For I always wanted to build a bridge from my soul to yours, I collected words of different shapes and colours and sizes. Whether spoken or written, I crammed them into my mind, as if I were anticipating their inevitably critical mission. Whether constructive or demolishing, inspiring or dressed in cruelty, I have hoarded as many as my brain has been able to memorize. Knitting them together in meaningful patterns is what I do when I need an escape from the quotidian stress, and the end result, even if imperfect, always catalyses a soothing sense of happiness.
The first ones I remember were there, vibrating in my father’s vocal cords, dancing in waves from his voice into my ears every time he attempted, unsuccessfully, to make me fall sleep with a bedtime poem. I was three or four years old, and I did not understand their individual meaning, but I sensed then, almost instinctively, that words, if woven in a rhythmical order, can spin a complex web of emotions powerful enough to shake the most aloof out of their lethargy. So committed was I to those early poems that I begged him to read them to me time and time again. It mattered not that my young heart was not equipped to understand neither the words nor the emotions. Memorizing them was an essential step in my word-hoarding undertaking. Judiciously and lovingly he always obliged, and by force of repetition I retained them indelibly in my memory. They would then come out of my own voice like a bullet ricochet, back to him, my most faithful audience.
Because my father’s voice almost always spoke to me while a book of poetry rested open in his hands, I was convinced then that life was a love poem and that the words that mattered only came in writing. Knowing I would find them hidden in the sweet, musky smell of his old collection, I used to hang around the rustic bookshelf that uncompromisingly decorated a big wall in our house. I would go countless times from one end to the other, with my fingers running across the book spines as though they were the strings of a harp. The soothing melody would urge my eyes to close, so I could more vividly imagine a time when I could open one of them and memorize its content, without the need of my father’s voice. I dreamed of the day when I could be the writer, so that my words could also matter.
I learned to read, and like a bird that learns to fly, I was then somewhat freer. The books that patiently waited for me in the bookshelf suddenly were more than a collection of pages glued together by a scent of the past. Poems that my father never read to me told me stories about love, pain, and love and pain as interchangeable terms. Love for someone. Pain for losing someone. Love for a country. Pain for having to exile in a foreign country. I saw myself many times reflected in those words, even if I had never gone through those experiences. Love and pain. It occurred to me that I could write my own poems, and so I started writing. It did not matter that I was never going to be published. Writing was my outlet, the tunnel I could go through, the puzzle I could put together, the place where others could see me for who I really was.
The more I read, the freer I was. Freer, yes, but also more exposed. My father was no longer there to selectively filter the emotions he thought I could handle. He, with his fatherly protective instinct, had shared with me the words of love that some poetry gives birth to, but he could not save me from the truth that there is more than poetry and that the world is not a love poem.
Those emotions that I learned from my father’s readings, through words that were always gentle, like the ocean breeze that whispers to me the sound of my dreams as I walk on the beach, were not the only ones that existed. Stories of unthinkable cruelty were also there, encapsulated in fancy leather covers, told in words that hit me like downbursts that ferociously descend from a thunderstorm. And they showed me how imperfect human nature is.
And when my world became bigger than my house, I started to learn that the words of ordinary people, like the ones written by famous authors, also mattered. Many have come into my life, some to stay, some to leave, but their words mattered. They mattered because they too triggered feelings in me and helped me see the world for what it is, and touched my dreams and at times killed them. Their words mattered, because they wrote important parts of my story and in many ways shaped the way I see the world. I write as an exercise of liberation and a way to speak to all those who know me as much as to those who are yet to come.
For example, I want to write to you, the nun in the Catholic school, who labeled me as a negative leader at the age of six, and who, from then on, continued to misjudge my character until the day she expelled me. Your uncontested premonition that I would not get to be “old bones” in the school became a reality seven years later, as a prophecy from which I was certain I could not escape. Your words mattered, because they built an image of me for the little world I lived in, and its inhabitants believed you. Your words depicted me as a bad human being, and, coming out of your authoritative voice, they left my soul defenseless. Defenseless, but not submissive. Despite the evilness you saw in me, I voiced my opinion every time I sensed unfairness, because I urgently needed to show you who I was and what my heart stood for. I never hurt you, except for the fact that who I was did not fit your mold. 8-year-old me was beside herself when she wrote a short essay on children’s rights. It was so well written that it was selected for publication in the school’s newspaper. For one day, I was not the “negative leader” that you always made me out to be. For one day I was celebrated both by teachers and classmates. For one day I felt like I had found an oasis in the middle of the desert that I felt my life was. But my defense of the children’s rights could not persuade you of the good-hearted spirit behind my “evil” character. My words did not change your mind about me. Your idea of me was immutable. You sentenced me without a crime and without a fair trial. But unbeknownst to you, you empowered me and fed my passion for justice and tolerance and acceptance of those who hold views different from my own.
