I STAND at the Customer Service Center, a fluorescent halo humming overhead. Behind me stretches the store—a labyrinth of aisles with every shelf bearing witness to what was taken and never returned. The clerk narrows their eyes, searching the counter for that piece of paper—the stub that explained what exactly brought me here. They greet me with the same question every survivor dreads: “Do you have a receipt?”
None.
“I have myself. Isn’t that enough?”
They shake their head and gesture toward the sign: “No returns without original receipt. Exchanges may require further documentation.” Of course! Company policy expects more. They want the paper trail—the item and subtotal—proof I was broken here and not somewhere else. I found it the hard way that the rules for return are written elsewhere—by hands that never asked permission.
What did my receipt list?
Marks—$trespasses wrought
Stains—$innocence lost
Tears—$sorrows wept
Hushes—$secret still untold
All I ever got was the transformation: the soul stripped bare inside the body, the body pressed into service for someone else’s hunger, the boundary lines marked by fear, not by walls but by tentative lines on a map nobody taught me how to draw.
Lines—the lines—I show the barcodes—ghostly patterns that only emerge when the light hits just right, as I roll up my sleeves. Neat, parallel, and silent like a ledger etched to catalog the pain. Still, the clerk barely glances, lips pursed into an apologetic frown. “Without the receipt, technically, it’s not proof. Technically, those don’t count.”
Technicality—the invisible fence that lets harm slip past and lets perpetrators turn away unscathed. I try to protest, “This store knows me. Every memory is an aisle.” I remember when the essence of my skin soured, where I first tasted shame, how it slid down my throat like spoiled sustenance. Yet, the clerk offers me nothing and gestures to the growing queue.
I lower my gaze and step back from the counter. What I bring cannot be returned, cannot be exchanged, and cannot be refunded. Somewhere, a register pings, marking only the losses that they bother to tally. It was then that I only understood: with every denied claim, what is most real often fails to exist at all, due to technicalities. The proof resides in every step I take beyond this counter—where company policy ends, I begin anew.
Jasmine is a BS Psychology student with a minor in Financial Management, currently serving as the Co-Commissioner of the Sanggunian Commission on Anti-Sexual Misconduct and Violence and former President of TUGON Ateneo. With her commitment to survivor-centric advocacy, she strives to create spaces where survivors are believed, supported, and empowered in shaping their own narratives and journeys toward healing.
Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed by the opinion writer do not necessarily state or reflect those of the publication.
