Photo by Jason Chen
Talking to Yourself, Tenderly
Yannah Guda
Your tito was named Jet, and he drove an SUV like it was his last day on Earth. It made you nauseous, dizzy, and reminded you of the roller coasters in Disneyland that you just rode. Your cousins cooed at each other, babbling in the way only a five-year-old and a seven-year-old could, delighted by how their vowels tumbled from their mouths. Dummy baby, dummy baby, you’re a dummy baby! And you, you were in the backseat of the SUV, talking to Tita Weng, listening to her ramble. She looked at you and tilted her head, and a rainbow came alight on her face as the car speeded and speeded and speeded through winding roads, past orange street lights, red and blue police cars, a flickering McDonald’s sign. (She had laugh lines, but her mouth was sharp, wrinkles, but her cheeks were full.)
“Yannah,” she began, “are you afraid of your mom?”
You stared at her. What an absurd question. What an accurate observation. You fidgeted a little. You weren’t used to wearing jeans, your hands were dry because it was winter, and your mouth was sore. (It might have been COVID. Or homesickness.) Your hair was choppy because you cut it yourself with scissors you stole from your best friend in ninth grade, and your jacket was too big, too loose around your shoulders. (It belonged to Tita Popoy. It smelled like her, was expensive like her.)
“Bakit mo naman natanong ‘yun, Tita? Why did you ask that?” You tried to play it off like you always do. You’re the eldest sister, and you knew how to embody three beings at once: therapist, jester, and deceiver. “Have you seen my mom? She’s scary. Who wouldn’t be afraid of her?”
Tita laughed. You turn left on a different highway. There were minimal lights here. Just orange, just yellow, just summer. Or fire. Whichever you wanted it to be.
“I saw how you look at her,” she said, “the way you flinch.”
You fidgeted again. The lights built a sun on Earth. Your cousins chattered. Tito Jet sped down the highway like he was racing against time. While you, little Yannah, were in a different world altogether. Simultaneously, within yourself, you were three years old and five and ten and thirteen and fifteen. You carried memories of a childhood on your back, behind your ribs, tender and prone to bruises like ripened fruit.
So, you admit, “Of course I’m afraid of her.”
Tita’s face softened. And, at that moment, you wanted to tell her about everything you’ve been through, about everything that’s happened. You wanted to tell her that you begged your mom not to hit you in first grade, but she did, and then she kissed you afterward, brushed back your hair, and cooked you binagoongan as though nothing happened. You wanted to tell Tita Weng that Mom yelled at you in fifth grade for being ungrateful, then she sent you to your room to think about what you’ve done. After an hour of penance–you pray for forgiveness, you pray for understanding, Jesus looks at you and bleeds from His crucifix–you come to her, trembling, “I think I’m a bad person, Mommy.” At twelve, your mom beat you for being gay, and at thirteen, your mom beat you for hiding the fact that you were gay, and at fourteen, you were caught with your girlfriend and at sixteen–God, at sixteen–you cried in front of your mom for the first time in years. You felt like a child. (Mommy, my back hurts, my heart hurts, my head and my wrists and my thighs. Everywhere I hurt myself, everywhere my fists have slammed into.) “Mommy,” you said, “I don’t want to wake up in the morning.” And she looked at you with the eyes of a woman who has seen worse, been through worse, who was worse, and she told you, “How dare you.”
You burst into tears. Tita Weng hugged you.
She cradled you to her chest–warm, frail–and the world moved around you. The lights kept changing–red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue, blue, so much blue and purple as a police car drove past, as Los Angeles came to life, as the Universal Studios blue globe spun, and the lights of many billboards clashed–while your cousins kept talking. Tito Jet began driving faster because he was hungry and he needed to pee and LA traffic was making him irritated.
