OPINIONS

Opinionated, “she is opinionated” read a teacher’s report, at Art College. I had barely spent one year in London, my accent, my wildness and my ‘opinions’ were still intact, unrefined.

Now, over thirty years later, my accent is softer, my opinions are just as strong and getting stronger with time in spite of my ‘spiritual training’. I cannot help having opinions in the face of the world I see. And I still find it incomprehensible why having ‘opinions’ is such an unacceptable thing. 
One conclusion I have come to is that if you are going to have opinions you better be outstanding and voice them forcefully or you'll be trodden on in a country where the colonial past is engraved in its citizens DNA. Just like our colonised past is engraved in ours.

So I write to affirm my rebelliousness. I write not to pick fights. I write because all I have is life experiences.

I am told sometimes, by well intentioned friends I need to leave the past behind; I should not read the news; I should ditch all so many hurtful things, vanish their sting from my heart.

I listen, then I think, do I want to be a smiling zombie, touching lightly the surface of life?

If I forget my experiences what is the point of having lived? chaotically, madly, nonsensically if you wish, but that’s what I have done; all that which is not me, but part of me.

Am I to not look, pretend that I don’t know that 'everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned’ as prophetic Yeats said so accurately? Am I supposed not to see world order needs changing, but the existing alternatives are worse than what we have?

Since early in life I was taught to ignore my feelings, to perform, then I became a bad performer as I could not connect with my emotions. I allowed things to be done to me, feeling that I do not feel what I feel.

This, and many more reasons that I will speak of in time, is why I write.

@Paloma Zozaya Gorostiza