“TRY YOUR best to fit in,” my mother said on our way to kindergarten. But five-year-olds don’t comprehend that logic, nor do they care. They are untainted by the world, and their naive minds have yet to grasp the idea of a need to change one’s self. Masks untouched, we run around the playground with “BFFs” we had met less than two hours earlier, unmindful of that foreboding darkness.
“Try your best to fit in,” my grandmother told me as she walked me to the Korean school in which I had to spend the summer. I spectacularly failed at that, almost immediately even. I was to introduce myself and, unable to attempt a word in Korean, knowing that my lack of fluency in the language would paint me a fool, and with the concept of a “mixed Korean” being a rarity in our ideal of pure-blooded superiority, I shook my head in refusal. Shame swathed me as the teacher told me to sit down. Stares scanned my body and penetrated my back, causing my shoulders to hunch.
“Try your best to fit in” was the tip I was given on how to get along with new peers, as I went through the process of transferring school. What a sight it must have been—an “Inglesera” fresh out of an international school, head held high, claiming, “Yes, I can speak Filipino,” as she internally struggled between “kami” and “tayo.” It was a wholehearted attempt on my part, albeit unsuccessful, to fit into the Filipino environment in which I was such a stranger. People saw through my facade in no time.
“Try your best to fit in,” my brother said as we hurried through Morayta. I fastened my cap even more securely as my Divisoria-bought clothes enveloped my frame, afraid to let anyone catch so much as a glimpse at my face—and subsequently think that, with my thinly slit eyes, I cannot be from here, and that the seemingly harmless old bag in my arms held amounts of money people in the area so desperately seek.
Walking through the streets may cause people to learn more than they think possible, if they only knew that seeing and listening is often more effective than speaking. I see a tiny young lady with curls dyed emerald and wearing a crimson skirt and a lavender turtleneck, her green-coated lips pursed in thought as she browses the silverware. I see a man with rings rimming his ears, eyebrows, lips and nose, and rows of tattoos inching along his biceps and crawling around his neck. I watch a woman from behind, poised with hulking shoulders as she struts down the road in cherry heels. She turns and reveals a face lacking the delicacy that they say makes a woman. I realize that it is merely a body with male genitalia identifying as female, yet fail to see her as one who is simply being herself.
I hear teenagers laughing, mocking the green-lipped young lady for her bizarre sense of fashion. I hear a mother harshly whisper to her son staring at the inked man with unabashed fascination, to avert his eyes and not follow the example of the man whose piercings glint as he assures an old lady that her purse is not heavy at all. I hear a grandfather cough in distaste at the “revolting sight in front of him,” shaking his head in dismay as he regards the transgender as a sin worse than all other choices.
They don’t know, or maybe they forget. They forget how easy it is for children to run hand in hand with strangers, how a boy can have hair cascading to his shoulders and the other kids would only marvel at its softness, how one can eat a peanut butter sandwich with tuna amid shrieks of “Ewww!” because that’s how one likes it. And how the darkness simply stands by the side with the masks alongside it because you never let it rule over you.
They don’t know that once the bell rings at lunch time, the Korean children swarm my chair where I attempt to make myself as small as I can. I brace for ridicule. They corner me in my seat, my hands clammy with sweat as I peek at them through my bangs. They ask, “Can you teach us English?”
They don’t know that when the students at my new school had discovered all that I was hiding under my facade, they laughed, and not out of disgust or pity. It was strange, but they got me to laugh with them at the plain silliness of it. Then they helped me in my homework, translating word by word until I got the hang of it and knew the language beyond “tayo” and “kami,” and until concepts untranslatable into English—such as “kinikilig” or “pakikipagkapwa”—became nothing but confusions of the past. And we shared laughter once again in congratulations for my achievement. I could from then on say, “Yes, I can speak Filipino,” and mean it.
They don’t know that when I now rush through Morayta in fear that moving too slowly may get me pulled into a dark alley, I keep my face held high. Eyes glance at me as I pass, suggesting greedy thoughts of snatching my wallet, but I barely see them. My eyes are to my sides, where my friends are, glaring at any who dares come too close. I hear them saying I should be protected (“Uy, kailangan nasa gitna si Yoo Jung!”), and I know I don’t have to fear as much anymore.
I am at the point where I can tell people, “Yes, I can speak Filipino, but not fluently,” unafraid of what may be said or judged. When adults in Korea ask why I am not in school, “I am not from around here” floats out of my mouth because I can as easily claim that I am a mixed-blood from the Philippines. I have hope that one day, I will not need to have friends around me to not feel fear when I walk through Manila. I now use not only my eyes and ears but also my voice: “What is wrong with someone being oneself?” When asked why I am this way, I am unafraid to simply answer: “I am different.”
We grew up hearing “different” as synonymous to “weird” and “strange.” We grew up thinking that being different is a bad thing, and that being unable to fit in means there is something wrong with us. We grew up in a world where fitting in means one is “normal,” and standing out draws unwanted, even dangerous, attention.
But we are changing. We are teaching our children what we were not taught: that we are all different. Difference makes us unique, and “unique” can be synonymous to “weird” and “strange,” but it doesn’t have to be such a bad thing. It does not mean we have to shy away and hide behind a mask, the same mask that society has created and forced us to wear day in and day out, a mask handed to us by our own nurturers because it’s the only thing they know. It’s been handed to them in the same way, and they’ve been wearing it for so long that it has become a part of themselves.
We are learning that growing up does not have to mean that the foreboding darkness, which simply stood by the side of the playground we played in as kids, with masks untouched, will rule our lives forever.
Yoo Jung Lee, 17, is in senior high school (Grade 11) at OB Montessori Las Piñas.