Men’s Rea
Sacha llanto
Content Warning: The following story includes graphic depictions of violence, gender dysphoria, and implied self-harm and suicidal ideation. Reader discretion is advised.
Several years ago, I killed a little girl.
The girl was born on a large island by the Philippine Sea. Not close to the beaches, riddled with pearls and gems gifted by the waves, no, but close to the towering mountains, rich with mystery and verdant valleys. By these mountainsides, the girl lived with two loving parents and eventually, a rambunctious little sister. Every day, she woke up to the croak of the rooster, and after rubbing her eyes, would gaze upon the range of mountains and rainforest that seemed to never say goodbye. But there would come a time where she would have to bid everything farewell. They could do nothing but watch her go.
But before she left, the mother was the first to go. The girl and her sister pleaded and cried for their mother to take them, but nothing could be done. The mother was too well aware of how barren the island was of education. She didn’t have it in her soul to send her children to school where they would only learn enough to live well on the island, where overseas, children seemed to learn things that could change the world. The mother, too, knew the expectations her daughters would face as fellow women on the island. To live only to support the family and to die as simply a man’s wife and a child’s mother— it was a fate she spent her entire life denying. And she would not allow her daughters to fall victim to it.
Some distant people in a distant land offered a bargain—under the condition that she work a chunk of her life, the mother cut a deal with a hospital that would allow her and her family to move to this Land of Opportunity. The paperwork had been signed and sent away, along with the mother.
The girl, bright-eyed and curious, could not understand why her mother had left her. The father would explain how this mythical land would grant them greater freedoms and wealth than they could ever have here on this island, but the girl remained confused. We are already rich, she would retort, looking at the boundless rainforest that surrounded them. The land their house resided on was full of life—banana trees stood tall and firm, their emerald leaves fanned and curved, protecting the creatures that sought their shade. Birds of all colors sang high in the canopy, their melodies free for all to listen to. If a person was lucky enough, they would perch on a window to sing a special song. Rain would come and go, sometimes terribly so, but it came and went nonetheless. And when it came, children ran to the narrow, dirt streets, and happily played with each other in puddles so large they could surely be swallowed with a single jump. Their parents watched over them, of course, but there came times where no supervision was needed.
The children and their families, whose community has lived on this land for generations, loved and trusted the bonds that had remained unbroken since time immemorial. Look around, father, are we not already rich?
The mother could have been absent for weeks, months, or years—it was all the same to the girl. She said her goodbyes to all her relatives, to the babies who had just drawn their first breath to the elders who were drawing their last. She said her goodbyes to the land that had given her life, and wished that it continued to do so, even after she was gone. Besides her goodbyes, all she could muster were apologies. “Ingat ka na, Ate. You’ll always be our big sister.”
She continued these farewells until the island she called her home, her life, became a distant mixture of blues and greens as she ascended into the clouds. The girl turned to her father, for he had been saying these goodbyes with her, and suddenly felt a drop in her stomach. Feeling uneasy, she pulled on her father’s shirt, and after feeling the warmth of his arms around her, she fell into a deep sleep.
When she awakened, she found herself disoriented. Time and place became blurred altogether in this new land, and so too did her understanding of herself.
The climate was quite temperate, very different from the humid and dense air of the island, but the girl felt quite cold. She could not speak to this land like she could at home, but she understood that this land ordered her to create herself anew. When she fell, she had to get up on her own, teaching her how to rely on herself. She was encouraged to navigate this land for her own good; thinking about others would only wear her down.
Was this the same girl that left the island so long ago? In truth, she had always remained there. When they thought of her, her neighbors would remember the sweet little girl that loved the outdoors, whose mother unfortunately had to leave them. Her memory remained in the rustle of the leaves when her friends climbed the trees, the grooves of her fingernails etched in the bark forever. She could still be felt in the gentle wind of a downpour, calming those who missed her so.
Then, who was this person who ended up in this Land of Opportunity?
I can’t tell you much about my childhood no matter how much I try. I only know that I was born somewhere else. I just found myself alive here, in the land of opportunity. Awake. I opened my eyes to the bustle and hustle of a grand highway. There were lanes upon lanes of cars buzzing by, the cars too similar in shape and color to paint a distinctive picture. When the car stopped, I opened my door to a gray, flat apartment complex. Another day, on another car trip with all of my belongings, I opened my car door to yet another apartment complex. This time, it was a mute shade of brown.
This cycle repeated itself over and over. We would introduce ourselves to our new neighbors. Then for whatever reason that my young brain could not comprehend, we found a new apartment and introduced ourselves again. Nothing felt organic, nor did anything feel permanent. I would meet a child my age and express my wishes to play together someday, only for that day to never come.
In this land of great opportunity, full of people that lived the lives that I was promised, I felt betrayed.
My mother always told me about how much of a troubled child I was before I came here. I would always talk to my classmates instead of paying attention to the teacher, and moving my seat around the classroom didn’t help at all. During a rainstorm, I would come in with muddied feet but a flashing smile on my face. She says she never got mad at me for playing with my friends in the rain, but I always forgot to clean myself before entering our stone kitchen. I never hesitated to walk up to someone who was by themselves, hoping to make a friend out of the encounter.
