The Last Sweet Roro

A dear cousin is going through a long-drawn-out break-up. I only realized how deep into it she still is when, after declaring, “That’s it, I’m done” in the way that 22-year-olds channeling wise, worldly 35-year-olds (yeah, that’s me) tend to do, she camps in front of her TV set with a bottle of red wine in the hopes of drowning out the shameful, shameful thing she just did earlier that evening: She was in her room, going through old scrapbooks when she came upon photos of her ex—the one she was supposedly “done” with—which brought back old memories. Which weren’t that bad, apparently, because they prompted her to send him—gasp!--a text message. And—bigger gasp!—he didn’t reply. Kapow!

Indeed, how does one recover from such a blow?

A few years ago, I would have told her that the only solution would be to “stay strong, stay firm, cut him out of your life, erase his name and all contact details from your directory, pack up everything he’s ever given you (unless it’s an iPod or a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone or a Zara cocktail dress) and stuff that reminds you of him and throw it out. Then take up kick-boxing. Or jujitsu.”

But when you’ve become a more mature, more balanced woman (yup, still me), you now know better. You now know that while the aforementioned method is still a personal favorite (because it uses rage—a lovely emotion that gives your cheeks a nice, healthy reddish tinge and, as a bonus, keeps out unwanted company), there are, in fact, a wide range of getting-over-him/it weapons at your disposal, with yet more in product development. All you have to do is ask a woman. The older she is, the more she will likely have in her arsenal. And you are most welcome to employ any or all of them.

For my heartbroken cousin, I shared one of my favorites—a wonderful and surprisingly effective tool: a story. My girlfriends and I have come to know this story as The Last Sweet Roro. Two years ago, as I was in the throes of my own long-running, di-pa-rin-ba-tapos-yan??? break-up saga, my friend Kat told this story to me, which was told to her (during Kat's own dark days) by the story’s main protagonist herself, another good friend of ours. Like a precious family heirloom, I’ve passed on this story to my sisters and girlfriends, hoping that they would derive the same comfort and magic and sense of hope that I felt when it was handed down to me.

Here goes:

Once upon a time, in the south of the Philippines, my girlfriend was in a long-term relationship with her high school sweetheart. Then she got accepted into her first-choice university, which happened to be in Manila, and so off she went. As a wide-eyed, impressionable freshman, she caught the eye of an upper classman. He was smart, sophisticated, older—and on his way to taking up law. The girl was, naturally, flattered and quite impressed. When he asked if she would like to be his girlfriend, she promptly broke it off with her boyfriend and took up with the future lawyer.

Alas, two weeks into this new relationship, the girl realized that she was, quite possibly, with the biggest narcissist in the metropolis—the kind of guy who hooks up with much younger girls because they were the easiest to brainwash into becoming adoring fans/groupies. The “relationship” was all about him. And the guy just couldn’t stop yakking about himself. TOTAL mistake.

The girl left him in mid-sentence, so to speak, packed a few things, hopped on a bus that rolled into a Sweet Roro ferry and practiced her I-made-a-mistake-please-take-me-back speech to her sweet, sensitive, thoughtful ex-boyfriend. But when she tried to deliver this heartfelt speech to him, he refused to hear it. In fact, he refused to speak to her and to see her.Kapow!

The girl was devastated, but not discouraged. She rationalized that she had brought this upon herself, and she was willing to do whatever it took to win back his affection. Every month or so, when she had scraped up enough of her student’s allowance to afford a ferry ticket, she sailed on the Sweet Roro from Luzon to Mindanao, hoping against hope that this time, on this trip, he would finally let her back in. I don’t recall who said this, but it’s awfully on the mark: “What men will only do for God and country, women have always done for men.”

She had a goal—and to her mind, it was a noble one: love. She was going to be worthy of it again, and if that meant packing her quivering heart in her suitcase every few weekends, offering it to her stony ex only to once again watch it being tied to the back of a truck and dragged mercilessly along the Mindanao highway like Lito Lapid, so be it. At the same time, she wondered just how long she could do this, how much more humiliation and rejection and heartache she could endure.

Perhaps because we’re the gender assigned to experience the necessary violent act called childbirth—not to mention the agonizing nine months prior--women tend to have a much higher threshold for pain than men. The kind of prolonged intense physical pain and suffering that earns men medals and hero status, women experience all the time, as a simple matter of fact, without fanfare. And so this girlfriend of mine, by the mere fact of having been born female, was genetically predisposed to let it rip.

