About Me — Jillian Somera

Artist trapped in a perpetual glass case of emotions

I was born many sunrises ago, at the crack of dawn, in the small city of Victoria, Texas.

My earliest memory is playing and running around the backyard of my early childhood home, when I suddenly lose my footing, twisting my right ankle in an uncomfortable direction, somehow managing to press the side of the top of my right foot, just below my toes, into a tiny pebble.

In a way, you could say that I began my self-aware life with my first-ever epic failure and subsequent triumph over temporary pain, an unfortunate pattern that has continued, for better or for worse, as the years go on.

My mom doesn’t remember this ever happening. She’s convinced that this was all a dream; I would be inclined to feel the same way if it weren’t for the very prominent marking left by the impression of the supposed imaginary stone on the side of the top of my right foot, just below my toes.

Whenever I see it, it reminds me to think about my origin story, as I try hard to recall my first memory of consciousness, its elusive nature fascinating and frustrating me all at once. But once those feelings have passed, I get a reminder to reflect on what I’ve done, who I’ve been, and who I am now.

And so, here I write, for you to find out more about me, as I sit cross-legged in my chair, wondering about me, too.

It was straight into the hustle from day one. My parents were right in the thick of building their American dream: my mom, a Communications professor in Texas, while my dad was several states away teaching Anthropology in Georgia. Academia being their career of choice, we were beholden to go where the jobs were, which were few and far between.

By default, it demanded sacrifice.

My brother, 5 years my senior, spent much of his childhood in the backseat of the car.

Always in the early hours, my dad headed out on the open road, making the drive on the weekends, all the way from Georgia to Texas and back.

We were always on the move. When my dad had his visa waiver application denied while attempting to move institutions to a small private college in Wisconsin, the plan that my mom would follow suit and bring me along was squandered in the blink of an eye. Acting quickly, they made the executive decision to move back to the Philippines instead, so that we could keep the family together.

Permanently returning back to your homeland before retirement age was considered a failure within Filipino culture, as if you had surrendered to admitting immigrant defeat.

Even so, we uprooted our whole lives, like my parents had done many times before in their tireless pursuit for a better life.

My brother had a more difficult adjustment ahead of him, having spent the first half of his single digit years in the U.S. in the Midwest, and the last half with us all together in the South.

Forced by circumstance, the Michigan-born adolescent turned Georgian turned Texan that he was, he returned with us to our roots, to the land of Seven Thousand Islands, our Filipino homeland. We knew that it was going to be hard, but at least we had each other.

Banding together, we pushed, forward on.

It was there that I learned Tagalog, picking up the language of my people, its vowels and sounds foreign on my American-English-speaking tongue, until eventually, it became the dominant movements that shaped my assimilation into my home culture.

I transformed, slowly, from the little girl with a Texan drawl, wandering around the palengke (a wet market), holding my dad’s hand, and pouting:

“Daddy, close my nose!”

The smell of freshly caught fish made its presence known in the open air that we breathed, a reminder of the ocean that surrounded our lands. We were but a tiny speck, the way we are when we are born until the day that we die.

I came to know and embrace my new identity, but to be fair, it was always my identity. Although, I didn’t discover it at birth:

I was a fair-skinned Filipino-American, a unique mix of two cultures, belonging neither here nor there, and yet everywhere at the same time.

5 years later, just when I started to thrive in the private international school my brother and I had been put in, we had to make a move again. My parents had fully intended to stay in the Philippines, but the health complications that my brother had suffered as a result of living in a heavily polluted metropolitan city began to take its toll.

It was so dire, in fact, that his pediatrician recommended that the only way to really solve the problem was to move away. Somehow the stars aligned, and my late great auntie Ems, or Lola* Ems as we called her, told my mom about a position that had opened up at the University of Guam at around the same time.

Keeping my brother’s health in mind, my mom decided to head to Guam ahead of us, laying down the groundwork for us to settle again in a new home.

*Lola means grandma in Tagalog

I remember the distinct feeling of separation from my mom on my eighth birthday, as she greeted me over the phone.

I was a kid, and yet I understood the value and weight of what she had to do, the sacrifice she had to make.

I discovered then that love was not tangible and it was, instead, actually weightless, the warmth of my mom’s voice enveloping and embracing me despite the ocean that separated us.

It was a wisdom that did not belong in the mind of a child.

Yet, there I was, some tiny beacon of light, beaming of love with hope, support, and understanding.

Even when we weren’t together, we were always on the move.

“It’s like a dream come true!” I exclaimed, finally reuniting with the whole family a year and a half later.

We walked, fresh off the plane and headed to baggage claim, as I gripped the sides of the moving walk way. I felt light and free, leaning fully into my childlike innocence, experiencing joy in all its purity.

It was like life took on a solid form, brimming of possibility and opportunity, and I immersed myself in the intention to take full advantage of our momentum.

But, what I think I really picked up on,

was that my parents’ instincts seemed to gravitate towards permanence in our settlement on Guam, a stability they had been searching for way before I was even born, though I didn’t confirm any of these sentiments at the time.

It was really on Guam that I started to cultivate my potential as an artist.

Though it was a beautiful and vibrant place, years of constant movement had come to make me resent stagnancy, and so sometimes, those qualities were lost on me as I adjusted to the slow and relaxed pace of island life.

But really, what wasn’t lost on my teenage angst?

To deal with my emotional tribulations, I turned to music. I taught myself how to play guitar at age eleven, my passion and love for the instrument leading me to the ability to play the entirety of Stairway to Heaven, an impressive feat that I achieved within seven months of picking up the instrument.

My mom had put me in classical piano lessons four years prior, when we still lived in the Philippines, and I had been singing since I was three years old. I quickly grew my instrumentalist arsenal, joining the middle school band as a mallet percussionist and also picking up drums a year later. I couldn’t possibly get enough of my choice of art.

Through my musical upbringing, I learned the elements that I search for now in a work environment: collaboration, creativity, risk-taking, open communication, trust, community, and the list goes on and on.

It taught me how to work towards something bigger than myself, to say death to the ego, and live in service of the greater good. These are ideals that often clash with the realities of the world, but they remain ingrained in my mind, forever informing and affirming my grounded approach to life.

All that being said, the fact is, being an artist is expensive (and always has been). So like many others, I made my entrance into tech for its promise: financial independence being the coveted goal. However, what I wasn’t prepared for in my pursuits was finding another passion in programming and software engineering.

But looking back, my penchant for the craft goes deeper than the act itself.

At heart, I am a problem-solver who loves and obsesses over puzzles, whether they are actual 1000 piece puzzles (love those) or unknowns that stick like honey, awakening my senses to a tantalizing curiosity that is as sweet as it is overwhelming.

I don’t ever stop until I know that I’ve tried all that I can, even if that means accepting a lack of closure, and then I pivot to go on and chase my next endeavor.

I may stumble, I may fall, and most days, I definitely have no f*cking idea what I’m doing.

But, I always get up, dust myself off, and continue on.

I am always on the move.

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