SCARS

I loved playing outside when I was a kid. Evidence of fun is stretched on my knees albeit I was always alone. I didn’t have many friends, and I didn’t have a sibling until I was nine years old. My family made sure I was given everything I needed as a child, and that made me feel luckier than any other kids I know. I wasn’t spoiled. I was disciplined. Rightfully to their thinking. I was the apple of their eye, spanking my bottom red just to show they love me. I had everything a normal kid needed so wanting more would lead to one thing alone— guilt. On bad days, I still feel like an ungrateful brat for having the nerve to notice the bad things, among the abundance of good. It’s a constant struggle, especially with my mother.

I. OH, MOTHER

I am sure that I’m not the only person who wishes to never tread the same path their mothers paved for them. My mother is good, but strict. A bigger disciplinarian than my father, in fact. I was an only child for almost nine years, and my parents treated me as if I were a rare crystal ornament in a glass table from a house of diamonds. I used to be a very sickly child too, which may warrant my parents’ metaphorically placing me in a bubble wrapped kind of life. I understood the high fences, I truly do. But growing up with friends whose parents are easy going made me question my own. Classmates who are close to their mother, and can talk to them like friends. I envied them. I grew up knowing that if I went out this week, I can’t go out again for the next five weeks. Asking for permission is not the issue— I already knew the answer.

My mother had impossible standards. I remember getting chosen in day care to represent our school in a show and tell contest. I was four years old, and I still recall how hard she spanked me whenever the stroke of my Crayola went over the steep leaves of my tree drawing. Once, the scene got too rabid. I was barely breathing from all the crying and mother’s constant screaming and spanking, when I heard my father yelling from the other room, “You should just kill your daughter instead! That’s what you’re doing anyway.” But now that I’m older, I fear that this memory may be fabricated. A thread that tangled between the same trauma suffered by my sister and I. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was her. But one thing I know, bruises always made themselves known on my skin.

My mother’s eyes are the truest thing I know, but she did have a terrible side eye. That kind that when you see it, you know you’ll end up in welts at four in the afternoon, and for the next three days. I learned to check on the time constantly. I did tasks before I was even told. I learned to do things by myself. At second grade, I tried to stop asking my mother for help in my assignments. I stopped telling her about school plays because I didn’t want her to see me. At the age of eight, I tried to withdraw from my mother as much as I could. But even so, I am and will always be my mother’s daughter. I needed her to tell me I was doing well. I needed her approval. So, I went through a cycle of emotional withdrawals for years. My mother’s eyes are like mirrors I was most afraid to look at. Each mistake I made was a stroke, a scar from the supposed to be fine lined skin of my young life. Every disappointment; every unmet expectation; every wrongdoing—she made sure that I saw it in her eyes. That I felt them. That it ricocheted to me. That it wounded and scarred. But her eyes also revealed what she thought of my small successes. Times when I was a perfect daughter. And I chased that proud glimmer for years.

Determined to prove that I can be a perfect and independent daughter while seeking her nod with a smile, I walked through life alone, making me earn my self-made scars. Those I believe that made me stronger. At least that’s what I thought. That first significant wound happened in fifth grade when I purposefully made the solar system project by myself. I was scraping the Styrofoam into circles, making planets, when the blade slipped and sliced a clean cut on my leg, three inches above my ankle. It went so deep that my mind marveled into a picture of me in a hospital bed, having my wound fixed and listening to my mother’s endless homily. Even so, as blood rushed through the floor, I quickly took care of my wound and wiped everything clean. Full credit is due to adrenaline rush, and a combination of fear of getting whipped whilst my leg is bleeding. I never told my parents, especially my mother about it, but it scarred. My first and biggest visible scar. I wore pants every day for almost two weeks.

II. MOTHER FIGURES

Some might call it mommy issues, but I consider friendships with women much older than myself the truest gift. So, when I lost the one that I treasured most, I nearly killed myself. Eleventh grade, I met Ma’am D, a new teacher. She’s cool, maternal, and believe it or not, I was the student she was closest to. I found in her the mother that I never saw on my own. I told her things I never told anybody. Things I never even admitted to myself. I later found out that this was what drove her away. The first time I ever bared myself and trusted a person and she left me. Every time she passed me at school, she looked through me, as if I did not exist. Dwelling on this at 6:00 AM being sleepless the night before, I stared on the ceiling and realized how similar it was to when I was basically invisible to my mother after graduating salutatorian in elementary. How can a house so small be too big for a mother and her child? It was as though a scar was slashed open again and someone spilled salt all over it. This was the first time I recognized depression and made my first suicide attempt. And as if it was a cosmic joke, I thought of my mother when the knife was mere millimeters against my wrist. And I was brought to the land of living again. I lived as if I were collecting scars. Years after and several attempts later, it was still the same. My mother drove me to do it, but it’s also her that saved me from it.

