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A conversation I had with a friend tonight gave me an opportunity to find the words to explain why I desperately want to leave this country in the quickest way possible. I don’t care where I end up, or how I get there. I just want out.

I cannot stand Philippine society. I cannot stand how strong class discrimination is and the fact that norms that operate within those classes exist and will continue to exist. I hate that everyone I know knows everyone else, and there are always people watching you, waiting for you to fumble, fall, make a complete ass out of yourself, or do something scandalous. I hate that if I commit a serious crime, I’m probably going to get away with it because my friends know people or my family members know people who can wipe my slate clean. Which is not to say that my family is all-powerful and influential in this society. But we’re fairly bourgeoise. Which means that I’ll most likely get away with a lighter sentence than if someone with no connections and no influence got into the same sort of legal mess that I did.

In college, I would roll my eyes every time a professor talked how we all have the capability to end corruption and end poverty. BULLSHIT. Corruption and class division has been around since the Spanish era and it will continue to exist because that’s part of our culture. That’s who we are. It’s more convenient to collaborate with the conquerors. It’s more convenient to steal the taxpayers’ money and to kill off your enemies than to be honest about your votes and keep your paws off the cash. It’s more convenient to use your connections to get away with murder. And not only is it convenient–it fucking saves the family name as well. Which is not to say that I personally condone that. I despise corruption, I do. But once the average person is in a position of power, in a place where they can get away with anything, morality goes flying out the window and they cheat, steal, kill, and get away with it. I’m willing to bet any amount of money that there will be at least one person from my university who will turn out to be the kind of manipulative leech, despite the values that the Jesuits tried so very hard to instill in us. But I would probably lose that bet anyway because that person’s public-relations people will probably make him/her look like an all-around good guy, and the journalists who try to find out the truth about him will be murdered in no time.

I swore this to myself once and I’ll say it again–I will not marry a Filipino. It’s not a race thing, it’s a cultural thing. Because if I marry a Filipino then I’ll marry into his family–whose in-laws will probably look down on me because I’m not rich enough or sociable enough or pretty enough or for whatever reason associated not with who I am as a person, but the class or family I belong to–and I’ll marry into his connections, and I have to be nice to all these powerful people who can save my ass from jail and god knows what else. I have to retain a certain image to uphold the glory of the family name. I will not stand for that crap.

I want to live in a place where I’m completely anonymous, where family names and backgrounds don’t mean shit, and where people are valued for the work they do and their moral integrity instead of the number of powerful people they know. I want to live in a place where people couldn’t care less about what I do with my life, where people won’t gossip about my personal relationships and the people I’ve screwed over and the people who screwed me over.

I suppose some would say that I’m a horrible person for being aware that our country’s society is shit and instead of getting up and trying to change things, I want to get the hell out. I don’t feel like a horrible person, though. I’m not the asshole killing off political enemies, or stealing from the pork barrel. This is my reaction to the reality I see. Philippine society won’t change, at least not in my lifetime. And I want to live my life the way I want to instead of wasting my time fighting a losing battle.

*ducks flying tomatoes*