But this was what matters: you cried. You were crying in Tita Weng’s arms. You were crying in the arms of a mother, not your mother, and you wanted to let Tita Weng know that the wounds from your mother still stung. You wanted to let her know that you’ve been trying to forgive your mother in the way that the Lord taught you to and in the way that the priests of Sunday Mass preached, but how do you water flowers that grow from a battlefield? Where do they sprout from? Where do they find home from the blood of the Earth?
You didn’t tell Tita Weng any of this, though. You just cried. You cried and cried and cried because it had been too long since you had been held, too long since someone said, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay.
When you quieted, you waited for Tita Weng to start saying her platitudes. That’s what most forty-year-old Catholics did, anyway–they usually started preaching once the solemnity of a vulnerable moment was over.
But Tita Weng did not tell you to forgive. She did not even tell you to understand your mom. She looked at you–eyes a kaleidoscope–and said, “You need to let go.”
“What?”
Your voice was drowned out by Tito Jet telling your cousins to be quiet, please, he couldn’t hear his Google Maps. But still, Tita Weng must have heard you because she continued. “It’s not good for you,” she said. “You need to let go.”
You clenched your teeth. Shook your head.
But Tita Weng was laughing, now, in that good-natured, unmocking way only she could laugh. “You need to,” she said. “For yourself.”
But when have you ever let go of what hurts you? You wanted to argue with her. You felt years of pent-up rage and pettiness rise in your throat, trying to make their way past the itchiness that might be COVID. And you had a thesis statement here, some grand, international debate-winning speech, but what came out was:
“Huh?”
Tita Weng brushed back your windswept, dried-from-winter hair. It tangled in her fingers. (She was kind enough not to comment.) “Cry it all out,” she said, “then get over it.”
What a strange concept: getting over something. Ninang Little said the same thing earlier that week when you wore Tita Weng’s sweater by accident and your mom screamed at you for it in front of the entire household.
“Don’t worry,” Ninang Little said. You were in the car, still trembling, and she was driving you to Forever 21 because all your clothes didn’t fit anymore. “You’ll get over it naman, diba?”
That seemed impossible to you, and you wanted to tell Ninang Little then and Tita Weng now that the wounds caused by your mom cut deep, deeper than the Mariana Trench, deeper than the ninth circle of hell, and you will carry the pain forever. (The wound of a curse word. The scars of her hissed teeth, her furrowed eyebrows, her disappointment.)
But still. The question remained, and it made you uncomfortable.
When have you ever let go of what hurts you?
When have you ever stopped picking at scabs? Deepening wounds? Reopening them to watch yourself bleed because you liked the color of red on brown skin? Mamala said that you should stop farming guilt. She said it through a phone screen, while you were crying in the dark, wanting to die. “Ay, Apo,” she said, “‘wag ka magtanim ng galit. Don’t farm guilt, don’t farm pain. You will only hurt yourself in the process.”
You laughed at her, through snot and tears. “Pero Ma, if I farm a lot, yayaman ako. I will grow my own plantation. Don’t you want your Apo to get rich?”
You’ve tried to stop hurting yourself, but you couldn’t, and you’ve always wondered why. You punish yourself before your parents do. (The fast breathing. The dry tongue.) You already hear their voices in your head before their mouths open. (The nerves of your thumb have been damaged by constant picking. The blood dripped down your palms.)
Do you love the familiarity of pain? Do you think you deserve it?
What a strange concept, no? Just getting over something. Without being forgiven or punished.
You gave your own punishments so willingly and freely, but when was the last time you offered yourself grace? When was the last time you picked yourself up after you failed, and instead of criticism, you told yourself that you were okay? That you would get over this? That you were beautiful and strong and you didn’t need to keep hacking away at your thorns to bloom and unfurl–to earn tenderness?
You hiccuped one last time and Tita Weng patted your back. She offered you a water bottle that was complementary from the ticket station at Disneyland. It even had Mickey Mouse’s face on it. You took it and drank deeply.
“Better?” she asked.
You nodded.
“Yeah,” you muttered, “I will be.”