Eventually, she—and her poor, battered but brave little heart—stopped thinking, became numb to the pain and just went on her business of taking the blows. Kapow! Kapow! Kapow!

One day, she took her place in the queue towards the entrance of the ferry bus, the way she had done for the past year. (Yes—YEAR!) As she planted her right foot on the first step of the bus, it dawned on her, clear as a sunny day--“I’m done.” Just like that. No bitterness, no anger, no remorse. Just a sense of finality and…relief. And gratitude. She did her time, and now she was free.

She stepped back from the crowds, calmly watched the activity before her. And she stayed long enough to watch the Sweet Roro sail away and disappear into the horizon.

I think I got to my feet and applauded when Kat was done telling me this story.

The truly genius thing about going--as my siblings and cousins put it--“all out” is that it guards against that silent monster--regret. The regret of not having done enough, the whole pwede-pa-sana school of thought--wishing you had done more and wondering what would have happened if you had—that haunts your waking and sleeping hours, as terrifying to some as seeing dead people. I suspect this is the reason women stay longer than they should in situations that make them miserable. They want to face down their monsters now, when they still have energy left, and not run away only to have these monsters lurk around in their supposed happy and content future. They don’t want to regret anything; they don’t want to think they had “given up too soon”. They want to be sure. They want to be able to walk away and never look back. So in the meantime, as my sisters say, “Go lang nang go!”

Certainly, there will be none of that regret for you when you board your own Sweet Roro, when you choose to just ride out the excruciating pain—and humiliation. Even those have expiry dates. You will have known that you did give it—that job, that friend, that dream, that relationship--everything you had and found out that it just wasn’t for you. At that point, no amount of pleading or negotiation or argumentation or guilt-trip or even bodily threat can reel you back in. You’re sooo DONE. You can peacefully let the damn thing go already.

There is no way to accurately describe the rush of relief, the odd sense of victory and liberation at finally arriving at your last Sweet Roro. You’ll watch it sail into the sunset—that relentless drama boat that rocked you to the core—with the giddy knowledge that, finally, you’re not on it, anymore. You’re on solid ground.

Moving Out Of Warrior

Recently, I went to something called Bars Access Energy Therapy. The idea behind it is that the body’s illnesses aren’t caused only by an unhealthy diet or imbalanced (a.k.a. stressful) lifestyle, but also by negative thoughts and emotions. These negative thoughts and emotions block the smooth flow of energy throughout the body in much the same way that cholesterol blocks the easy circulation of blood. Bars Therapy is supposed to “unblock” bottle-necks throughout the body to achieve a smooth, balanced flow of energy.

Not only do I buy this idea, I sell it. I’m one of those staunch believers in mind-body connections and therapies, but when my friend Lizanne, who was so amazed at the insights she had during her own bars therapy, gifted me with a session for my birthday this year, I hedged.

Insights, I thought. Do I really need more of that right now? At that time, I was already five months at work on my second book and I felt I was drowning in insights as it was. So I waited. Two months later--and stuck in a whirlpool called my book’s introduction--I was ready for outside help.

The therapists—or healers—are a male-female team, David and Claudine, in a classic show of balanced yin-yang energy. David is a writer, Claudine, among other things, is psychic. I liked them both instantly.

After conducting a short ritual that would “open” me up—to the healing energy, I suppose--they asked me to remove my shoes and to lie, face up, on a massage bed. Both healers decided that David would take the lead (while Claudine would act as support) because, according to them, his energy was closer to mine than Claudine’s. “You’re both writers,” Claudine said in answer to my eye-blinking questioning face.

I expected them to bring out “bars”. And, for some reason, the “bars” I saw in my head were bricks. Somehow, when my friend was telling me about her therapy, I imagined red bricks being piled on her, depending on how stressed out she was. I wondered how many “bars”—bricks--I would require.

In any case, there were no such brick “bars”. The healers explained to me that this kind of therapy got its name from the points on either side of the head which connect to form an imaginary bar.

David pressed his fingers against these points in my head, mumbled some things and told me to “say ‘yes’”. So I said “yes”. He asked if I felt anything and I was tempted to say “yes”, but…”You know, I don’t think I’m really that sensitive…” Then he mumbled some things again and told me to “say ‘yes’”, so I said “yes”.

