Personal shizzle.

So today I feel this regret of saying something. I guess it's interesting because I mostly don' feel regret. I mean, being hopeless is different, regret is kind of darkly hopeful, do you agree?

So today, there was a question posted about having an experience a dark side of privilege and it took a lot in me to speak up. Because you know, my whole life I've been pretending to be all good times, except when I write, except when I'm honest and  I whine and I whine and I whine... and today, I spoke up... you know, because I am brown and all this white-defensiveness is appalling to me. I am not being racist. But the truth is the white-poor is not comparable to the brown-poor and at least they have an identity, being brown and aspiring to be white... that's the sad thing about being Filipino. I feel like I was being gut open when this white girl was speaking, saying that she's below the poverty line, and she's trying her best to not be... I don't know, unfortunate. But this I think is narrow-minded, and blind to the priviliges of, not being white, but being within the Western Community. The poor in the poverty line in a University, well, that almost never happen in Third World Countries, you see if you consider yourself unpriviliged, if you were back home you'd be eating instant noodles and bad rice and not have a job because the government can't help, and yes you are privilege because you can't see beyond your hardship and the fact that you are ignorant of how lucky you are makes you even more so...

But I regret speaking, about being emotional about my people. I don't know. Sometimes, even though I am myself and I struggle and not conform, I don't want to stand out... and I think of this thing about privilege and I know I am priviliged and I am ashamed to be thought of as poor or as Filipino, sometimes, I am embarassed of my color... and that hurts you know. And I am not trying to shame white people, I mean, I don't know, I just sometimes think... if you have never felt like wanting to be another color (because life is hard and people judge you because you have an accent and you struggle and struggle and you try to act like them, talk like them, think like them) then you are priviliged. This is a truth. I mean, I am afraid to be misread, misheard, misinterpreted. I am Filipino. I grew up to blonde dolls, with blue eyes, and whitening products, and western movies, and English as a sign of intelligence, and going abroad makes you special... this is who I am... and sometimes I am ashamed, because even though I don't want to there is still a part of me that believes this. That being not-Filipino is good. This is why I think I am not privilige... And it shames me that sometimes being different keeps me quiet.

And when I found my voice. I am ashamed of what I say... Not because it isn't true but because I am afraid of what people would think, that I am sad, and poor, and my people are helpless... Aculturation. Have I come to the west to be diluted in Western ways?

I want to be a writer. In English. Because I have always thought English makes me priviliged. Because I am natural at it. But now I am here and this tongue is foreign and swollen in my mouth. I speak and speak and I am not sure if I hear myself.... who am I?

I am proud of the immigrants who stumble and speak and speak, wearing their accents proudly, saying things once, twice and thrice until they get to say what they mean. And here I am, someone who speaks almost without accent and with a vocabulary larger than natural speaker of the tongue and I stutter and I don't speak loud enough because I am well too aware that I am Filipino and perhaps I think this is all pretense and I regret everything.

I am always afraid no one understands me, but I spoke today. Trying to paint this picture that has stuck with me for ten years of a family sharing a bowl of payless noodles. Five children, bent over a bowl. Skin and bones and brown and Filipino. And I try to tell them, in a room of white people, in a room with one person who thinks she is poor, I tell them, back home poor meant barely surviving. Here in Canada, you can work at McDonalds and you're set, in Philippines, there are no jobs, no jobs for graduates, no jobs for the poor who don't have degrees.And here everyone can buy ing lotion and back home, lotion is a luxury.

And when the class stills and I am in this quiet, and my heart is pounding and my voice shook and I am emotional. And I wonder, and I wonder, have I alienated myself, no one looks me in the eye like they are afraid of my tear unwept. And I don't know... I wish I didn't say anything....

But at the same time, I'm glad I did.

Regret feels like the walls of my stomach are on fire... and I wonder, I wonder about many, many things.