This is a true story. In 2010, I was standing in the kitchen being judged. My father was frustrated with me. “We’re trying to fix you!” he said, looking desperate. An old mystic, Filipino woman stood in front of me. She claimed to have healing spiritual powers, not Christian but something supernatural. Her eyes were mean and accusatory; they seemed to say “you are a dirty faggot.” Her mouth cut my emotions to dust. She was a ruinous stranger, intrusive and cruel. My temperature kept rising and I was angry. My mind was defiant, trying to fight against why I was subjecting myself to this degradation. I wanted them to see my anger, that her presence was hurtful and that she was not welcome here, but I was too polite. Perhaps it was because I thought that I could, like any accusation, just brush it off.
At first she made me and my father both collect random items that would become “curing” charms and place them into our own healing jars. Then she made me remove my shirt and told me to stand straight. That’s what they were trying to do—make me straight. She circled me, and with squinted eyes and tightly pursed lips, scrutinized my posture, my soft chest, the hurt in my eyes– all the outer gay pieces of me that seemed to offend her. They wanted me to vomit my sins, my guilt. I stood ashamed of myself, of my exposed femininity through the baring of my unmanly body, feeling like I deserved to be judged this way. Yet I stood by the sparks of fire and anger knowing I did not deserve any of this. “Stand like a man!” my father shouted with a look of exasperation on his face. I complied robotically. Why was he taking her side? Why was I trying to appease them? Why was I participating in my own personal freak show? A feeling of grey sickness emanated like moldy spores from my innocent core and reverberated throughout the chambers of my homosexual body. “This is disgusting” I thought. I felt disgusting; disgusted with myself, disgusted with them.
My mother and sister walked into the kitchen then. My mother’s eyes looked me over, observing my stripped humiliation of bare skin and bare shame. She lowered her gaze in a meek, embarrassed manner that said “This is what’s best for you,” and turned her cheek, but not in the way had God meant. Through her timidness, I felt her shame. My flame of anger flickered to smoke and embarrassment, blue and sad. A strange look of satisfaction and pity formed on her face as if she wanted to protect me from this but thought better of it. They left me standing there half naked, violated by this stranger woman, by their shame, within our home. That let me down. That kind of crushed me. Was that how they loved me at 18? Did they think I was something they could mold and alter to their liking? That wasn’t love, whatever it was. At least not the kind I ever wanted to receive. That kind of thing stays with you. It leaves a mark in your mind and needs love to forgive. I’ve forgiven them now, but I cannot forget that moment of hurt.
Nikko Espina