The decision that haunts me

The decision that haunts me

April 25, 2013

By: Gina Yoryet Roman

The word clean manifests orderly, blank, clean, virginity, intact, bright, cleansed, purified, clear delicate, dirtless, elegant, faultless, flawless, fresh, graceful, hygienic, laundered, neat, pure, sanitary, shining, simple, plain, sparkling, snowy, speckless, spic and span, spotless, untainted, stainless, taintless, tidy, trim, unblemished, unpolluted, unsmudged, unsoiled, unspotted, unstained, unsullied, untarnished, washed, well, kept, white, but overall, it is a mirror of immaculate.

Ever since I came back from Nayarit, I can’t wipe all these adjectives out of my mind, whereas they are connected to a particular image of an older woman (I’d say she’s in her 50‘s) in a two piece bathing suit who I coincided with at the beach. The inquisitive person within was immediately unleashed the moment my attentive eye caught her when she was skipping around all over the beach with her grandchildren.

Looking at her, fast forwarded my clock making me echo myself in her a few years down the line. I rapidly linked the antonym of immaculate to that woman’s image because of the marks on her body. That realization pounded on my head very severely and confirmed what I’ve been seeking for since I was scratching thirty...

When I scanned her, I noticed a butterfly lying on her lower back, a small fading rose on her ankle, and another attenuating image on her upper back towards the right side.

There was anxiety with a blend of disgust. Not because I was being critical of her, I mean who would I be to judge someone who decided to mark his/her body when I tortured my sacred temple not one, two, or three times, but five! I loathed to think about my own contaminated frame. My rebel with many causes youth will always come back to remind me that I would some day dwell after making those impulsive decisions. The way I exactly described it to one of my students on Wednesday right when he asked me if I liked tattoos at the same time he detected the butterfly on my ankle, was like this.

“There was a moment in life where I made stupid, immature and unconscious decisions which I was oblivious to know that I would much later regret. I grew up fighting against my father’s overly strict regime,

thus, I can’t blame him nor the circumstances for the wrong actions taken. Nobody forced me to do it, I did it because I felt like it. My ‘there and then’ indicated Yoryet that it was the ‘right’ thing to do, I tried to bypass who I was for a long period of time, but sooner or later I reached a point where the real me re-emerged and longed to have an untainted temple. The who concealing deep down as a shield to avoid letting my weaknesses out, finally retaliated and made me realize that one cannot run from oneself because one day, the real one will be disclosed.

Sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror I close my eyes and imagine what it would be like to have an uncorrupted body. I guess I will not live to tell that...”

At least when I decided to pierce my body/face, they healed without leaving a trace behind.When the crazy me decided to get my hair dyed puke green to reflect a rebellious rocker and once again masquerade myself in a stranger, it washed out within a few months.

Unlike those marks that will always make me reminiscence of my wild years. There is always hope though. Esperanza is what gives me a sense of being me again by removing that unwanted ink decorating my body. The adolescent and young adult I ran away from year after year and the woman I was to become one day, is the someone who claims for an immaculate temple. that is why I will remove one by one soon enough and perhaps that day I will stop yearning for the ‘who’ I originally was and the wrong actions done in my youth will cease haunting me.

That revelation and this quote I've used in several of my posts will induce me to appreciate my body and treat it like a temple like I should always have.

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body," (1 Cor. 6:19-20).