And I want to write to you, the bully who tormented me and cornered me with her words of oppression, leaving me to wonder, every time, what mysterious force would drive her to harm, so repeatedly and mercilessly, the one who admired her. You were everything I wanted to be and thought I couldn’t: pretty, tanned, athletic, popular, respected. People would circle around you in the schoolyard to watch you do triple mortal flips like it was nothing. Hidden in the middle of the crowd, I would study your every move. You moved with the grace of a swan and displayed in my eyes such amount of talent, I could only close them and dream what it would be like to be you. Your words mattered, because they played off my weaknesses. Much as I did with you, you studied my every move. But all you saw was my pale skin, my clumsiness, my unmuscled anatomy. You made sure to draw my attention to my flaws, as if I didn’t know them, and to be sure I understood them loud and clear, you would point them out in public. Your words crumbled my self-esteem. I was at times tempted to tell on you, but I had no doubt in my mind who the nun would take sides with. It was a letter I wrote to you that finally shook you. My words no longer were about the person who desperately imitated you, but about the person I actually was. I poured my truths into that letter, revealing the ugly wounds that your poisoning words had opened and my need for you to recognize them, so you could heal me. When I read those words to you, also in public as you taught me works better, something moved your needle in the opposite direction. I was as honest and raw as a twelve-year-old can be, and when I finished reading from one side of the room, on the opposite side were you, standing without blinking. You listened. It was apparent to me that you never knew the crushing pain you had inflicted on me for so many years. You walked toward me and with every step you took, you abandoned your cruelty and mended me.
And I want to write to you, Colombia, the country that I called mine for 30 years and which spoke to me every day, through newspapers and politicians. Your words of war, dreadfully eternal, made me frightened of your streets and at the same time accustomed to my fear. Violence was and continues to be your only language, and it is spoken in your prairies and your mountains, in your coasts and inner cities. Sometimes it felt so far-flung, I felt as though I was just an observer of someone else’s tragedy. But in many ways, it was my own, because, like every criminal and every victim occupying your painfully beautiful geography, I learned that violence was entrenched in my identity. It was written on my forehead, visible to everyone in every airport I passed through, to every foreigner that met me in my own land, and what is worse, to every fellow Colombian whose forehead had the same label imprinted on, equally visible to me. It was daunting to see you bleed out without ever dying. Bloodthirstiness was your history, and injustice and impunity your most visible trademarks. Your words of violence mattered, because they made me feel ashamed of my red passport, a permanent reminder of the fact that I inevitably belonged to you. But they also mattered, because they aroused in me the urgent need to side with the oppressed, to fight my own indifference and fear, to be an instrument, even if imperfect, of change. You made me want to become a lawyer, not to fight in court, but to write about you, and against you, and for you.
And I want to write to you, oppressors of the world as I know it, who have spoken to me throughout my life with words of hate and intolerance and terror. Your words have butchered the dignity of those who do not look like you, or think like you, or worship like you. They, your words, have shattered the sense of worth of millions, whose souls have bled for centuries and centuries in every corner of this world that is not just yours. Your words matter, because they show me just how ruthless humankind can be. They show me that for every human being who has a voice, there are thousands crushed in pieces, silenced, killed. Your words matter, because you make with them a world where I do not want my child to live, a seedbed of inequality where privilege attaches to only a few.
And I also want to write to you, the many oppressed souls that a tyrannical minority has mangled, day after day four countless centuries. You have spoken words of persecution and torture and exclusion. Humankind is forever indented by your heart-rending pain and your harrowing fear. You have spoken words of hope for freedom, and I am ashamed of the times I chose not to come out of my ignorance, assuming I was not your intended interlocutor when in fact you were urging me to listen.
And I want to write to you, my only child, the one who always stands by his beliefs and principles, speaking to me words of uncompromising optimism. Always gentle, your words of faith in humanity navigate straight to my heart, even if the waters are dangerous and furious. Your words matter, because they remind me of the love poem that I want the world to be. They challenge me to do my part, because it is a poem that won’t write itself. Your words matter, because they invite me, as the words of Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti did once, to never stay idle at the side of the road, to never love with half a heart, to never hold off on happiness.
I write to you, parents and children, nuns, bullies of the world. I want to reach as many of you, oppressors and oppressed, friends and strangers, as my words allow me. For your words have shaped my ideas of love and hate, hope and anguish, repression and freedom, and I have been myself mother and bully, oppressor and oppressed, friend and stranger. I have spoken the same words and have known both prejudice and fairness. I want to speak to you, because we are all both, mirror and reflection. Words change us, and we should not have to witness our metamorphosis in isolation. My words may not come in pages glued together under a fancy leather cover, but I learned already that it’s not the cover what makes words matter.