I
WANTED to use the word “alien” but that may conjure a slew of
sub-meanings from legal/immigration perspective to extra-terrestrial
plane. So I will just simplify the subject as foreigners in America,
or those who live here (irrelevant of their legal status) but who
grew up or got “older” in their country of birth. Like me. Like
Neil, a Taiwanese who is a US citizen. Like Mario, a Mexican who is
an undocumented illegal. Whatever details are embedded on their visa
or passport or maybe they don't an ID at all—the commonality of
their truth is, their spirit is rooted to oceans or borders away.
I
am always asked, “Do foreigners like you get depressed like we do
in America?” Let me rephrase that and ask myself instead, “Do
foreigners like me believe in the existence of depression?” Of
course we do. I do. “Depression” is defined, textbook-wise as,
“A state of feeling sad” or “A serious medical condition in
which a person feels very sad, hopeless, and unimportant and often is
unable to live in a normal way.” Depression or funk (in case you
choose to call it that) is also a fact of life back home although it
is not widely seen as a “medical condition.” Why is that?
First,
sadness and hopelessness are usually brought forth by very physical
misery in the islands where I came from. Natural calamities. Huge
typhoons, widespread flooding, landslides etc that spawn other
torments like sickness, hunger, homelessness, crime etc. Typhoons
happen many times a year in a such a way that we become used to it,
or immuned to the pain. Sort of. So usually there is no time to
figure things out, psychology-wise, why we are sad. It's pretty
obvious. There's no such thing as “therapy” or counselling or
shrinks. These are not part of the sociocultural conditioning.
Instead, friends talk with friends, families gravitate as
communities. It is a natural progression of existence. It is kind of
weird to be licking your wounds in a shut room. People pull you out
because there's some more problems to attend to. During and after
typhoons, there are matters to deal with other than dramatic
outbursts or crying nonstop.
“Medical
conditions” are usually confined to obvious ailments like severe
diarrhea, tuberculosis, hepatitis, heart conditions, diabetes etc.
Little aggravations like headaches, slight fever, dislocated
shoulders, strained knee or allergies are usually shrugged off. The
village herbolario (herbalist) will take care of that or mom will
devise some healing brew from boiled guava leaves or something in the
backyard. These things and remedies work, after all.
In
a way, it is also economics. Second, it's a cultural truth. Although
workers and employees usually have health insurance and there are
free/public hospitals, people are not conditioned to go to the doctor
on “mere” allergy or stuffed nose. Herbs, right food and a
people's fatalism that says, “Back spasm? Let's go play
basketball!” Depressed? “I have a joke, this is funny!” or
“Let's serenade this beautiful lady.”
THEN
suddenly, we are in America. We are not clobbered by typhoons five
months a year anymore. No more nonstop monsoon rains that last for
days or weeks. Meantime, I don't need to enumerate the polar extremes
of scarcity and plenty. I sit in the quiet comfort of a living room
Facebooking and watching Game of Thrones, and there's always a lot of
food in the freezer and cupboard. And a lot more than make a typical
Filipino parallel America with Heaven or Paradise.
So
you may ask, I should be happy. So why should I feel depression? Why
be sad? Back home, it's a lot harder. But then I ask myself, is it
really hard back home? Or am I, in fact, saddened by other stuff and
things? In a way I tackled it in my poem, “Seeking home.” Below.
Seeking
Home
I see
fragments of home fall like broken
stars
from an immaculate winter sky,
like
tears or blood
or
sweat, that spread through
the
night and reflect faded
photographs
of war and poverty
on
weeping windowpanes;
home
is lost in the din
of
freeway skids, thud of subway
concrete,
hallow of $.50 7-Eleven coffee
canisters,
wail of Grayhound ticket
stubs.
The smell of monsoon is gone.
The
stench of fowl entrails strewn
with
bamboo sticks on coal beds
are
gone. Foot trails to river shacks
are
blurred by interstate smog;
Christmas
carols have been muted
by
incessant grumblings of washer-dryers
gnawing
at guts like rubber
ulcers.
All these tap at my heart
like
hammerheads on tincan
roofs,
emaciated flesh cut
on
credit card gallows:
sharp,
hallow, loud, intent, sure.
Winter
storms have washed away
directions
home; I seek comfort in
many
open doors that remain close
even
as I am freely welcomed in.
Love
fails to communicate
in a
borrowed language
that
seems to grow more strange
in
each mumbling of sorrow
or
joy; words that bounce back
like
ten-minute autumn rain
that
dry down like cheap vodka
on
chapped lips, hot clinches stolen
in
between hours-rendered,
dollars-paid;
oh pain, that familiar
pain
is nowhere to be felt
within
this tiny cubicle in heaven
where
the agony of homesickness
translates
to warmth—
warmth
that speaks of
a
vagrant truth that have long
sentenced
my soul in exile.
--Pasckie
Pascua
14
December 2009; 11:52 PM
Despite
my facility of the English language, it is never easy for me to
accentuate a message in a way that I can be understood fully just
like the other dude beside me. Even simple gestures of caring or
intense espousal of frutration are read on usually different context.
It is not how I word the word or constructed my sentence or how the
accent went. I am usually read on a totally different context. It's
weird sometimes but I usually shrug it off.
When
I speak my mind (about my observation of the culture), which I
usually do, I judged as condescending and rude. If I don't say a
thing, I am stereotyped as clueless or I may not even understand an
English word other than yes or no. So I needed to explain gestures of
kindness, appreciation, admiration or even frustration, disagreement
or protest. I struggle in explaining myself—and still, I end up
oblique, shady and absurd.
I
digress though. All I am saying is, this blankness or emptiness—of
not having to fully explain myself, or the stigma of rejection from
being told “It's time to stop, we got other things to do” drives
me back to my shell out of frustration—evolves into a kind of
depression. Loneliness, isolation. I can read a poem in front of a
crowd and get all the nice handshakes and good words, yet I still
head home alone. I feel like I am a novelty. A new gadget off the
rack, a strange new product from some planet. And if that gadget
seems too complex to figure out—then I am dismissed for the
meantime. Wait for my next show, maybe I'll have another magic. Did
you see it? Oh man, you are so complicated, dude! Uh huh.
You
may ask, do I really feel that way? Yes, I do.
Is
that depression at all? A kind of aloneness that I still believe can
never be healed by pills or all the scholarly psychological
treatises. It can only be healed by people in front of me. Just like
in the islands. Typhoons pummel, wars rage, poverty slams—but we
got people in and around the unease and discomfort. People get angry,
people are sweet, people are rude, people are nice. But we belong.
Aloneness is never a given. It is physical—hence it is seen. I want
to be “seen” before I am “felt.” But it seems I am invisible,
I am so out-of-there that no matter how I am appreciated, I am still
negated. I am attached but I am largely detached.
So
no matter how many poems I write and how many words come out of me, I
still belong to somewhere. Those poems are like neons on a marquee as
you drive by. Flash gone. Did you get it or was it a pitch to sell
something, a handshake, a hello? It's gone. That's it. Yet what we do
is what we are. I wrote to breathe back home, I write to breathe in
America. I will write and write and write in the quiet isolation of
my world and then one day, I am sure, the flickers on the screen will
reveal a human form, a physical shape that could read me because I am
there, beating like atoms on flesh. Not a poem. And then maybe, maybe
when my pains glow alongside my joys, I will belong—because I just
successfully projected my humanity. Broken but beating, empty but
warm. Then healing, by way of belonging, shall come.
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