Recall our elementary school days: the teacher has stepped out of the classroom to take care of something, and has left the rest of the class at the mercy of the class president, who is tasked with the incredibly important duty of keeping his classmates in check. He exercises this duty by writing “the Noisy List” in his sacred corner of the blackboard. He writes down the dissenters’ names in bold letters, glaringly white against the green of the blackboard. These dissenters are usually the same people: boys who have been known to cause trouble in the class, those whom teachers treat with a strange mix of sternness and fondness, and the occasional girl or two, those who would risk journeying across the classroom in order to titter and gossip with her friends.
I recall this scenario so vividly, only because I have seen my own name written in those very same white letters too often, admittedly more often than I would like to admit.
Though I look back at those years now with a nostalgic fondness, I can’t help but also feel a sense of fierce protectiveness for my eight-year-old self. I can vividly remember how my parents had to sit me down in order to give me a stern talking to, because they had been informed about my unruly behavior by a homeroom adviser.
I remember how I would oftentimes be singled out in the middle of a class lecture by a teacher who thought it unbecoming of me as a girl to be so kulit. I remember how I was lumped together with my much rowdier male classmates and labelled as a “troublemaker.” Most of all, I still remember how I would lie awake at night, gripped with the constant and irrational fear of finding out that no one wanted to be my friend because I was too loud or too annoying.
One would think that letting myself be so affected by something as inconsequential as being put in the Noisy List in elementary school was silly – after all, none of it would matter in the long run– but it was something I had carried for years. It was like having a tiny voice in my head reminding me to always reel myself in, to always be prim, proper, and “well-behaved”. As I got older, however, the less I listened to that tiny voice and I learned to feel less ashamed of being called “noisy” or “makulit.” I decided to change the way I was viewing these words.
Today, I choose to no longer view them as negative labels, but rather, I view these words as traits that I fully capture my truest self. The more I instilled this perspective within me, the more that I started embracing them and identifying with them.
Where I once hastened to defend myself against people who would constantly criticize me for being “too loud”, I now make my voice louder, in order to drown out their criticism. Where I once attempted to restrain myself from attracting too much attention, I now take the extra step to let myself be known. Where I once tried to change myself for the sake of pleasing the people around me, I now accept myself for everything that I am, noise and kakulitan included.