Meanwhile, Claudine’s lands hovered over my chest. She frowned. She addressed David: “Matigas dito…”

I didn’t understand half of what was happening, and I suspect I wasn’t supposed to. At least, not intellectually. I was practicing a new thing: trying not to think too much. So somewhere in the middle of the session, I stopped trying to understand what was going on and just sort of flowed with it. I don’t know if that inner decision had anything to do with it, but suddenly, there came—ta-dah!--the insights.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama says this about insight: “Even if you seek to help someone out of concern, without insight you cannot be very clear about what benefit will come of your efforts. A combination is needed: a good human heart as well as a good human brain. With these working together, we can achieve a lot.”

And, boy, did I want to achieve a lot, beginning with getting myself together. Which, I had come to realize over the past couple or so years, was already a lot of work.

Even David, who’s not psychic, seemed to think so. “You’re…well, I wouldn’t say you’re running on empty. But you’re running on one-fourth the energy you need. And it’s decreasing.”

Oh, wow. He knew this from pressing the sides of my head?

I don’t remember who asked about it but suddenly we were talking about the major break-up I just had early this year. How tough it was, how that whole relationship exhausted—depleted—me, and how it came to a point where I had to choose between the survival of the relationship or the survival of me.

“That bad, huh?” Claudine said.

“How do you feel?” David asked for the nth time.

“I’m OK,” I said.

“I mean, do you feel anything now…any sensations?”

“Um…I don’t know,” I said. “I feel cold.”

“Cold?” Claudine asked. She reached over and took my hand. “Malamig nga.”

“It’s the aircon,” I said, unconvincingly. I’d already been told by several doctors—both holistic and conventional—that my blood circulation was poor, which is why my body doesn’t react “normally” to changes in temperature.

“It’s not that cold,” Claudine observed, referring to the room, and I felt her making some connections in her head. She touched my feet. Even with my socks on, they still felt cold. “Hmm…”

David verbalized the connection Claudine must have been making between my cold hands and feet and my “rock hard” chest and solar plexus. He said that my body heat seemed to be concentrated in my torso, that my center was drawing heat from my extremities. As if it was protecting something…

“If you can visualize your solar plexus, what does it look like?” Claudine asked.

I didn’t have to think hard. In fact, I don’t think I thought at all because there suddenly was the image of a round thing with rays emanating from it. I described it to Claudine.

“What is it made of?” she asked.

“Metal.” Again, my answer was fast and sure.

“You’re protecting something,” she said, thoughtful. Then, a second later: “You’re protecting a child.”

Hmmm…

“You’re protecting your inner child,” she said.

Oooh…

“How old is she?” Claudine asked.

“Four,” I said, without hesitation.

“What happened when you were four?” she asked.
She asked if any particular memory stood out and I instantly saw this little girl with bangs and a high ponytail wearing nothing but frilly white underpants, socks and shoes. I had seen those photos of me. I was in the Surigao City airport with my mom, my maternal grandfather, lots of other relatives and family friends.

“People are telling me who I should be,” I said, and even I was surprised as I did so.

“Should…” Claudine was quick to take note of this. “Who are these people—your parents?”

“My parents, my grandparents, my uncles, my aunties, their friends—everyone.” I could actually hear them baby-talking to me, cooing, telling me I should be this and that because I’m so this-and-that. I felt my body tense up.

“Who do you want to be?” Claudine asked.

“Myself.”

“And who do they want you to be?”

I thought a moment. “Themselves.” More specifically, the selves they didn’t think they could be.

I had gone down this road before. Had written about it in countless journal entries over the years, went to psychotherapy as a way to answer the question of why the people in my life couldn’t seem to just let me be. Why they had such set notions about what I should do, how I should behave, who I should love and why, in God’s name, did I feel so threatened by it? As though they really had the power to make me into what they had in mind.

I had finally figured out the answer to the first part (the part where they felt entitled to say who I should be)—at least, in my head, I did—so, as a way to be fair to these “people”, whom I love very much, I explained to Claudine that I am the eldest granddaughter. So I became the natural focus of my family’s affection; that they also naturally projected onto me all the things they wished they could have been, the way people tend to do with a new baby—an assumed blank slate.

