Hilario 1

Elli Hilario
English 115 Honors
Professor Lawson
28 September 2016
Culture and Identity Essay Revised Draft
1427
Born as an Other, Living as an Other
During my childhood years, I was that one girl who was very different from the other
children back in the city of Taguig, Metro Manila, where many of the upper middle class families
are sharply distinguished from those families living in poverty. I was one of those fortunate
children privileged with good fortune, but despite growing up in the same culture as the rest of
my peers, I someone managed to bud differently. I know that people often develop certain
characteristics as a result of their cultural upbringing. And many traditions can be narrowed
depending on each clan, and personality can vary as a result of their familys own culture and
tradition. Imagine a vast plateau split into two, on one side with greeneries, and the other with
fertile soil without crops. I fall in the void in between the two different sides of the plateau,
where pieces of each side meet together. Now imagine that you are at the bottom of that void,
you gaze up and see the endless view of people struggling to get to the greener side. And that is
the life I experienced in my ethnicitys overwhelming, but defining social culture that negatively
affected my perspective of my Filipino identity.
During my early childhood years, I resided in General Trias, Cavite. I was an only child,
and my parents were always busy at work, so my maternal great grandmother was the one who
took care of me eighteen years ago, and surprisingly, she is still alive. I also was not able to

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communicate well because I did not learn Tagalog until I started Nursery (Pre-K equivalent in
the United States). So a lot of my classmates could not communicate with me until I actually
learned how to speak in Tagalog. Furthermore, unlike other children, I was raised in a large
house and practically had everything to myself. I remember the times when I was the only child.
My family would let me run around the front and back yard, enjoying the freedom I was given,
as other children gazed with envy on me. Like how many people in the Philippines are, being
envious about one another is a silent, unspoken trait that many native Filipinos have. And
because of not being able to communicate well, due to my familial status and language, I started
to feel like I was not accepted in society because of the privileges that allowed me to do certain
activities unlike the rest of my peers. I started to feel as if I was being isolated from people. And
of course, as a child, I was brought up under the thought that people are like me, and that all of
us have the same lifestyle, but that only brought those people around me to be envious of me
even more.
A year later, when I was around four years old, we moved to the city in Taguig, Metro
Manila, where I was more exposed to the Filipino city social culture. At first, I felt almost a part
of the mainstream Filipino culture, my peers treated me nicely, and I adapted really fast when I
first came in as a Kindergarten student. Even so, I lived for four years in Taguig trying to fit
into a society I would not be able to adapt into on the first place. I always wonder how I never
got along with my childhood friends that well despite being raised the same culture. People were
acting more differently than what my past peers did, and I felt even more alone. Unlike my
childhood friends, I am often more oblivious to my surroundings, and we do not have many of
the same interests. Even though I could surely relate and adapt to their interests, it does not
strongly motivate me enough to actually get close to my friends. Many of the Filipinos I met

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have the isolation tendency, as I would describe it, wherein Filipinos will not readily accept
someone with a certain set of uniqueness. They would silently sit back and make you feel like
you are not accepted to their world. Unlike most Filipinos, I like classical music, whereas my
friends and family like pop music. I was conservative and they were outgoing. I felt more
attraction towards Eastern culture, and they felt attraction towards Western culture. I am a
Christian and they were Catholic. They were smart, and I was slow. I was someone who would
help out a friend in need but not get anything in return. I know that I was not someone who
would subject such a culture where one abandons another. All of these may seem so dark and
unlively, but as I described, it looks like you are at the bottom of the rift in the plateau, and I am
talking about what people do not see.
After those four years in Taguig, my mother decided to move to the United States, and
my father worked as a sea-man, I lived with my paternal grandparents for six years. I had to
adapt into another culture the culture of the province dwellers. Living in the small province of
Maragondon, Cavite is where culture affected my personality more than ever. My life changed
once I stepped inside the campus of a small Parochial School connected to the Church in my
province. I met a completely different set of people and faced a difficult set of social problems.
My personality started becoming more twisted and unknown for ever since I started school back
in June 2006. Surely enough, my personality was too different from the rest of my peers and they
would get along with me first. Now I was too outgoing, and they were conservative. The only
correction I had to do was to tone down my previously not enough energy. Soon enough, I
was able to adapt better to the provincial environment, but the people in the province can get a
little rough, and that kind of culture was the one that threw me off balance. I experienced another
culture shock that totally changed my entire character.

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One time, during third to sixth grade, someone developed a crush on me for unknown
reasons. I kept on wondering, Arent we too young for this?, every time I see him. Of course I
did not like the guy, he was ugly. But I also understood the concept of crushes at a very young
age, and people in the Philippines would say, If you do not have a crush, then you are
abnormal. Funnily, I picked a cute looking boy in my class and declared that I had a crush on
him so that I would not get labeled as abnormal. Eventually, during my fourth grade in school,
that guy and I ended up in the same class, and it was not fun. I admit there were a few funny
times, but it was not fun. He kept on pursuing and pursuing me that from a previous feminine
girl, became a tomboy-looking girl (it did not affect my sexuality, just how I acted). I tried a lot
ways in order for him not to like me until those acts became who I was, and traces of that
personality is still within me and not completely gone. My point was that the provincial culture I
was living in can drive you into a lot of change because of how overwhelming their persistence
and shameless culture, despite being more conservative than others. How twisted is that? I
learned how to control my feelings to the point wherein I am not able to feel emotions like
empathy, sadness, etc. This kind of culture drove me to suppress myself and not trust people, it
was a matter of not wanting to participate in such way of thinking. I do not want to adapt into my
born-culture.
Different as I am today, I am still glad that I left the Philippines being able to get two
good true friends, whom I really cherish a lot and care for. Despite the unacceptance that I felt,
those friends of mine helped me go through society. They understood that no matter where I am,
I could not fit in with Filipino social culture, nor the Filipino American culture. At least I
departed from the Philippines with a bit of love and understanding from my two closest friends.
However, adapting into a new country was not easy for me. In my first few weeks of school in

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the United States I was tight and I kept to myself because of culture shock. I did not know that
hugging is a form of greeting, and that was weird for me, since I was fresh off the boat and
was not exposed to a vast diversity of cultures. That time in middle school when actual people,
actually my age, approached me and asked for my name, my eyes widened up and I thought that
I could start anew in this country, and I learned that people were more accepting than expected.
And that was the start of my journey adapting into the American culture. I think my accent back
then was thicker, but it was good enough for actual English speakers to say that I am pretty good
for someone who just came to the US, which is another kind of generalization about immigrants,
but still I was happy that I was able to communicate and make more friends than I did when I
was in the Philippines because no one knew me, and people are trying to get to know me, even
though there were still some expectations that I should act Filipino. American culture made me
more of an accepting individual, of course I still have a few stereotypes and generalizations in
my head but I do not quickly assume that a certain person I am talking to is what I think he or
she is, those ideas were the primary information that might relate to them in some way, but I get
to know people as they describe who they are. Participating in the culture of the United States
has developed my previous, still current, but stronger values. I was actually free to express
myself in ways people would accept more unlike my peers from the Philippines no matter how
different I am.
In the end, the diversified culture of the United States made it easier for me to fit in,
because people here are others, and I am an other as well, and us younger generations try to
relate to other people in multiple ways because the United States is so diversified that people can
connect with different people of different ethnicities in different ways. Being Filipino does not
mean I think and keep Filipino culture. I lived in the Filipino culture normal cannot see. But

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unlike back then, I am now able to connect with my peers, different in both ethnicity and culture,
through similar and multiple interests, in which I never found in the Philippines.