By Clara Santos

My senior year was coming to an end and I couldn’t wait for it to be over. After those rigorous exams, I finally packed my summer clothes and headed off to the island of Boracay. That was pure fun! All I cared about was my nine full days on the beach under the blazing sun and nothing else.

Then August came.

I was scheduled to fly to the US on the twenty-second. I was thinking, “Hey, I could take a little break, relax, and look for potential colleges while I’m here.” I wasn’t so worried because I knew that I was going to come back after a few months. My friends were crying their eyes out the night before I was scheduled to leave and all I said was, “Ano ba yan?! Todo naman and drama ng mga ‘to! Babalik naman ako after a few months, ‘no! Tama na ang iyak!”

But I never came back.

Separated from my family and friends, I found myself living in a foreign land full of roaming monsters I never knew existed–in the streets, in encounters, in the media, and in the system. Given my limited options, I began to work for minimum wage. I had to force myself to understand everything that was foreign to me. My belief was, “If I just go with the flow, I would be okay. I would survive.”

I almost didn’t.

A couple of months later, I was working as a domestic worker, a nanny. I never ever thought I would end up with a job like this, but I had no other choice. Being in a country where racism and discrimination exists and occurs every damn day would make me, a queer Filipina, experience this every damn day. Working for a white family with a daughter and a son, I felt my true potential as a human being shrink. So small it shrank, it could fit the tiniest box ever created. I was expected to take care of her, bathe her, feed her, make her bed, clean up after her, and help her with her homework.

Sounds easy, right? But that doesn’t include the not-so-subtle racist remarks that I got from that community: “Oh you speak really good English! Did you just learn that for the past months that you’ve been here?” “Do you have ACs in the Philippines? It must be really hot there during the summer.” “Oh, you read books?”

The first few were like rocks swallowed slowly, scraping my skin, making it bleed. I never thought something like that would be said to me. After work, I would go home and cry myself to sleep.

Recently, I just came out as a queer daughter and sister to my family and a “lesbiana” to my friends. All of a sudden, I was treated with so much indifference because I didn’t fit into the norm anymore. It’s as if I morphed into another person: the Clara they knew before was replaced with some sinner, some stranger. They claimed this wasn’t who I was supposed to be because I am a woman, and women are supposed to go out there and find the man of their dreams, get married, have kids, and be ever-obedient wives. For them, I could not be queer.

A question started to swim in my head: “Is this who I really am?” I found my answer: Yes, this is who I really am.”

Facing these struggles here in the US, as a 20-year-old queer Filipina, was not a choice I made. It has been made for me by the current government in the Philippines—a government tainted by US imperialism. And so I left my motherland to seek a “better life” in the US—a country that has done nothing, so far, but oppress me because of the color of my skin, my gender, and my sexual orientation.

But I choose not to remain silent and be stereotyped as a youth using activism as an outlet for my anger. Activism is not just about holding a big sign while marching down the streets, crying for liberation. It is about speaking up and fighting for change in a world that forbids it. To speak and not lose hope–that is what I’m all about!

Clara Santos (not her real name) is actively involved with Ugnayan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Linking the Children of the Motherland). She delivered the testimony above during Ugnayan’s third anniversary and year-ender celebration called Magdiwang, held in December in New York City.

Visit the Ugnayan ng Mga Anak ng Bayan blog

Photo: Clara babysitting her ward.