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           Last March 9 and 16, 2019, I went to Guanella Center for my Binhi. According to their page, “Guanella Center is a non-stock, non-profit organization by the Missionary Religious Congregation of the Servants of Charity whose purpose is to care for the indigent children with disabilities.” Particularly, I met male children and adults (the ones who already grew up there) with disabilities—mostly, mental disorders. Before the day of my Binhi, I already had my expectations based from my observations from other “special” children I see around because I haven’t really met anyone with these kinds of disorder. I expected them to be shy, awkward, weird, importunate, pesky, and childish—adjectives that I have ascribed to them when I was still a stuck-up and ill-educated. When we arrived at Guanella Center, the kids immediately wrapped their arms around us with huge smiles on their faces and excitedly escorted us to our venue. Before formally interacting with the children, there was a guy who introduced and gave an overview about them. During this time, I was completely saddened by the kids’ background. Some of them were abandoned because of their disorders while some had parents who were incapable of raising them due to financial concerns thus, affecting their mental well-being.

One of the kids that I met was Maki. I observed that he repetitively say “Mcdo.”  When I asked about this, I was told that on the day Maki was left at Guanella Center, his brother told him that he would leave him for a while because he would go to Mcdo but sadly, never returned to pick him up. Being born normally (without complications during birth) and raised in an environment with parents who are caring, loving, and supportive, I was able to explore my talents and hobbies. My parents were athletic, the reason why I’m very into sports and lived an active lifestyle. Because of this, my privileges made me blind from a world where complication exists. I felt superior to people with disabilities because I thought they can’t do the things that I can. However, I noticed that most of them were hyper, clingy, loquacious, thoughtful, and very caring, contradicting my expectations. I realized that they are also just like us—they also have their own school, they can sing and dance (there was a guy who can bboy, a kind of breakdance or streetdance), they go to camps, they celebrate birthdays and holidays, they play sports, etc.—thus, we shouldn’t treat them differently or act as if we are superior to them. Despite having unpleasant family backgrounds, the children were able to develop their individual identities because of their new found family at Guanella Center. It can be seen that the Guanellians (people who serve at Guanella Center) were able to provide love, hope, care, and support to the kids in which they reciprocated, not just with the staffs but also to other people they interact with.

DISCLAIMER: We weren’t allowed to take pictures at Guanella so I took this picture from Guanella Center’s website. Link: https://jjpipo.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/its-christmas-in-guanella-center-servants-of-charity/ 

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I have three main identities for my offline and online life. For my offline identities, first, my family sees me as someone who is very focused on her studies and usually stays out late because of academics. This is sometimes true and sometimes false. My college friends know that I like socializing and making new friends that’s why they know me as someone who likes to go out and party. However, my family doesn’t know about this identity of mine because they are very strict specially when it comes to academics. My parents believe that staying out late with friends will hinder me from getting good grades, which I firmly disagree. The truth is, going out with friends help me release stress with regards to my issues with my academics and family. Lastly, for my offline identity, my high school friends sees me as someone who is very athletic and great at playing volleyball. I played competitive volleyball (NCR meet and Shakey’s V-League) and also garnered a lot of awards (Best Spiker, Best Server, and MVP) my whole high school life, the reason behind why my high school friends remember me as this “volleyball player.”

For my online identities, first, I present myself as someone who is funny and quirky on my twitter account because I feel like I am more free to speak my mind and be myself on twitter because I have no relatives following me. Second, I like posting “model-like” photos on Instagram because I feel like this is the social media platform wherein people my age stalk and judge. I want to show these “stalkers” that I look good, dress well, and have a fun life. Lastly, I present myself on Facebook as a very conservative and wholesome person. This is because all of my relatives follow me here. I believe that people on Facebook are usually the most judgmental ones because they are usually composed of parents and adults who are closed-minded and are stuck with their old beliefs and principles. 

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Freedom Wall

“Freedom Wall” is a play written by Tyron Casumpang, directed by Jerome Ignacio, and staged by Ateneo ENTABLADO. It is a socio-political play that aims to raise awareness on sexual harassment, the effects of patriotism, unfair justice system in schools, false accusations, and the lies and uncertainty that lurk within the shadows of social media. In this play, the different defense mechanisms proposed by Sigmund Freud were explored.

The different characters in this play displayed some of the defense mechanisms like repression, rationalization, projection, and sublimation. First, Julia, the lead actress in this play, exhibits repression as a defense mechanism because she tries to restrain her past bad experiences which causes her anxiety. Next, rationalization was displayed by Gab Go, the swimmer/abuser, because when he was asked by King, the lead actor, why he brings girls to the swimming pool when he’s just wearing trunks, his reason was because it was his training time and he was just comforting the girls who needed consoling when in fact, he’s just really trying to lure them into attending to his sexual desires by pretending that he cares. Projection, on the other hand, was demonstrated in Mario’s character for he was the one who sexually harassed Julia but when asked by the prefect, he denied and pointed out that King was the one who might have sexually harassed someone. Lastly, sublimation as defense mechanism was displayed by Giselle because her problem/hatred with sexual abusers led her to create Musa, an organization that gives support to victims of sexual harassment in their school.