The attention was rather intense, me being the first granddaughter (my older cousin, a male, was in Cebu, himself undoubtedly being intensely fussed over by his maternal grandparents and relatives), and it was a habit that just got carried over until I was, oh, thirty-plus? As a reaction, I had become intensely self-protective. Practically all my energy was channeled to fending off meddlers, those well-meaning, sure, but thoroughly invasive, intrusive people who wanted to have a hand in shaping me as a person—those people who just couldn’t leave me alone, goddammit—and laid on the guilt trip. All that effort, all that energy solidified over the years into a “rock hard” torso—I had created for myself a veritable breast plate, not to mention breast cysts. It was exactly what my friend Cecilia, well-versed in the ways of the esoteric, told me just a few months ago, “You follow the truth inside your heart like a warrior. Problema…heart chakra. Forgiveness. Kasi nga warrior pose, eh. Rage is essential to maintain the energy to assert your personal integrity.”

So I told Claudine this. I said, “My friend says I’m forever in warrior pose. It’s my favorite yoga pose.”

“It’s my favorite, too,” Claudine said. “But ‘forever’? That must be so tiring,” she said sympathetically.

“It is,” I said, and I felt like crying. My God, it’s tiring. And, only recently, I also figured out the second part of my seemingly life-long angst (the part where I felt threatened by other people’s desire to mold me)—I was afraid I wasn’t strong enough to fend them off, that one day I’d succumb and live a fake life just to shut them up already, that I’d live a life that made them—but not me—happy.

“You know,” Claudine continued. “You may have kept people out, but you’ve also locked in your authentic self. Let it come out. It’s time you let it out.”

Then she said the words I realized I most needed to hear from another person: “It’s safe to be who you are.”

(If you'd like to experience this kind of therapy, you may reach Claudine Mangasing at +639178958191 or David Montecillo at +639178170396.)

Like Father...

Five years ago, I don’t think I would have ever admitted to myself, much less to anyone else, that I took after my father. I thought he was too stubborn for his own good, too proud to admit he was wrong or to apologize for a mistake, too rigid in his beliefs and so quick to judge others who did not share the same values as him.

Then beginning in 2003, my life fell apart so many times that I began to develop a most effective coping mechanism—looking inward. And I went poking about inside my psyche, inside my thoughts and motivations, as seriously and as determinedly as a CSI agent. Out of this inward curiosity, I discovered that there was inside me a too-stubborn, too-proud, too-rigid, too-judgmental person and that it was this part of me that was attracting and causing the pain and misery and confusion of which I was suffering. No wonder my father and I didn’t get along—we were so alike, we shared too many of the same negative traits that we clashed.

I decided I was going to change.

I willfully altered my habits and thought-patterns (repeatedly telling myself as a mantra: “You don’t always have to be right”) and before long the miracle happened: my father and I managed to stay at the same table without arguing. Looking at my father from a more open, more accepting vantage point—and not always trying to exert my own will--I saw that he was a kind, funny, irreverent, pure-hearted, deep, thoughtful, intelligent, honest romantic idealist who was always trying to do the “right thing”. And this allowed me to get in touch with the part of me that was all that, too. The more I liked my father, the more I liked myself. I developed such a deep, unwavering affection and respect for this man who happened to be my father—and what all that was doing for me--that I found a kind of peace that I never even imagined. And for a few years, we were doing fine. That is, until I fell in love with a man with whom my father was so violently opposed.

The new man in my life had been married before and had two kids from that marriage. For my staunchly Catholic father, who didn’t believe in annulment and who saw me as the loose, immoral woman who was coming between a man and his family, this was a definite no-no. I thought I could change his mind once he’d hear from me how happy I was in this new relationship. But in our first meeting after he learned (from my sister) that I was dating a “married man with kids”, he told me in his straightforward manner: “I just want you to know that if this relationship ends up in marriage, I don’t want to be there.”

It was too late to hate my father for that or to think that he was just saying it to hurt me. I had already seen a more complete picture of him—I could never go back to thinking he was just put on this earth to make my life a living hell. We were at an Italian restaurant, sharing a pizza while he sipped his cappuccino when I brought up the subject of my new relationship. Almost instantly, storm clouds gathered around him, his expression darkened. He looked like he couldn’t wait to get away from the table, from the restaurant, from me, from the whole idea that his eldest child was devaluing herself by being with a man who did not value marriage and family. He suddenly looked old and lost, and my heart went out to him. I found myself saying gently, “I understand, Pops.” The strange thing there was that I meant it. Knowing him, I did understand his position. He was consistent. He was acting according to his own strong personal beliefs, according to what he believed was right. He didn’t mean any harm. In fact, to his mind, he was trying to protect me from harm. He reminded me so much of someone—he reminded me of myself.