III. UN/BECOMING

I was a girl raised by two religions: Catholic and Jehovah’s Witness. I attended mass on both the Catholic church and the Kingdom Hall, alternating Sundays. This went on until I was about ten years old when our families had a feud. My parents stopped allowing my Tatay to take me on “sangyaw.” But before all this, I watched my elders already mapping my future for me. “An obedient girl like you shall be a teacher, and you will find a great seaman, and you will settle down,” said my Catholic neighbor. “No, bibi will become a nurse and find herself a fine husband that is a doctor and they shall live an abundant life,” said my Jehovah’s Witness uncle.

However, I have always looked up to my mother despite everything and adhered to her on making any significant decisions. All she said was for me to marry a good man, someone like my father. I loved my father dearly, so I smiled admiring those words. I thought, I guess it’s not that hard. I will not disappoint her this time. No more wounds to heal. No more invisible scars. So, when I realized I was a lesbian, I cried so hard for a very long time. It was like, a ghost has caught up on me even as I ran so fast. “I am straight. I should be straight!” I have one shot of becoming the perfect daughter and I can’t blow this up. But silence won over my all too loud head. I am a lesbian. I knew this for a long time, but I never entertained the thought. I placed it in a box and covered it shut and tucked it in the back of my head. This was a potential major wound. Another scar.

I thought being an adult would be an easy fix to the shackles from my childhood, but it bled through my adult life. I learned to trust no one, but easily and desperately trusted strangers. I became my personal critic. A self-perfectionist but forgiving to others. I am the worst combination of selfless but selfish at the same time. I became a Taylor Swift song, disguising my covert narcissism as altruism. My years of cycle of withdrawing and clinging to my mother’s words made me unstable in a way, I believed. Even in my relationship. Nitpicking every nitty gritty detail that caused us to fight every so often. I loved to prove my point, but I hated to argue. I want everything to come my way. I micromanaged my relationship until we found an in-between. So long as it worked.

I want to blame my mother for what I’ve become. Why do I seek chaos and peace at the same time? I always like to reflect on fictional characters because that was the only way I could see myself. I never knew who I was. I’m guessing I have spent two decades trying to be a perfect daughter that I forgot to be a person. I sought my mother’s attention and approval through striving for perfection. A dead cause.

I love my mother in spite of the yellowed stains on my favorite pillow. Maybe I should thank my mother for planting resilience in me at an early age. I should even be grateful that I have a mother that is present. She’s faulted, as are all of us, but she is my mother, and I am still my mother’s daughter, despite us living different lives. I often find myself frozen whenever I am asked to describe who I am. I just don’t know yet. So, I answer with who I want to be. I am not the equal to all those visible and invisible scars I’ve collected through the years. I am not just my mother’s daughter. I want to pave a new path and tread it lightly. Enjoy every rock and falling leaves that find me. It’s not too late. I always write “Life’s about to get good” at the top right corner of my draft papers. I believed in Shania Twain. Whether it was my mother’s responsibility to make a better human out of me, it is my choice now to be who I want to be.

She may not be proud nor approve of my former and future life choices, and the person I am now, it’s the price I have to pay, and hers to accept. Maybe I have given my mother too small a credit. Maybe she will accept the fact that her eldest daughter is a lesbian and may never give her grandchildren. Who knows. But for now, I love the silence and the laughter of people who know me, the smile of the girl I love, and my mother’s blissfully unaware eyes. I can still buy my time to be a good daughter. Not a perfect one.

Ronah Ganzo grew up in Bohol, Philippines, with a huge imagination and a backyard that was perfect for a young girl's little world. She's 24, and the eldest of two daughters. Her passion for storytelling led her to pursue a BA in Communication Arts, with a major in Literature and Creative Writing. Currently working as a high school teacher, she still writes whenever the muses whisper to her, or as she calls it, the two ends of the spectrum-- the happiest and worst days of her life.