From the day I was born, or perhaps before that, I was a part of a Filipino household. For me, that meant three things in particular: first, I would grow up to be loud. Second, I would grow up hard of hearing from the boisterous nature of my family. Third, I would be Catholic.
My very first school was, and I don’t joke, secluded high up in the mountains and run by Catholic nuns. I spent a year attending the school before moving to Australia when I was four, where I would attend another Catholic school for three more years, followed by a move to Malaysia where I first began attending weekly Sunday school classes. On top of that exposure and education, my family made sure to attend Mass every week, not just Easter and Christmas, and as an entire family, embodied what we believed it meant to be Catholic in all aspects of our lives. In other words, I was very Catholic, but more importantly, I liked it.
In sixth grade, when I was eleven years old, I realized I liked other girls. I hope that as you read this, you’re having thoughts along the lines of “Oh, that’s cool”, or “Well, that’s not a character-defining factor behind a person anyway, so what does it matter?”, or even “Me too!” However, I can assure you that my thoughts were nothing of the sort. At the time, I didn’t know that my sexuality had been present for just as long as my religion, if not longer. For all I knew, this piece of news was fresh, it was new, and most of all, it was not welcome in my life.
I wish that my attitude about it could’ve been different. I wish that I could’ve just accepted it for what it was, come out and come clean to my family and friends, and received the support that all humans deserve. I wish I could inspire people with a life story of staying true to yourself, to show others that you shouldn’t be ashamed of who you are and who your heart falls for. But that wasn’t my story.
For years, I struggled to hide it from my Catholic family who I feared would never accept it. To clarify, my parents had always taught me to love, no matter what. I would argue that the Philippines provides some of the best diversity in their portrayal of gay characters in media, and that it similarly has a wide range of proud gay celebrities who are nationally loved as much as all other celebrities. Homosexuality, in my experience, was viewed positively in the Philippines; the only condition was that it was okay, as long as it was in someone else’s family. My parents have always been excellent role models, but how would they react upon discovering that one of their own children was possibly homosexual? Even if they promised to love me unconditionally, would the disappointment drive a wedge between us, as they would slowly realize that I was the daughter they would avoid talking about in family reunions? Could I ever take that risk?
On top of losing the most important support system I had, I also struggled with the shame I fought to hold back every Sunday. In the place that once gave me strength, I found nothing but shame and denial. No longer could I imagine God’s arms in a loving embrace. As I shut my eyes, His open arms were replaced with the image of closed gates, and in place of the love I could once feel myself immersed in during prayer, I was engulfed in darkness so thick that I could feel myself suffocating in the depths of my sin. The internal homophobia I faced was more debilitating than any external hatred I could’ve received, and with the loss of my personal connection with my religion, I lost yet another support system that had once pulled me through years of racism.
Feeling like I had lost the love from those who I believed had loved me for all my life, I lost the ability to love myself. And with the denial of my sexuality, I truly believed I had lost the right to love at all.
Upon stating that I liked other women earlier, I had mentioned my hope that your thoughts were either positive or indifferent. To me, nothing would make me happier than to be in a world where sexuality arouses zero curiosity. To me, this was the ultimate wrench to throw into the works that were my moral standing, and my identity. My depression hit two significant peaks: the first when my sexuality made it clear that I could fall in love with more than just a single girl, ruling out the hopes of it being a one-time incident, and the second when I decided that I could no longer trust my feelings to remain platonic, when I stopped allowing myself to risk forming close friendships. For all I knew, I was alone, and in being as such, the only person I could ever hurt was myself.
Where my story ends, however, is still a work in progress. As bleak as this story may sound, there is a message that I want you to leave with. Despite all different beliefs surrounding the topic, despite the controversial views that some Catholics may hold about sexuality in general, there is one thing I can say that cannot be disputed. I was not alone. I am not alone. My story is but one of millions, possibly even billions of other stories. I can’t sit here and tell you whether or not God, Allah, Shiva, Kami, or any other deity or non-deity, would state about sexuality. All I can promise you is that you are not alone. With or without a religious background, if you have struggled with coming to terms with sexual orientation, or gender identity, or anything within that realm, you are not alone.
To the eleven year old who cried herself to sleep, thinking that God had forsaken her, thinking that the world had turned its back on her, I have to tell her this: one day, you’re going to move to a university filled with people who faced the exact same challenges as you. You are not a bad person, they are not bad people, and you are all worth loving. The love that you can give is unique, and whomever your heart decides to entrust your love to, so long as your wish is simply to bring someone else the happiness you think they deserve, it is a beautiful gift. Isolating yourself isn’t just a loss to you and your happiness, but to those around you as well. Love is love, and even if it comes from the strangest of circumstances, and even if it ends in vain, please, let yourself love.