Right then I vowed to myself that I wasn’t going to change how I treat him. I would continue to respect his position and his beliefs even as they were the direct opposite of mine. I would treat him the way I wanted to be treated. I would never again try to change his mind. For almost a year, he refused to speak to me and I let him be.

During that time, I became a writing teacher and discovered that I loved teaching almost as much as writing. Teaching revealed to me my own capacity to be a safe place for my students, that I was a person with whom they felt free to be their most natural, authentic selves. I couldn’t help thinking it was my experience with my father that made me into such a person.

After almost a year of not speaking, my father turned up in one of my workshops. It wasn’t as dramatic as it may sound because he isn’t a very dramatic or sentimental person. He simply sat, matter-of-factly, in class and was the most enthusiastic student. Whenever I asked my students if they would like to share what they had written, my father would raise his hand like an eager little boy and proceed to spill his guts. In one heart-wrenching essay, told in his trademark straight-up, unapologetic, unsentimental, irreverent, funny and unflinchingly honest style, my father shared with me, his writing teacher, the story of his life—his dreams and disappointments and the peace he was trying to make with all of these.

It took us three drafts, a few more cups of coffee in a café and plenty of trust and respect on both sides to get us back on track.

Finding My Way Again...And Again

(For 100 Kwentong Peyups on the occasion of the University of the Philippines' Centennial Celebration. Submit your own UP story in 1,500 words or less to kwentongpeyups@campaignsandgrey.net) ;)

Right after taking the U.P. College Admission Test (UPCAT) in 1990, I made a pact with myself: If I were to fail the exam, I would take it as a sign that I was not meant to pursue higher formal education. And that, instead, I was to happily be on my way to learning from the only place that, to me, could rival U.P. on the excitement scale—the “real” (a.k.a. “working”) world.

It may have seemed like a radical decision for a high school student, but for me, it only seemed natural, given the feelings I had nurtured towards U.P. for years.

The university had first taken hold of my imagination early in my adolescent years when I saw old pictures of my mom as a young, pretty U.P. student in the 1960’s. She was in teensy miniskirts that reached up to her butt, a cheeky grin on her face, hamming it up with friends and looking like she was having the time of her life. I became very curious about the school that gave me a completely different picture of my otherwise proper, ladylike, conventional mother—the French-speaking, American Field Scholar student activist who made Molotov bombs and was chased down University Avenue by the Metrocom. Like a person’s first great love, the university seemed to have brought out the bold, fearless, astig aspect of my mom, and I wanted to believe that, as soon as I shed my plaid Catholic high school uniform for the college outfit of my choice, it would coax the same brilliant traits from me.

For this reason, U.P. held an intensely romantic, almost mythical aura for me. I decided it was The One. (And I think this marked my first ever all-or-nothing bet.) I wasn’t going to play safe by applying to other schools. And I certainly wasn’t going to settle.

It was an attitude that allowed me to apply to the university without a sense of desperation or fear of rejection. So even before the letter of acceptance from U.P. arrived in the mail, I had already decided there was no way I could lose. No wonder I entered the university with a kind of swaggering confidence and an abiding belief that nothing in the world could go wrong for me. I felt invincible and this feeling liberated me to do the first few bold, courageous/crazy things I’ve ever done.

I joined the U.P. Mountaineers almost as a test of how far I could handle the notoriously rigorous application process (five-, ten-, fifteen-kilometer runs under time pressure; a battery of written and practical exams; climbs of escalating difficulty). I was inducted that summer at the summit of Mindoro’s Mt. Halcon, otherwise known as the “Macho Mountain”, and felt like I grew balls.

(What I had to do to secure my parents’ blessing for that induction climb was another character-building battle altogether.)

