Kiana

“…There is nothing, nothing that stops me from doing anything except myself.”
—Susan Sontag in Reborn: Journals & Notebooks (1947-1963)

Last night my mind was exceptionally clear, which was a surprise. Maybe it was the coffee I bought with my own money, the coffee that served as a reward to myself for suffering patiently, for enduring three weeks of having no pennies in my pockets. Suffering patiently reminds me of my Catholic household upbringing, where I was taught to suffer patiently and endure for God because the glory that will come after would be incomparable. Maybe this teaching is still in my bloodstream after years of trying to run from the confines of religion and, who knows, maybe subconsciously I’m still this rigid Catholic disciplinarian parent to myself. In my high school, self-discipline was taught. But it was self-discipline against a human being’s original nature; it was self-discipline that catered to the faithful, that promoted the denial of self to bring glory to God. I couldn’t reconcile myself with this idea of god, so I chose to go my own way. Last week at a school event, my friend noticed me not doing the sign of the cross during the opening ceremony invocation. She asked afterwards if I wasn’t Catholic anymore. I told her I no longer adhere to the church.

Breaking free from whatever form of bondage or constraint is liberating. Now I can see how brave both the godless and the godly are—the godless for choosing to live solipsistically, vicariously; the godly for submitting themselves to this elevated ideal of a divine being, a hand spinning the wheel of life, omnipotent and merciful, but equally just. It takes some form of bravery to renounce faith in a higher being and another form of bravery to succumb and be entrenched, at times blindly, by ideals put up by men of yore.

Propelled by women writers I’ve obsessively followed through the years, I think I’m now ready to put myself “near to the wild heart of life,” to borrow Clarice Lispector’s words. I’ve been sketching quite hastily and mapping out plans in my brain, then on to paper, and have been listing names of like-minded people I can talk with to help and inspire me more. I want the teenagers and women in my country to feel autonomous, to feel like they matter and are heard, that they deserve the space they’re in despite the shaky political atmosphere in the Philippines right now. ♦