Spots
When I was in Grade 1, I wore knee-high socks to hide the dark spots, scars, and wounds I had from scratching my legs while asleep. I often woke up with dry blood between my nails and patches of red stains in our fresh bedsheets. My mom would scold me about this bad habit of scratching, and it took me time to outgrow it. My wounds, like outgrowing my bad habit, took time to heal.
When I got bored, I would remove the scab out of sheer satisfaction and try to stop the bleeding afterwards, or let it bleed until it dried on its own. Maybe this was what I traded for getting these scars—the satisfaction I got from peeling the scab from the edges. And in turn, as a consequence, my body would heal differently, and I needed to wear knee-high socks to hide the wounds. The pairs of socks I wore served me well for the next few years, but on days that I would not wear them, bullies in my class would come over and call me names.
Burog. That was one of the names they called me. To this day, I never got the chance to know more about the skin condition I had. The wounds would either start from a simple insect bite or from a small abrasion from physical activity. Coupled with a bad habit of scratching, it would grow bigger and heal differently—with dark-colored edges, leaving a scar that would not disappear no matter the amount of sebo de macho I put on it. I can show anyone the scar from a wound I got when I was eight—a small oval patch on the inner part of my right leg—or the scar from when I scraped my left ankle against the corner of a door in 2019.
I had no constant friends, but I had bullies. The name-calling would peak during recess or lunchtime, and I would end up crying at my desk, alone. Don’t get me wrong, I had good times with my classmates, too, but enduring the bullying almost got the best of me.
Galis. That was another name they flung at me. This physical insecurity I had was an opportunity for them to bully me. Things didn’t get any better in the years that followed. I wasn’t accepting of how I looked, and the name-calling just worsened my low self-esteem. Trips to the guidance office were mostly due to encounters with the bullies; their insults were penalized only with pangaral, and so the bullying happened again and again.
How does one, at a young age, cope with such distress and trauma? There were nights I’d sleep and have this nightmare of a mob of people calling me names for how I looked. My younger self would not fight back, simply because he did not know what to do. Instead, at times, he treated these encounters as mere jokes, only to realize how much of a terrible impact they would have in the years to come.
Dalmatian. A dog breed and another name they called me. My scars were much like a Dalmatian’s—black-colored spots all over the body. My moreno skin and the dark spots did not go well together. I would often stare at my naked body in front of the mirror and see the parts that I hated.
In 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labeled bullying as an adverse childhood experience (ACE). Meaning, these experiences could potentially harm the physical and mental well-being of a child through repeated abuse, and impact how they interact with others, how they perceive themselves, and how they perform in school. It said these ACEs could also lead to “anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns” in the future, and carry over to adulthood. Our teachers teach us about flight-or-fight when we find ourselves in a stressful situation. What they don’t tell us is how our body also freezes to try to frantically think about the next move. We share this same response with other animals. With rabbits, for example, their last line of defense when flight-or-fight fails is to freeze and play dead. While playing dead is not an ideal situation for us humans so that predators, say a bully, will lose interest in us, freezing (and crying) often happened to me.
I’m still in the process of healing from these wounds. I have learned to outgrow the bad habit of staying in the lives of people who don’t want me in theirs, and have learned to let go of people who do not bring out the good in me. I still carry around insecurities to this day, but I no longer need to wear knee-high socks when I go out. I no longer scratch these wounds and wake up with bloodied sheets and blood between my nails. But these scars have left a history that I need to tell. I have learned to accept these spots — call them whatever you want — little by little.
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Manuel Genaro de Luna, 22, is in his last semester at UP Los Baños. He values solitude just as he loves spending time with friends. He wishes to adopt a cat soon.