I joined the women’s football team even as I knew nothing about the sport except that the players sometimes got to do a really fun thing like sliding in the mud. I attended my first and only rally ever--in support of a total log ban. I faced down a professor—my first time to stand up to an authority figure who was not one of my parents. I survived a sexual assault by a stranger as I walked from my freshman dorm to the Arts and Sciences building early one morning. Instead of being cowed and avoiding that path after the incident (which, to my mind, would have been a victory for the attacker), I continued to take the same route to class but now holding an uncapped Pilot pen and seriously looking forward to stabbing the next pervert who came near me.

In U.P., I knew exactly who I was. And who I was in that school was someone I really liked and respected.

It seems fitting then that later on, as a wage-earner assailed by self-doubt and annoying existential questions (“Is this what my life is about?” “What do I really, really want?”), I would find reprieve in the place that first showed me my possibilities. When the otherwise manageable undercurrent of indecision, confusion and fear would swell into a great wave, carrying me and then slamming me down on the shores of some desert island, I would be left no other choice but to try to regain my bearings. During these times, I would pick myself up from my island of misery, skip work and make my pilgrimage to U.P., as though to get in touch once again with the bold, uncompromising, spirited girl that I seemed to have left there. And always, during the course of my short visit, the school would remind me of who I am.

It doesn’t matter what I’d do in U.P.; I could be joining the late Sunday afternoon crowd brisk walking, jogging, biking or skateboarding around the Academic Oval; sharing a slice of Devil’s Food Cake with an equally “lost and confused” U.P. alum friend or sibling (three younger sibs were undergrads at UP, one took her Master's) at Chocolate Kiss Café; catching another wild stage performance by my never-say-die friend and iconic campus figure Romeo Lee; or just planting myself on one of the benches scattered around the campus like the village grouch, scowling at the carefree students who walked by and relishing my cynical old-timer mode as I mutter disdainfully, “Bagets.” The answers may not come to me at that point, but the memories of my four fabulous years in U.P. would crowd around me like old, solid cheerleading friends recalling the moments in my college years where I was most proud of myself. And then the crippling doubts and fears would be replaced by an unshakeable confidence that, as that unofficial U.P. Humanities professor Bob Marley sagely sang, “Everything’s gonna be alright.” Relax lang, the vibe around me seemed to say. Aabot din tayo diyan. You already know you got it in you to make it.

And I would always trust that feeling. The strange, almost drug-induced powerful feeling that never once failed me the past eighteen years since I first felt it.

Everything was gonna be alright.

Perfectly Flawed

(My entry to The Philippine Star's "If My Life Were A Book..." essay contest ;) )


For someone who writes for a living, I have not had the easiest time identifying what sort of book would best reflect how I see my life. A book, in all its edited, published, art-directed state, suggests to me a fully-formed, finished work. And really, my life is anything but fully-formed and finished. If anything, I feel, at thirty-four, that I’m just getting started.

Since writing my first “book” (a Nancy Drew-esque mystery slapped together by paste complete with my own drawing of a blond girl on the cover) at age nine, I knew I wanted to become a writer “when I grow up”. And since then, becoming a writer has been my life’s biggest challenge precisely because growing up has been. How does it feel to be a grown-up? How does one know when one finally is? More importantly, how does one get there?

The problem was that, for a long time, I was very conflicted about adulthood. On one hand, I couldn’t wait to be earning my own money and being able to do whatever I pleased without having to ask my parents’ permission. On the other hand, I dreaded having to be motivated by “obligation”, “responsibility” and “sacrifice”—words that seemed to belong exclusively to the adulthood lexicon and which to many adults have come to mean staying in a job they didn’t like, sticking to a marriage wherein they weren’t happy, saying things they didn’t mean. The adult world around me seemed such a joyless, dishonest, generally unappealing—except for the money part--existence that I did often wonder why anyone would even want to “grow up” or why people are encouraged to. It just didn’t make sense to me. Like death, growing up was something I knew was inevitable. But at the same time, I was hoping I could stall its inevitability.

So stall I did, steering clear of anything that reeked of “adulthood”--a regular 9-5 job and jobs that required a uniform; savings; insurance policies; investment and property; “settling down”. All the things adults were supposed to do and have, I wasn’t even sure I wanted. So there I was, stuck in limbo land—not a kid anymore, but not exactly an adult, either. There was no real movement in my life, no moving backwards nor forwards, just going around in circles that I might as well have been standing still (at least, then, I wouldn’t be wasting so much energy). And there’s nothing like being stuck--not knowing where to go next--to make one think and consider: Now what?