And that would be enough.
Yannah Guda
Your tito was named Jet, and he drove an SUV like it was his last day on Earth. It made you nauseous, dizzy, and reminded you of the roller coasters in Disneyland that you just rode. Your cousins cooed at each other, babbling in the way only a five-year-old and a seven-year-old could, delighted by how their vowels tumbled from their mouths. Dummy baby, dummy baby, you’re a dummy baby! And you, you were in the backseat of the SUV, talking to Tita Weng, listening to her ramble. She looked at you and tilted her head, and a rainbow came alight on her face as the car speeded and speeded and speeded through winding roads, past orange street lights, red and blue police cars, a flickering McDonald’s sign. (She had laugh lines, but her mouth was sharp, wrinkles, but her cheeks were full.)
“Yannah,” she began, “are you afraid of your mom?”
You stared at her. What an absurd question. What an accurate observation. You fidgeted a little. You weren’t used to wearing jeans, your hands were dry because it was winter, and your mouth was sore. (It might have been COVID. Or homesickness.) Your hair was choppy because you cut it yourself with scissors you stole from your best friend in ninth grade, and your jacket was too big, too loose around your shoulders. (It belonged to Tita Popoy. It smelled like her, was expensive like her.)
“Bakit mo naman natanong ‘yun, Tita? Why did you ask that?” You tried to play it off like you always do. You’re the eldest sister, and you knew how to embody three beings at once: therapist, jester, and deceiver. “Have you seen my mom? She’s scary. Who wouldn’t be afraid of her?”
Tita laughed. You turn left on a different highway. There were minimal lights here. Just orange, just yellow, just summer. Or fire. Whichever you wanted it to be.
“I saw how you look at her,” she said, “the way you flinch.”
You fidgeted again. The lights built a sun on Earth. Your cousins chattered. Tito Jet sped down the highway like he was racing against time. While you, little Yannah, were in a different world altogether. Simultaneously, within yourself, you were three years old and five and ten and thirteen and fifteen. You carried memories of a childhood on your back, behind your ribs, tender and prone to bruises like ripened fruit.
So, you admit, “Of course I’m afraid of her.”
Tita’s face softened. And, at that moment, you wanted to tell her about everything you’ve been through, about everything that’s happened. You wanted to tell her that you begged your mom not to hit you in first grade, but she did, and then she kissed you afterward, brushed back your hair, and cooked you binagoongan as though nothing happened. You wanted to tell Tita Weng that Mom yelled at you in fifth grade for being ungrateful, then she sent you to your room to think about what you’ve done. After an hour of penance–you pray for forgiveness, you pray for understanding, Jesus looks at you and bleeds from His crucifix–you come to her, trembling, “I think I’m a bad person, Mommy.” At twelve, your mom beat you for being gay, and at thirteen, your mom beat you for hiding the fact that you were gay, and at fourteen, you were caught with your girlfriend and at sixteen–God, at sixteen–you cried in front of your mom for the first time in years. You felt like a child. (Mommy, my back hurts, my heart hurts, my head and my wrists and my thighs. Everywhere I hurt myself, everywhere my fists have slammed into.) “Mommy,” you said, “I don’t want to wake up in the morning.” And she looked at you with the eyes of a woman who has seen worse, been through worse, who was worse, and she told you, “How dare you.”
You burst into tears. Tita Weng hugged you.
She cradled you to her chest–warm, frail–and the world moved around you. The lights kept changing–red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue, blue, so much blue and purple as a police car drove past, as Los Angeles came to life, as the Universal Studios blue globe spun, and the lights of many billboards clashed–while your cousins kept talking. Tito Jet began driving faster because he was hungry and he needed to pee and LA traffic was making him irritated.
