GIGI GOES GAGA

BIG GIRL

I don't think I'll ever forget the moment that night, after I stood up from his bed in my chambray nightshirt to walk across the room and grab my bag on top of the chair beside the TV stand and then back again. I remember feeling his eyes watch my every step intently as I pretended not to notice. As I plopped back on the mattress and sat beside him, my eyes now searching the vast caverns of the leather satchel on my lap for a tiny lip balm tube, he said, a matter-of-factly and without breaking his glance, "For a big girl, you're pretty lithe."

I was tempted at that moment to mention which parts of his body were not so big and what he couldn't do with them, but I'm never cruel even when I'm decidedly annoyed. So I looked up at him instead and asked pointedly though not quite indignantly, "I'm a big girl?" He then fumbled with his words, realizing that his backhanded compliment was about to slap him in his face, and stammered, "Well, what I meant was that you're not petite -- you know, you're not bony or skinny, like..." Like the other women he normally dated, he meant but couldn't say.

The truth is that while I've never considered myself thin (even during that blip in history when I was 5'4" and 100 lbs.), I've never thought I was at the other extreme either. I suppose I've always been somewhere in the middle, with the exact location completely dependent on who I happen to be standing next to or even where I'm at. In other words, it's always been relative. For instance, when I'm sipping my latte inside a hipster coffee spot, I feel like a linebacker in leggings next to the picture-perfect natives who look like they subsist only on caffeine. But when I enter a McDonald's situated beside a truck stop in the middle of "Next stop: gas, food, and lodging," I can't help but notice that I take up less space at the counter.

Yes, my doctor prefers that I lose a bit of weight for health reasons, and I'm working on it. In the meantime I take comfort in the fact that I can still fit into clothes sold at trendy boutiques where women with sharp cheekbones and protruding clavicles are the dominant species (although if truth be told, I often wear the largest size there, which to no surprise is usually available). Recently, I felt a simultaneous swelling of pride and guilt when a trainer said during my physical evaluation that I looked athletic (my muscular calves fool everybody else but me). But then again, I have to admit that I dread stepping up onto a weighing scale, especially in public, and I refuse to allow anyone to carry me even if it means possibly saving my life.

So maybe I am a big girl. Or at least I'm big enough so there's no way I can disappear into the background or pretend to be invisible. It's not easy to push me aside and I can't fit into a small box. When I walk my steps have substance and when I'm on the move others may have to move out of the way. See, the one thing about being a big girl is that no one can possibly call me little.

I regret that on that night I didn't have the perfect retort -- which incidentally I only found tonight. As one of the female stars of a new reality show swaggered on camera: "Once you go big, you'll never go twig."

Oh, and another regret: That I allowed him to make me feel so small.

 

 

 

JUST BREATHE

It used to be so easy getting up. Literally and figuratively, I mean. Although I'm not yet feeling the pain of arthritis scraping away at my joints, there's already a bit of the ol' dreaded creaking that happens when I have to reposition my body these days. Maybe that's why so many women my age are headed for yoga studios; I really should, too.

But worse than physical inertia is the one that can't be easily felt or seen: the kind that happens within, the one of emotional and mental resistance. It creeps up on you much more insidiously. One day you've convinced yourself that you're fearless because of all the risks you've taken in your life, then the next you find yourself asking more questions before you do, or even giving into your fears.

I think this happens naturally as we get older. After falling down and getting up, and doing that over and over again, it's like arthritis develops and suddenly it hurts doing both. Sometimes we find ourselves holding onto a stable surface much more tightly until our knuckles turn white; other times we're down and find it easier to just sit there for a while longer and catch our breath.

Earlier this year I quit my job to go home, to Manila, and spend time with my parents whom I've been so far away from for more than 25 years. It was like one day I woke up and they were old and much more fragile than I remembered them to be. Both walk with a cane now and often need to hold on to something or someone to keep their balance. Their voices sound weaker, more shaky.

For the past couple of years I've noticed that I've been writing out more and more messages of sympathy to friends and relatives, and I dread the day I start receiving them in return. As my mother emailed me recently, "I want to go out and spend more time with friends but most of them are dead now." None of my friends can imagine being away from their children for even a few weeks or months and -- I don't know why I'd never thought of this before -- maybe it hurt my parents even just a bit that I'd already been away from them for a lifetime.

The reason I was able to just up and leave after all these years is because I'd practically lost everything else in my life. There wasn't much to hold on to so I had to find a way to stay up. In a way I was mourning, deeply. I needed to go home and start again.

For the four months I was home I got to rest and think -- a lot. I decided I needed to come back here and get back on track so I could be self-sufficient and independent, to fight my demons, and to find myself. It was just like why I came here the first time, 26 years ago. I felt like I was going home with my tail between my legs, and it just didn't feel right. I was made of stronger stuff than that.

So now I'm back here, but I've chosen to start again in a brand-new place. It feels right, you know. There's nothing here to remind me of the past; no memories associated with any of the sights, smells, and sounds around me. But at the same time it hurts to be away from my friends and family, and it's scary whenever I realize that I don't know my way around here. I feel completely lost.

Scary is a word I've been saying a lot lately. Try finding a job during a recession, with the unemployment rate averaging about 10 percent. Now try to find one at my age, too. I have to remind myself that I'm still as smart, capable, and resourceful as I ever was -- probably even more so. The past few years, and especially the beating that I've taken, have changed me in ways that I can't possibly describe because I'm still in the thick of things. But I know what's important now, and I'm thankful for what I do have. But, yes, it hurts and I get scared.

So I decided I was going to do whatever scares me, that I wasn't going to let fear be the reason that I walk away. I realize this sounds almost counterintuitive; one would think that I'd be seeking tender shelter instead. But the only way that I can stop being so frightened is to face fear directly and keep pushing it out of the way every time it stares me down. Eventually, I figure, I'll find myself in the clear; I'll look and see that I can stop fighting so hard now, that I can finally exhale.

The other day an acquaintance of mine, a magazine editor, asked if I could help her. She had interviewed a businessman for an article but had run out of time to write it and her deadline was in less than two days. She could send me the audio file, a brief press release his office had issued, and a link to another article recently written about him -- but other than that, I was on my own. Oh, and please make that 1200 words, thanks.

"Are you kidding?" I stared at my computer screen. "There's no way I could do this." Sure, I can type up a blog post in less time than I can make breakfast, but I'd never met the fellow and I'd have to transcribe her interview and do a bit of online research myself. Did I have enough time to commit to the task without panicking and failing?

Sure you do, a voice whispered from some forgotten recess of my brain, you've done this before. And I had, many times in fact, when I was with the Philippine News way back when. I juggled college and full-time newspaper work simultaneously, and I had to find a way to get all my articles in somehow, no excuses. And this was during a time when there was no internet, when I had to find phone numbers in an actual phone book, go to the library if I needed background research, and bang out my story on a typewriter. Yes, I could do this.

And so I did. I submitted my article in less than 24 hours, way before deadline. It felt good, I could still pull something like this off, I still had it within me, and I was no longer scared. Then I exhaled, and took another deep breath.

Now where's that nearest yoga class? Maybe a bit more twisting in unnatural positions will be good for me after all.