These stories always interested me, because this alleged me did everything that I would never even think of doing in my life.
When we came to this new land my parents brought a photo album of our friends and family from back home. In these pictures, my father would point to a picture of a happy little girl, her shoulder-length hair neatly combed and fastened with a headband. In the next, she was a little older. This time she wore a dress that fell past her knees. In every photo of her in this album, she wore the same kind of dress with the same kind of hair, with only a few variations here and there.
“Look how cute you were. You actually remembered you were a girl,” my father would comment, laughing as if he had just made a joke. “I wonder what happened. Perhaps you’ve been too influenced by the American women here. They don’t remember what gender they are—sometimes they don’t even look or act like women anymore. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll grow out of this phase of yours.”
You.
You.
I stared at the girl, whose happiness remained trapped on all of these pieces of paper. She smiled back at me.
I was the little girl in those pictures. Or was the little girl me?
There came a time in my adolescence when I would look in the mirror, and all I saw was the little girl staring back at me. Her long hair itched on my shoulders as my fingers combed through it. I attempted to hide the length with a hat, stuffing every inch of hair into it, but the little girl still stared back at me. I put on loose clothing that hid my developing chest, but she continued to stare. No matter what I did, all I saw in the mirror was her. I was nowhere to be found.
I could tell the little girl was lost. She isn’t supposed to be here. She belonged back to her island, at home with everything and everyone that held her dear. I tried to get her out of me—looking into the mirror, I cried, I sobbed, hoping that my tears would wash myself of this little girl. When I got up from the floor and wiped my eyes, to my dismay, she was still there.
The ghost of this little girl was haunting me. Her essence was not confined to my bedroom mirror—it seemed that everywhere I went, she was there in place of me. My parents would call me by her name, congratulating me on how strong of a woman I would become one day. My classmates saw this little girl too. I would be assigned to the girls’ side of the gym, no matter how much I longed to step on the other side. Boys and girls teased me and took advantage of this little girl for her foreignness. But why are they treating me like a little foreign girl when I was a boy who tried so hard to become just like them? Yes, I could have told a trusted adult like I was always told I could do. But what adult would believe that they weren’t seeing me, but the ghost of a little girl from an island thousands of miles away?
I wanted to get rid of her. I kept looking in the mirror. I could only see her and her sadness. Not only was she not supposed to be here, but she did not want to be here. I could not talk to her, but her eyes yearned for her life back in the Philippine Sea. A life whose existence stood in limbo.
There came a point in my life where it became too much. Instead of seeing me for who I was, the whole world only saw me as this little girl who came from an island far, far away. To the people in this land of opportunity, I existed in a perpetual state of foreignness. No matter how much better I performed in English than my native speaking peers, no matter how much I forced myself to eat foods that made me so sick that I would throw up, no matter how many movies I watched to keep up with the other children—I could never be a part of these people. The only place I found some sort of belonging was with my family. Even then, my dear family seemed to favor the little girl’s ghost over me. When we would go to church every Sunday they dressed me in skirts and pigtails despite the discomfort I expressed, and ridiculed me when I wanted to wear slacks and a dress shirt. When I would come home I looked at my bedroom mirror, just to check if the little girl was still there. She always was.
That is when I made a decision.
I had to put her out of her misery.
As much as I wanted it to be swift and painless, it was anything but. I can’t recall the time it took me to kill her—months, but more probably years. I hated the little girl. I hated her for stealing years of my life that I could have lived as my true self. It was time that I would never get back.
Now, this is something I never liked about myself: I hated her, but I felt every single bitterness and heartache she lived through. When I locked her in my bedroom to hide her from the world, she was alone, so alone. I felt the gravity of her desolation deep in my chest. The confusion that muddied her brain stained my own to a point where it gave me migraines. Her cries still ring in my ears to this day. I can still feel the sorrow behind each muffled breath. Fortunately no blood was spilled, but I can’t deny that every time I held a knife, the thought always crossed my mind.
Burying her was surprisingly easy. And while I couldn’t mask everything, I buried her well enough that after some time she disappeared from the mirror, pushed so far back in my consciousness that I could forget that she even existed.
Or so I hoped.
To this day, the little girl continues to haunt me. She haunts me within the pictures hung on my family’s wall, proud of the achievements that their children worked hard for. She is there, hair combed and kept neat with red bows, holding a paper medal. In another, she is at a wedding, the ever-so-esteemed flower girl, holding the hem of her dress with one hand and a half-full basket of petals in the other. Next to that, she holds her newborn baby sister, her hair draped over her shoulder. It’s strange, really—she may be haunting me here, but back in my homeland, to my family, she is still the little girl I left behind.
When I think of the little girl, my mind wanders. While the strife within me has mostly washed away, I always wonder what life would be like if the little girl never existed. She would still be back on her island, playing happily in the moist vegetation right in her backyard. Maybe she would grow up into the strong, beautiful woman that she was meant to be, the one that I was expected to be. She would not have had to experience the pain that came with being different. If she still lived, I wouldn’t be alive today.
So today I stand.
And I think this was for the best.