But this was what matters: you cried. You were crying in Tita Weng’s arms. You were crying in the arms of a mother, not your mother, and you wanted to let Tita Weng know that the wounds from your mother still stung. You wanted to let her know that you’ve been trying to forgive your mother in the way that the Lord taught you to and in the way that the priests of Sunday Mass preached, but how do you water flowers that grow from a battlefield? Where do they sprout from? Where do they find home from the blood of the Earth?
You didn’t tell Tita Weng any of this, though. You just cried. You cried and cried and cried because it had been too long since you had been held, too long since someone said, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay.
When you quieted, you waited for Tita Weng to start saying her platitudes. That’s what most forty-year-old Catholics did, anyway–they usually started preaching once the solemnity of a vulnerable moment was over.
But Tita Weng did not tell you to forgive. She did not even tell you to understand your mom. She looked at you–eyes a kaleidoscope–and said, “You need to let go.”
“What?”
Your voice was drowned out by Tito Jet telling your cousins to be quiet, please, he couldn’t hear his Google Maps. But still, Tita Weng must have heard you because she continued. “It’s not good for you,” she said. “You need to let go.”
You clenched your teeth. Shook your head.
But Tita Weng was laughing, now, in that good-natured, unmocking way only she could laugh. “You need to,” she said. “For yourself.”
But when have you ever let go of what hurts you? You wanted to argue with her. You felt years of pent-up rage and pettiness rise in your throat, trying to make their way past the itchiness that might be COVID. And you had a thesis statement here, some grand, international debate-winning speech, but what came out was:
“Huh?”
Tita Weng brushed back your windswept, dried-from-winter hair. It tangled in her fingers. (She was kind enough not to comment.) “Cry it all out,” she said, “then get over it.”
What a strange concept: getting over something. Ninang Little said the same thing earlier that week when you wore Tita Weng’s sweater by accident and your mom screamed at you for it in front of the entire household.
“Don’t worry,” Ninang Little said. You were in the car, still trembling, and she was driving you to Forever 21 because all your clothes didn’t fit anymore. “You’ll get over it naman, diba?”
That seemed impossible to you, and you wanted to tell Ninang Little then and Tita Weng now that the wounds caused by your mom cut deep, deeper than the Mariana Trench, deeper than the ninth circle of hell, and you will carry the pain forever. (The wound of a curse word. The scars of her hissed teeth, her furrowed eyebrows, her disappointment.)
But still. The question remained, and it made you uncomfortable.
When have you ever let go of what hurts you?
When have you ever stopped picking at scabs? Deepening wounds? Reopening them to watch yourself bleed because you liked the color of red on brown skin? Mamala said that you should stop farming guilt. She said it through a phone screen, while you were crying in the dark, wanting to die. “Ay, Apo,” she said, “‘wag ka magtanim ng galit. Don’t farm guilt, don’t farm pain. You will only hurt yourself in the process.”
You laughed at her, through snot and tears. “Pero Ma, if I farm a lot, yayaman ako. I will grow my own plantation. Don’t you want your Apo to get rich?”
You’ve tried to stop hurting yourself, but you couldn’t, and you’ve always wondered why. You punish yourself before your parents do. (The fast breathing. The dry tongue.) You already hear their voices in your head before their mouths open. (The nerves of your thumb have been damaged by constant picking. The blood dripped down your palms.)
Do you love the familiarity of pain? Do you think you deserve it?
What a strange concept, no? Just getting over something. Without being forgiven or punished.
You gave your own punishments so willingly and freely, but when was the last time you offered yourself grace? When was the last time you picked yourself up after you failed, and instead of criticism, you told yourself that you were okay? That you would get over this? That you were beautiful and strong and you didn’t need to keep hacking away at your thorns to bloom and unfurl–to earn tenderness?
You hiccuped one last time and Tita Weng patted your back. She offered you a water bottle that was complementary from the ticket station at Disneyland. It even had Mickey Mouse’s face on it. You took it and drank deeply.
“Better?” she asked.
You nodded.
“Yeah,” you muttered, “I will be.”
And that would be enough.