive in the inside. Countless nights my father would hit me over and over because I have been stubborn compared to his other children and then when my eyes can no longer make tears and I am bruised all over, feet aching for standing so long like a plebe in military school, and exhausted with all the stress, fear, anger, hurt he would make sit me read to me the Bible, tell me to confess my sins to God in prayer and then tell me he loves me then embrace me. The same hand that slap me would be the same hand that embraced me. The same mouth that would tell me never to kiss him because it is like Judas kissing him, would tell me he loves me. The same man who told me that he named me Darlene Love to remind him to love me is the same man who is my father. This happened almost every night when he got home. It has gotten to a point when I would flinch every time he would extend his hand towards me. And every Sunday, when the Colonel gets up the pulpit to preach in church or to share his testimony I want to hurl the Bible on my lap at his face and spit at the General for never once did she stop my father when he beat me up. I hated them to the core. I hated being born. I hated their God for making me angry, hurt, confused, and neglected.
I grew up being told to do everything they say from what to eat, wear, befriend, course to take, religion to believe in. I deceived myself into thinking I knew who I was when I had no personal values, no personal principles, no personal foundation. I only breathed and lived by my parents law. I could not make a decision. And by the time I went to university I was like some schizo whose straitjacket was removed. All hell broke lose. All the pent up rage out for the world to take. This was the place I learned not to give a damn. This was where I fell in my own rabbit hole...
To be continued.
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