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Social structure that is actually just a social construct

Since the day I was old enough to understand complicated issues, like virginity, I was told that women should only give their virginity during honeymoon to their husbands. Even when I step outside our roof, the people around me keeps telling me that I shouldn’t lose my virginity when I’m not yet married. For example, historically, virginity was tied predominantly to women. Through biblical texts and societal perpetuation, the “virgin” was defined as a woman who had yet to have sex. The church is very vocal with regards to the issue of virginity since the epitome of a godly-woman is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Because of this, I’ve lived a life believing that this is actually true. Walking everyday raising my brows to those who lost theirs, judging, and distancing myself to them. I may be a virgin, I may also be not, but does it really matter? Will my value as a woman decrease when I’m not a virgin anymore? Women’s virginities were seen as a necessity in marriage, because women who weren’t pure were considered damaged goods. Marrying a “virgin” woman would also ensure that any future offspring were truly yours. The blatant pursuit of “the virgin” may have gone out of style, but the stigma surrounding virginity has continued to live on making it a social structure in our society. However, I believe that this is just a mere social construct that was made to commodify women and shame men who aren’t able to lose their V card fast enough. I think that this belief of mine falls under degree of constraint on the individual autonomy with regards to the formation of my identity. This is because I have the right and freedom to believe what I want to believe in and act based from these beliefs—different from my family’s beliefs, the church, and those of the state. Even though I adhered to this social construct before, I was able to see the reality and was able to change my views and act on it.

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For this activity, I chose my significant other as my partner. Comparing what I think he would say about me from what he really think about me, I would say that there are few similarities (like kind, dependable, and trustworthy) and things I never thought he would say about me (like strong, beautiful, and amazing). I was really surprised that we almost wrote the same adjectives if only I didn’t erase some of what I wrote like hardworking and loveable. To be honest, when I was writing what I think he would say about me, I only thought of the positive things he might say about me and I didn’t think of the negative ones—even though he didn’t mean it in a bad way and he was just stating facts like clumsy and weird. It really startled me to see that he wrote that I am a strong, beautiful, and amazing person because I never saw myself attached to those adjectives. As a result of this, I feel like I appreciated myself more because I saw that I affect people in a good way unconsciously and that makes me happy because I’ve always attained to be memorable to other people with how I affect their lives in some way.

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Our group listed things we are grateful for everyday for five days, March 4-8, 2019. With this activity, I was able to reflect on the things that happened to me each day and was able to see the goodness in everything—even the bad things that occurred. It was already proven by psychologists that writing about our feelings can help the brain overcome emotional upsets and leave us feeling happier. When we’re living in the moment, it may be hard to step back and get some perspective making us only rely on our memories to identify the patterns in our life. I realized that keeping a journal eliminates this problem by giving us a great view of our life because the more information I put in my journal, the more I can see the wholeness of my life. For example, noting everything I did at certain times of the day can help me see how I manage my time thus, can be useful for future use when my requirements pile up. However, what I think is the greatest importance of writing journals is that it reduces my anxieties and serves as a way to de-stress. Despite a long tiring day, whenever I write on my journal at the end of the day, it gave me a positive mindset and it made me look forward for the next day.

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March 1, 2019

This day was hell for me. It started the night of February 27 when I had “teeth”ache —yeah, not just one. I brushed it off thinking it was just because of the frappe I bought and it would go away as soon as I wake up the next day; sadly, I was wrong. It still hurts the next day which is why I tried to contact my dentist but she was sick and just told me to drink painkillers for the meantime. I tried to study the whole day for my long exam the next day but it was too hard to focus. I even gotten only two hours of sleep because the pain wouldn’t let me sleep.

March 1, I was ready to face the day with all my painkillers. Three hours in, I’m already dying. I took another painkiller but that just gave me 30 minutes of peace. I couldn’t do anything about it because I can’t take another painkiller that would lead to overdose. I tried to fight the pain but it was torturing me that the only thing I could do is cry. I wanted to go home so bad and see a dentist but I couldn’t because I had a long exam at 6:30-8:30pm. I had no choice but to endure the suffering.

I would never want to revisit this day. But you know what, this day made me realize that there are lots of people that really cares about me. First of all, I’m very grateful for my parents who were constantly checking up on me when I was in school. Even the night before wherein they stayed up all night with me because I was crying and they did everything they could to make me feel better. Also, I’m super thankful for my friends who postponed their reviewing time to try and look for ways so I could go home and just get a makeup test for the long exam (sadly, there isn’t). Lastly, I’m grateful for my boyfriend because even though he couldn’t come to school (cause he’s from La Salle), he did everything he could to lessen the pain by giving advices, making jokes, and just listening to my rants. I realized that the only time you will truly see who matters is when you’re at your lowest point.

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As you can see on the illustration, I created a human body out of my hybrid identities — both local and global. Globalization has an overwhelmingly positive impact to most countries in terms of economy, political and culture. Nowadays, people are more open-minded, accepting, and understanding in terms of issues that weren’t really accepted or talked about before with the help of social media. Examples of these are: gender equality, diversity within races, LGBT community, unregularized employees, and environmental saving. On the other hand, there are also shadows of globalization. People tend to be greedier thus, putting “magis” into a whole new level. It has made the rich richer while making the non-rich poorer, making capitalism and individualism stronger. However, even though globalization is very impactful, we still have some of our local or Filipino traditions and practices. Filipinos are still very family-oriented, conservative in some ways, and we still practice our “bayanihan.”

This is the reason why I like my hybrid identities. I can nitpick what I want and do not want to believe in based from the issues raised by globalization and localization. I am free to make my own identity because we have more freedom today as compared to centuries back. I just hope more people would choose the greater good for the betterment not just for our country, but for the whole world.