Path to Conocimiento

It was 1995 when my parents divorced and I was six years old. My father raped me when I was eight years old. He was taking care of my two older brothers and oldest sister and me while my mother went to Mexico because her sister died. He raped me four times in my mother’s bed. Living in silence for the next four years was like traveling to a different world. A world where my mother’s bed was just a bed and not the platform that sustained my body while the love for my father diminished. For most of my eight-year-old life, I was in what Gloria Anzaldua calls the “arrebato space,” where the rape from my father had shaken me. I was desperate for answers. Stumbling over the most delicate pebbles on the ground, I lost the capacity to stand on my own. I continued to fall until finally I fell into the second stage, the “neplanta space.” From the ages of nine to ten-years-old, I was a neplantlero. Living in a space where it was not about ‘he [father] touched me’ or ‘he didn’t touch me’ but where his touched manifested into consciousness. A consciousness that broke away from the binary of ‘good chicano’ or ‘bad chicano’ to a ‘surviving chicano.’ I was exploring new modes of being. Negotiating between what was love and what was not. Exploring the purpose of my body, as it not only invited love, through hugs and kisses, but also, as it lured in pedophiles. I was in a third space. A space of learning how to survive. Overwhelmed by my eldest brother’s sudden death, right before I turned eleven-years-old I descended to the third stage, “Coatlicue.” I was in despair, anguish, and hopelessness. Drowning in chaos, I found the will to swim to the surface and escape the demon waters by writing on my Harry Potter hardcover journal. The fourth space, “the call,” I validated my existence and experiences by writing them down. Writing soon shifted into the fifth stage, “Coyolxauhqui,” I was writing to put my life together. To give voice to my abused body, sorrow for my dead brother, and queer identity. To speak of my reality in a world that sewed my lips together and never called on me even though I kept raising my hand. Growing tired of being the only one witnessing my own experience, when I turned twelve years-old I cut the thread that was binding my lips shut and rather than waiting for someone to call on me I stood up and yelled! I told my mother that my father raped me. I told the world that I was gay. But most importantly, I told myself that I existed. This was my “blow up” phase, the sixth stage. What followed was what Anzaldua calls the final stage of Conocimiento, “spiritual activism” the seventh and final stage. I became a warrior, who was determined to speak out and transform my abused body into a strong, beautiful one. I was determined to make my writing known. Determined to make the words on paper onto the ears of people because living in silence was detrimental to my soul, my existence.