Little wonder that my writing was at a similar standstill. As my chosen form of expression, it naturally and simply mirrored the state I was in. I was writing almost everyday and had completed a novella, some screenplays, a play, but none of them were anywhere near getting published or produced. Why? Because they still weren’t good enough to show anyone else—an editor, a publisher, a producer, a director. I was busy lamenting my works’ being far from perfect, finding them infinitely inferior in comparison to the great works of my literary and dramatic heroes. I kept revising and revising, hoping to get closer to the level of those works that I admired but at the same time, getting more and more frustrated at how far off I still was.

Had I not been so caught up in my own frustration, it probably wouldn’t have taken me so long to make the connection between being a grown-up and being a writer. The aim of writing is to be coherent, at the least. And I have come to learn that the continuous attempt to be coherent—to have one’s life make sense at least to oneself--is what grown-ups do. We may not always have our lives all figured out, but to constantly try to, anyway--not abandoning the effort no matter how frustrating and pointless it can get--is what really makes one a grown-up. It is the same tireless effort—this time to have things figured out through the written word--that makes one a writer. Our effort implies that we recognize we do have a choice whether or not to make sense, to be coherent. And that it is a choice we do not make just once, but have to exercise again and again.

Coherence, understanding, a sense for things—these do not simply drop on one’s lap. They take effort to achieve. Paul Arden, in his book Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite, says: “The effort of coming to terms with things you do not understand makes them all the more valuable to you when you do grasp them.” And since many of us turn away from things that require effort—fixing a troubled relationship, being able to afford the house of our dreams, traveling to our dream destination, pursuing our long-held childhood ambition, finding out what we truly want--few things in our life are of any real value to us. If we can’t have what we want now, with little or no effort—the healthy relationship, the great house, the dream vacation, the dream career—we dismiss it as “unrealistic”.

Well, I’ve thankfully realized that what was unrealistic was me thinking I would suddenly wake up and be a full-blown grown-up--like adulthood simply happened to people--or that I would suddenly, just by wishing, whip out prose that would make E.M. Forster or Edith Wharton weep with pride. What my virtual paralysis taught me was to acknowledge, respect and trust my process, those little steps that may seem tiresome—even insignificant—but which will surely take me where I want to be. Shifting my focus from the end product to the process meant paying attention to the little steps, focusing on what was happening now, right in front of me, instead of what had already happened or on what was yet to happen. It meant learning to see a moment as part of something big, maybe even grand; at the same time recognizing the bigness, the grandness, of a single moment. By shifting my perspective, I became kinder to myself, less frustrated at my work and seeming slow progress. I thought, progress. Movement, at last. Never mind “slow”; “progress” is good.

So if a book were to reflect this movement in my life, it would have to be one that looks like it’s progressing, too—like it’s becoming--rather than looking all polished and finished. A collection of my own stories in their first, second, third, maybe even fourth—anything but “final”—drafts, the book would be this imperfect yet (or perhaps on account of that) interesting work-in-progress. Its unfinished, evolving state would, I hope, suggest my new-found focus on and patience with The Process.

The book would be self-published and it would sit on a bookshelf, matter-of-factly owning its flaws—its typographical and grammatical errors, its political incorrectness and moral unsoundness, its plot and character inconsistencies—alongside books that give off an aura of perfection. I also hope it would reflect what I’ve come to know about perfection: that, like the horizon, it will always be beyond our reach yet, at the same time, will always be exactly where we are.

It would be prefaced by a line from a Chris Cornell song, Sunshower, that goes: “All you’ll be…you are today…”

My book would be a perfectly flawed piece of work. And I would be perfectly happy with it.

The Beauty Of A Contest

I just joined another writing contest. My nth one since deciding seven years ago that I was going to write what I want. For a living. In a Third World country like the Philippines. Yikes.

Writing what I want, for myself--while a fabulous concept when I was employed--posed a strange, unprecedented challenge for me. For the first time, it gave me nothing to fight against or to resist. At least, nothing that I was used to, like an egotistic, chauvinistic boss; a too-stiff and too-constricting work environment; unimaginative, demanding clients; tight deadlines.

