ABSTRACT

The author, through her sweet years of childhood, believed she would grow up into a pretty girl. As a freshman in college, her classes are exhilarating, she particularly enjoy her liberation theology course and its ideas of overcoming oppression. As a Catholic chastity, Filipino traditionalism, and female propriety demands, she is opinionated and independent. Her romantic and sexual interactions with men lack the authorship and agency she seems to be able to exercise in school, sports, and platonic relationships. Years later, after marriage and a baby, she realized that she did not have to be sexual, pretty, skinny, strong, an activist, a single mom. None of this defined who she is. she feels she just has to be in each moment, to appreciate the fullness of life.