Ex-Seminarian in Exile #1: Of Being and Going, Becoming SEXed

Author: GPagulayan

15 years after my spiritual seed preferred to jump out onto this dry soil, people have finally stopped throwing me the many whys of leaving the enclaves of the chosen. I usually had readymade answers to all of them depending on who was asking. There was one for every kind. I would tell my friends that it was entirely their fault for not disclosing me the real thing, that sex (and the acronym) was more than yummy. Or I would say, “yokong magpari , gusto ko magpaari,” with some funny licks on my upper lip. I would also just tell people that I was not happy inside if I sensed they were to ask more follow ups. This worked so well with my grandmother whom I thought to be very sad but to my surprise, she was the first person to support my decision. When I was in UE, a lot more did not keep me away from their curiosity. Colleagues, students, girlfriends, everyone stabbed me with same whys. It was already part of my reflex to say something for the sake of explanation but honestly, I myself did not know why. I was not sure. I was not thinking. I was not aware of what was happening to me after. I just put finality into things and all I knew, I was already looking for a job just like a regular graduate.

I remember there was too much information inside. Some were about the missteps of our prefects and spiritual formators that I should have avoided knowing much about. Others were details pertaining to the inconsistencies of almost everything with everyone in the Church, in the Seminary, everywhere. I was very critical literally and psychologically that I became so vocal and loud, and restless, wanting to impact change inside the seminary, if not the Church, together with some friends who shared my agitation. It was still my 3rd year inside when I was already hearing from seniors of their plans to go out immediately after graduation. But I was not buying their ideas. I listened to their conversations but I was still firm about finishing up to priesthood.

I had not had any higher philosophical questions about the order of things not until Marxism, or Liberation Theology by the Boffs, or Postmodernism/poststructuralism, or Derrida, Lacan, Levi Strauss, Saussure, plus the stinky visit of three burnt friends outside our Seminary walls followed by the sneaky escape of a mentor friend from whom part of my nakem owed its maturity. The third storm was already stirring up, destructing within (from the Heidegger’s “destruksion” ) in order to put things into motion so as to displace/replace/redefine positions of origin of things that build the politics of relations into the status quo. I could not keep things within. They wanted me to burst out a narrative and blow an exit which was already becoming me.

I was seriously celibate until graduation. I had no girlfriend my whole life. I had not kissed anybody. I was a virgin, untouched, but only personally damaged by some artistic hand strokes. That is so funny, isn’t it. But true. I felt I was a shy thin dark and ugly fellow!

Not until I was given a teaching position in a medical school in Quezon City. I was like a bird on a first flight, spreading my wings wide in an open air. Woos woos! Imagine 50 to 60 young pretty nursing students in each 10 classrooms I handled, almost of my age at that time, amazed and listening, staring at your youth. Ah, what a moment to remember! It was then that Edmund Husserl’s Phainomenon became meaningful to me. So I began to bracket some presuppositions. I set aside some unnecessary prejudices in order to arrive at a clearer and more objective understanding of appearances. They came very clear to me. Back then, I behaved strictly as a scientist: to accept only the givens in their original form.

I knew that going back to the Seminary was still an option but it never visited me. The loyalty of materialism and earthliness were more compulsive in my life. Being an independent bachelor and earning more than enough in UE for 9 years as a Philosophy and logic teacher, I felt I was already living my dreams. I could buy what I wanted. I could go wherever I thought was fun until midnight without anyone reminding me of the right things. I switched into different relationships here and there behaving like a mad dog. However, there was one thing I did that I regretted so much. I extremely submitted into a long affair with a girl who was a kapatid in the Iglesia ni Cristo. I got baptized an INC. I don’t know though if that was valid up to now even if I willed for religious refreshment afterwards. I became a tiwalag. I loved her and I was sure about it. She also loved me and I was also sure about that. My baptism and our break up after 4.5 years were the only things I could not comprehend. Things became clear to me when I heard she married to an INC minister.

To date, the option is closed unless Batman insists and makes tweaks in my life. I may have gone too far away from the seminary walls but its curse continues to haunt me, still putting spiritual walls around this luxury of distance and freedom of exilic life. It bends my character and actions to the ground and liquefies my spirit so as to prefer only the bottom or lowly corners of the world. It has become my cool breeze under the burning heat of California sun, my cozy coat in the snows, more importantly, keeping my sanity on the sea level despite this huge spatial gap that I’ve built between me and the people I treasure the most.

I don’t know if I am thankful for being SEXed, for being transformed into this one personification of a big paradox of life and living. I chose to self exile yet I am continuously gathering myself to do U-turns that never stops until I am stuck on the infinity of aloneness time and time again. Sometimes, I ask of the classic question, why, and I find myself staring at empty spaces where music and muses grab me off to solitude, or I say, ‘dreamitude.’ Then I scribble some notes of all kinds.

Recommended Books:

Heidegger's Being and Time
Edmund Husserl's Experience and Judgment (SPEP)
James H. Cone's God of the Oppressed