With nothing and no one else to help define my work or to blame it on--all the things I had raged against, of which I had decided to free myself--I was slapped in the face with the realization that working alone is a bitch. It's like stripping down to nothing, not even one's undies, in the middle of the Ayala-Makati Ave intersection on a Monday morning. There is nowhere to hide and the question that swirls in one's head is: "Why did I think this was necessary again?" No wonder many people didn't do it, preferring to be employed and, um, clothed. It seemed, by far, the saner choice.

Since I insisted on being naked, anyway (perhaps a latent exhibitionist streak that was only making itself known), and a bit insane, relying on nothing and no one besides my kapal-muks and lakas-sikmurs, writing contests presented itself as a perfect crutch. It gave me just the right amount of pressure, but none of the unnecessary stress of my previous employed status, to make me come up with work I was proud of...ON TIME.

So what if I was baggy-eyed, my head buzzing from sleep-deprived delirium, and panting down the street to submit the notarized three copies of my work to the Palanca office at 11:55 PM, five minutes short of the annual literary contest deadline? I was pumped up! At least, nobody put me up to it. Whatever stress I was feeling was completely, unblinkingly my choice. If I didn't make the deadline, nobody would miss me. I wouldn't get a salary deduction, a less-than-stellar employee evaluation, nor the evil eye from my boss. But I would have another sleepness night, and this time I wouldn't be feverishly finishing my play or short story or essay; I would be staring at the unfinished work in my hands, berating myself for being such a lazy-ass slowpoke, being hugely disappointed at myself. THAT, as far as I'm concerned, is a worse fate.

Winning a writing contest is always a great thing and while, at the start, it used to be my primary objective, I now join contests to help me complete my work. Writing contests, with its deadline and, sometimes, theme can be incredibly useful that way, especially for someone like me who values personal freedom so much that it sometimes threatens that other thing I value as much--being productive. My freedom as a writer means nothing if it does not encourage me to produce work. I tell all my writing students this. And that is why a big part of our writing program is to join writing contests. It is not to make them medal- or recognition-hungry which makes them write only what they think will win instead of what is authentic to them (although that's a real danger), but to use these contests as a tool to effectively articulate all the thoughts and ideas that free-spirited people find so difficult to do.

My latest essay is the product of my joining a writing contest--The Philippine Star's "If My Life Were A Book..." I don't know what the verdict is on this one and honestly, I've not been losing sleep over it. I like the essay and I'm proud of the time and thought I gave to it. So I'm sharing it with any one of you who may be interested.

To my writing students: guys, asan na essays niyo? ;)

Dear Ms. Jolie

Can I call you Angie? I’m sorry if that may seem like I’m being too familiar, even with someone as familiar to the world as you, but I do feel like I know you. My boyfriend calls me your stalker;)--I’ve bought more magazines with you on the cover (as well as your book Notes from My Travels) than I can realistically afford. Friends excitedly call me on my cellphone when they see you on TV. My sisters and brother think I’ve regressed and have gone straight back to my Princess Diana-obsessed youth.

However, being the incorrigible optimist---as all romantics are--that I am, I see the upside to this “fanaticism”: I’d like to think that the evolution of my choice of role model from a starry-eyed romantic looking for love to a clear-eyed powerhouse who sought to be in charge of her life (in the process, attracting the love that would nurture her vision) reflects my own evolution as an individual. The fact that I identify with you as I’ve never identified with anyone else--however mind-boggling (and yes, delusional) that may seem to my friends and family given that you’re not only famous but that, helllllowwwa!, you’re ANGELINA JOLIE—gives me great comfort. It tells me that another Gemini (also called The Divine Discontent in the zodiac), with lofty dreams of changing the world (her Third World part, the Philippines) and improving her own troubled relationship with her dad, may finally be getting it right and may even find contentment in this lifetime.

You cannot imagine how much you’ve helped me without even knowing it, especially with this rather difficult endeavor I’ve chosen for myself—creating the life that I want. And since I want nothing less than a great, incandescent life, the demands upon me and the challenges I’ve been faced with have been nothing short of, well, great.

Just by being yourself—unflinchingly honest, open, authentic—you have offered me much-needed encouragement, spurring me on when times got really difficult that the urge to just give up, to stop and settle for less became overwhelming.

I just thought it fitting that I start this blog with a nice “thank you” to the person who has most inspired me.

I am sooo glad you’re in the world, Angie. Take care and keep getting more astig, Astigirl! ;)


Love and peace...