Tag Archives: non-fiction

radikalchick.lit

my body, my life: my stake in the RH Bill

here, for good measure, is mine. when I speak of the RH Bill, these are some of the more consistent memories that I battle with, that I live:

(1) an act of infidelity brings me to a room in the middle of nowhere, as the other woman needed a friend while she got herself an abortion: i was her only friend. (2) I skip a pill, and think nothing of it; let me overdose and do the-day-after-thing I’ve read about online. I do not know of its probability of failing. (3) I am pregnant with a sick child and told that the dangers are unknown, it is unclear if it is safe for me, but I have no options. (4) I am pregnant and in pain and in suffering and in even more pain, I am told by doctors that they want to do a caesarean operation on me, forgetting to say that it will mean even more pain for my body, less chances of survival for my baby. (5) I am speaking to doctors who talk about my body and my baby as if we were machines that they can fix, as we were just broken and in the name of their science can be fixed, by golly! we can be fixed. (6) I am in the delivery room and I don’t feel a thing, but I am trying to get the baby out with all my heart and soul, that which every woman on that delivery table must have done before me, and I am thinking of this: please do not let medicine touch my baby, do not let one needle, one piece of cold metal, to touch her. (7) I am alive, it’s been two years, my body’s still battered by the painful pregnancy, by the even more painful uncaring words, said about me and my body and my being woman seeing as abandonment can only be contingent to the death of a child.

when I speak of the RH Bill I remember all these, not necessarily in this order, but always in quick succession, each one a death in itself, each memory I imagine possibly less about pain and loss, if only there were mechanisms in place to protect me — and every other woman — as a woman; if only there was a system in place that would treat my body as worthy of much love and care and respect, because it is mine, and I deserve it.

radikalchick.lit

the street of my childhood

is victory avenue, quezon city. where a big house still is, owned by family but barely, a space i haven’t seen in years, a street i haven’t even gone into in as long.

but on that street where i grew up, my notion(s) of the world began to be formed. between the padlocked gate, and the poverty beyond it; the old beetle that we played around and not within, and the huge garden that Lola loved; between the death of a rock star and my own cousin found hit and almost dead by one of our trusted impoverished neighbors beyond that padlocked gate; between who we were there, within family and the strangest kind of love, and what we became when we left, with all our things, a time that i remember clearly.

i would later find out that in fact the move was about the daring to strike out elsewhere, on our own as a nuclear family.

seeing this street of my childhood as i was getting P200 pesos worth of gas, because that’s all my wallet had; coming from many things and emotions of the past two years, but literally from five hours of volunteer work in a public school in one of those streets i will forget soon enough; worrying periodically about money and consistently refusing to worry; with much love, too much in fact, for the world; in between celebrating a birth and a death in the three and a half months of every year since 2008.

this street, a full two decades after, has to be serendipitous.

as it is a challenge, showing me what i want, what i need to do, where i must go, and how it shall be done. as it is about the past, even more so about the future. and the now of knowing to see the possibilities of daring.

that street is exactly where i’m at.

radikalchick.lit

in process: travel with no man

speaking literally, in the sense that you carry your own bags, with no real options for help, no man to take pity, at least no man that’s yours. and this is the story of you, having a boy all the time, since you were in college to post-grad, working as teacher, living alone. there was always a boy.

and you do this on purpose of course, calling all your men, boys.

because that’s how they become, you find. they become such in the course of time, because you have the temerity to stay in relationships even when there were signs that told you to go, leave, walk away while you can. but alwaysyou see it through to what are generally painful ends, thinking it right that you do so, there is no other way,  you are proven wrong not soon enough.

and you struggle with your heavy bags and pray to the heavens that you’re going in the right direction to your bed and breakfast. you get to your room and find it unkempt, the last customer just left, the one who’s responsible missing. you get to the Eiffel tower by pressing on, you get there hungry, and with blisters on your feet, you chide yourself for these mistakes, no one else is at fault. you are always at fault.

you are in the Metro and it’s dingy and smelly, yet you need it to find your way, so you deal with its smell and chew some gum, light a cigarette. you plod on with a confidence that’s mistaken for certainty, you always know your way, you’re the one who knows what to do.

you shuffle through too many Metro stations, you walk through long unfamiliar streets. with blistered feet, you take some photos, plenty of them bad, some of them good. you have no conversation save for what’s in your head, and in there it is plenty and dynamic and brilliant, you wonder who can get it.

you wonder where you are. except that you’re here, where it’s clear what you’re up against and where you need to go. this is more than you’ve known of yourself since you’ve had a man. you should know to take this one as a sign.