is there anywhere left that doesn't hurt?
Dear friends,
Earlier this week, my cousin's wife gave birth to a daughter.
For a bit, he and I and my sister were the only kids around, and we were raised by our mothers who were sisters as siblings, too. He and his wife got married a couple of years back, and they've since managed to migrate to the US, where they are now based because of work.
When we first heard that they were pregnant, we were overjoyed—finally, a small human in this small extended family of immediate cousins that hasn't seen a small human in 21 years. However, this celebration was short-lived; somewhere at the back of my mind, I worried at the sort of world they were bringing a child into.
And now, she's here. I get photos of her every now and then on the family group chat—eyes closed, and bundled warmly, so comfortably snug and innocent and protected. Too young to comprehend all the horrible things that the world has become, and coming out, feet first, in the midst of a fucking pandemic.
I've always been clear about where I stand in terms of children—I don't think I'm having them, but this hasn't really stopped me from devoting all these soft spaces inside me for my friends' children, and from feeling anxious and worried about how the world is shaping up to be.
You've probably been tuning in to recent uprisings around the world, from George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, to Stand With Hong Kong and #JunkTerrorBill. I have little else to offer apart from my anger, my anxiety, my helplessness. There is something rotten at the core of things, and I'm not sure how to take it out—if it could still be taken out. Everybody is angry everywhere (and rightly so), and all over the world there is a virus that we do not completely understand just yet, which has upended most of our lives as we know it.
Is there anywhere left that does not hurt?
Anyway, I'm trying to make this a sort of letter that is helpful and hopeful—so I'm leaving a couple of links to donations to bail funds of the jeepney drivers and Cebu students who were recently arrested while they were protesting.
I'm also leaving this link to Basilan Rep. Mujiv Hataman's explanation of his No Vote to the Anti-Terror Bill, which I believe best explains our anxieties over the bill. Basilan has been the hotbed of the Abu Sayyaf insurgency for as long as I remember, and Rep Hataman definitely knows what he's talking about when he says he and his constituents know terror, because they're the ones who experience it first-hand whenever there is an attack. It is telling that the true counter-terrorism measures that Rep. Hataman is looking for —the genuine ones—are markedly absent from this bill, and that all it contains are sweeping and vague provisions that can be interpreted in a variety of ways to serve the State's purposes.
More resources
VIDEO: Metro Manila Pride Org’s Primer on the Anti-Terror Bill featuring explainers from Atty Ross Tugade and Atty Jazz Tamayo
INFOGRAPHIC: Mako Micro-Press’s infographic series on other ways to protest the Anti-Terror Bill in addition to online petitions and emails—in Filipino
Anyway, sorry to dump all of that on your laps; I hope, if anything, you take this as a sign that you're not alone in your anxieties about the world. We're all in this together.
See you on the other side. Have a restful weekend!
Xo,
K