This will be kinda long so brace yourself. The following essay is something I wrote several years ago when I still swore to the vow of chastity.

It’s not that when I left the Society I threw chastity out the window altogether, but it’s different if you PUBLICLY swore it. There is a real positive pressure to live up to it. Right now, the pressure’s no longer there. But it doesn’t mean I’ve become unchaste. [roll of eyes and evil laugh]

But see, if anything, this essay (which I wrote for the class of the great Doreen Fernandez) shows how much making God “my enough” was such a struggle even then. It’s not that I didn’t mean what I said when I said it; it’s that even when I was saying it, there was a “pang” somewhere. That it was always a struggle. And after awhile, the struggle was no longer life-giving.

Come back to this paragraph after reading the essay: For the girl, throwing the locket was not a sacrifice. Sacrifices are sacrifices because you’re giving up something great for something lesser. For the girl, the man was certainly greater than the locket. For me, years ago, throwing the proverbial locket, WAS a sacrifice.

And as a wise old woman told me once: this life you chose–it’s never about sacrifice; it’s about surrender. And blessed are they who surrender.

Maybe someday I will understand.

When You Don’t Have a Hand to Hold
Or how I survived watching the ultimate play for holding hands…

Sinta has been proclaimed by some critics as the ultimate play for holding hands. The story is told, part of urban legend and Sibol folklore, of a time when a couple watched Sinta with their three children. When the play began, the children sat between them in the intimate theater of Tanghalang Onofre Pagsanghan. By the second act though, the husband had signalled the children to make way for their mother to sit beside him. And they remained seated beside each other, holding hands for the rest of the play.

The story is told more convincingly and more beautifully by Mr. Pagsi– the man who wrote the play and was behind the more than 270 stagings of Sinta– himself.

I certainly felt the urge to grab my seatmate’s hand while watching Sinta– only it turned out that my seatmate is a Jesuit like myself! As song after beautiful song and line after beautiful line were said, I suddenly remembered that the last time I felt like this was during a Side A concert. This was when I seriously felt like a loser being there while everyone else (it seemed at that time) were dancing, singing and embracing the concert away.

What do you do when you watch the ultimate play for holding hands and you do not have anyone’s hands to hold? What if you are a religious? What if you don’t have anyone at the moment? What if you are, like a friend of mine, an NBSB (no boyfriend since birth)? Sinta can then become the ultimate scourge to all singles and singles-by-choice out there.

While I was writing this, I remembered a story about an engaged couple. They were walking across London Bridge when the boy protests to the girl that he is unworthy of her love. She replies that she loves him just as he is. He is not convinced however.

The girl is wearing a locket on a chain around her neck—her favorite possession, which she usually wears to celebrate when she is joyful and to console herself when she is sad. Suddenly, she removes the locket and throws it over the bridge into the river below. The boy panicked when he saw this because he knew how important the locket was to the girl. He asked her why she did this impulsive gesture. She answers him, “What I mean to say in throwing my favorite possession is that YOU ARE MY ENOUGH. If I have you, I don’t need anything else in this world.” And being as stupid as he is, he tells her that he still does not understand.

And then she answers him with something really beautiful, “Maybe when you are older you will understand what I mean. And maybe I will really understand too!”

Everytime we watch Sinta or a Side A concert, or when we see a couple holding hands in the college, or see a father holding a child in his arms, and probably everytime Valentines Day comes, we are made to understand what we meant when we said YOU ARE MY ENOUGH. We did not throw the lockets of our sexuality because it is bad, but precisely because it is the most precious thing we possess. And we gave it up, and continue to give it up, to say YOU ARE MY ENOUGH. With You, I ask for nothing more. You will suffice.

Then maybe we can go back to watch that play-for-holding-hands and sit through the play without holding anyone’s hands and not feeling empty. Because then we realize Someone has been holding our hands all along.

Then maybe, we have really understood.