Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Never ever ever ever!!!

I like Taylor Swift's new song, "We are Never Ever Getting Back Together." At my age, of course I can't relate to it haha. But I like Taylor. She spills her guts all over her songs the way I spill mine all over my blogs. Plus, she can write really catchy tunes!

Here are two videos of her song. Here's the one starring her:


And here's the one that's just all words, which makes it really easy to sing along to:


I like the lyrics video better! I love words. Taylor is easy on the eyes but I like the way words look better.

Which one do you like?


UPDATE: This song is about Jake Gyllenhaal, y'all!!!

Sunday, September 02, 2012

Grief is a curious thing

It is September.

The Septembers now are strange. Back in the day, when I was young, Septembers meant cooler weather, a storm now and then, which meant thrilling scenes of trees flailing wildly about outside my bedroom windows. When I got frightened, my parents scared me even more with "Our roof might fly away! The avocado tree will fall! The water will get the rats to come out of hiding and they'll stay in your bed!"

Those never happened, by the way, but the roof did leak (every year, no fail), and the tree did lean terribly close to the house (so Papa chopped it down), and the basement did actually flood (but no rats came out thankfully). And that's what September has always been for me.


Now Septembers mean bigger, more terrible storms. The kind that lasts for days, whipping up winds and waves, flooding the land, disaster everywhere. Milenyo. Ondoy. September also means the biggest storm of my life—when Mama died. Four years ago this September.

Four years is a long time. If I had given birth when she'd died, I'd be mommy to a preschooler now. If I had been a freshman, I'd be graduating now. Most of the time, four years feels like a long time and that terrible day is just shadows and whispers. Some days, four years fall away and that terrible day is suddenly so very now.

Grief is a curious thing. You never truly understand it until it happens to you. And when it does, it is something you will never wish on anyone, not even your worst enemy.

It isn't your regular broken heart, which is insanely painful. But you get over a broken heart, believe it or not. And I do believe a broken heart is a good thing, a beautiful thing, because broken hearts are split open, allowing more love and understanding and compassion to come in, and the heart becomes bigger and stronger as it heals.

The grieving heart is also a broken heart but the heart that has lost someone to death, it never heals completely. You think it does, you think you're done, then one day, the strains of Moon River, a whiff of CK Euphoria, a scene from Dolphy's movies, the facade of Megamall A before that new parking building was (mercifully) built in front of it... A little thing, a big thing, they always sneak up on you and BOOM! You unravel.

One cruel day, I was walking along happily from the supermarket on my way home to the loves of my life, when across the street, I saw a woman who looked and walked like Mama. Before I knew it, I had crossed the street, running, dodging cars, calling, "Mama! Mama!" even as my brain screamed, "She's dead! She's dead!"

The woman turned. Of course she wasn't Mama. And I laughed, my hand on my suddenly hollow chest. "Sorry! I'm sorry, you look like my mother."

And she smiled, "Oh! Tell her I think she's beautiful!"

And I laughed again, a little too breathlessly, "I will. I will tell her."

But I don't. I can't.


Friday, August 31, 2012

My different kinds of scars

Yes, I'm going to talk about scars in this post because I was given a tube of Hiruscar, the scar solution from Switzerland. Warning, may mga kadiri parts! But because I'm vain, I'm going to spare you visuals haha. So here goes: My list of my different kinds of scars!

My stupid scars
We all have stupid scars. Mine happened when I was 14 and absolutely in love with our neighbor, Jay, who wasn't in love with me. Not even close. Every afternoon, I'd hop on a bike and cycle up and down his street, in front of his house, hoping for a glimpse. One glorious day, I finally saw him coming out of their gate. I was so excited, I didn't see a big stone on the pavement. So sumemplang ako. The seat of the bike flew out and the exposed seat post almost deflowered me! Buti na lang it embedded itself in my right thigh instead!

That was one ugly wound and my Papa wept over it. "Hindi na pang-Miss Universe ang hita mo!" Of course I never told him why I got that horrible wound kasi malamang binatukan niya ako at sinabihan ng, "Ang landi mo kasing bata ka! Buti nga sa 'yo!"

I should be grateful that the scar is now just a shadowy inch. I didn't get a keloid or anything bad. It's hardly visible. What a relief!

My medical scars 
When I was 15 and living in an orphanage in Calaca, Mindoro (that's a story for another day!), boils grew in my left kili-kili. The medical term is hidradenitis suppurativa. Basically, my hair follicles got infected since I used a rusty razor (I couldn't find new razors in the orphanage). I tried to ignore them but every day, dumadami at lumalaki sila. After two weeks, the boils got so bad, I couldn't lower my arm na. As in, para along naka-perpetual royal wave! The little Calaca health center didn't know what to do anymore so I had to go back to Manila. I went straight from the bus station to Manila Doctors Hospital.

At the ER, I was looking at my poor namamagang kili-kili when the doctor came in. OMG. Kamukha lang naman niya si Aga Muhlach! He said, "Let's look at your armpit." Syempre, two weeks na akong hindi nagshi-shave! I die. I die. The guy didn't even blink his beautiful eyes. He just took a scalpel, sliced open my armpit, drained out all the pus, Betadine-d the whole area, slapped some gauze on it and sent me away.

I should be grateful that the scars are in my armpit so they're hidden away. The skin had been so traumatized that it had darkened and the scars had become keloids. Thankfully, his incisions were tiny so they're just these little bumps. Still, I'll never ever get to star in a deodorant commercial!

More scars after the jump...