To all those I taught, tutored, mentored, “tormentored”  when I taught highschool,  I know (I realize now) that many of my words stuck to you.  And because some of your lives have not turned out the way you expected it would, I feel just a weebit responsible for feeding you all that idealism,  all that Little Prince stuff…and the Giving Tree and the One Day I’ll Write You A Happy Poem.  I feel your disappointment.

Better to write me here….Facebook is like an “exhibitionist’s” playground.  Chim, you’re safer here as I have very very few friends and fewer still are those who actually come visit me here.   I get it when you say you want out…that NO ONE BATS A THOUSAND TIMES.  I get that.

From the song The Boxer, remember these lines…

“In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade 
And he carries the reminders
Of ev’ry glove that layed him down
Or cut him… till he cried out in his anger and his shame 
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains.”

Fighters remain even if it seems they’ll never  recover from some of the blows life has dealt them.  The shame, the insult, the reducing you, the constant aching.  This may sound elegiac…but what I told you about God still holds true.  He holds the earth in His hands.  He measures the universe with the span of His hand (isang dangkal lang sa Kanya!)  He causes the movement of the stars.  He cares about you.  All that is not diminished just because someone hurt you and messed up your life.

If you’re going to fight tooth and nail for anything, fight for this.  Fight to keep believing.

Things I thought hard about today.

• For some things, there’s an undo button so you can undo mistakes on  Word or Excel
• Or use solvent to ‘unglue’ something you’ve used Bionic glue on
• Or use Stripsol to ‘unpaint’ something
• For mistakes like that, you don’t feel sad or grieve.
• Because those things, you CAN ‘undo’
• But with other things, there is no ‘undoing’
• Like,  you can’t ‘unring’ a bell.
• You can’t ‘unsay’ something you’ve said.
• You cant ‘un-run over’ someone you’ve run over dead.
• Because, unlike spreadsheets, essays and projects,  life and people and relationships are fragile.
• For life and people, there is no such thing as being too careful.
• Yep.
• You can’t unring a bell

Have been reading a book by Dianne Keaton.  I only know her by name.   Yet, we think along similar lines.  How odd that I get her.    Can’t help thinking — if we had gone to school together, we’d be good friends.  Like,  we’d sit together in class.  Laugh at the same things.  We’d chat as we walked to the us stop after class.  We’d get on the same bus and chat some more.

Little girls enjoy being delighted in.  They love to be fascinating and interesting. They love for the grown ups to listen to their stories and drink in details.  Little girls love to play princess.  They love to feel protected, watched out for.  They wallow in this.

Then they grow up and grow old.  And grow wiser about themselves.  Its a little sad.

But really, growing up and growing old are immutable laws.

You just have to find a way to frame it so when you grow old, like me,  the disappointment won’t sting as much.

I walk with a slight limp from a really bad fall in the ancient ages.  Its just too messy to explain how this limp came to be — even to those who saw it happen.  They ask  incredulously — “You still have a limp from that fall?”.

I’m tired. I’m disappointed.  So I’m crossing over my moat and I’m pulling up the drawbridge.    I’ll keep myself scarce … that’s to preserve whatever’s left of my equilibrium.  And some people might attempt to cross the moat and pry open the drawbridge and say “what’s wrong? You can talk to us.”    But before they finish their spiel, the  little piranhas in the moat will take care of them for me.

Note to self:  Get over it.  People.  And the limp.

 

Meet my friend Issa.

Issa has a detached retina driven so by diabetes and she is losing her sight.  There are other complications of diabetes that are truly frightening.  But for Issa, going blind,  tops the list.

Meet another friend, Celia.  Her son has a rare complication of encephalitis and he is dying slowly, while she watches.   It came when he was only  six.  He’s been saying goodbye for a long time.  He’ll move to be an angel, that’s for sure, but that doesn’t make it less sad for Celia.

Meet Benedict.  He has liver cancer.  He now has three tubes in his liver.  He still goes to work. And not many people know how bad he is.  His greatest challenge is this:  … he doesn’t know how to tell his only son that he is a dying man.  His son is old enough to understand what cancer is, but too young to assume his post as head of the family..

Meet Rose. Both her legs were amputated from the hip level..  Stop here and picture that.  No legs after the lower hip line.  She uses her arms to walk.  She is married and has a child.  She manages a household like the rest of us. Rose does everyday chores like cooking, cleaning and laundering. Only — without legs. When her mother died, her father ( who has Alzheimer’s) had to move in with her.  Along with her younger brother (who, hear this, is  severely retarded.)

Needless to say, her husband is a gem of a man. If at any point, he said “This is too much”,   people would have understood.  Probably not just understood,  but would have totally agreed with him.  But if he had taken that stand,   legless Rose would not have been able to help her father and her brother.

Many times,  people have asked her “Rose, how do you do it?”  Her reply?  “I don’t know…you just do.”  Sigh.                                                                                                                                                      

Meet countless other people who live  very difficult lives.   Ahhhh, I see your antennas coming up. You’re asking —Have they checked the sins in their family tree?  Do they pray?  Do they have faith?   Keep that spiritual checklist to yourself.   You may need it more than they.  Don’t preach to them about having faith or about prayer.  They’re braver than you and me.

Someone once mused,   “Superman isn’t brave”.  As I watch these people live their lives, I realize just how true that line is.  Superman isn’t brave.  You can’t be considered  brave if you know you are indestructible. Its people like them who are brave.  They know they are not indestructible.  They know they can easily be defeated, but they fight anyway.

They wince, they flinch, they cry when they’re hit.  But they keep on keeping on.  They’re the kind of brave that people don’t clap for. They don’t get awarded medals.  Their names aren’t called to go up on stage.  But one thing is sure.  God applauds them.  Their lives are not pointless because God  uses their life, their adversity to speak into the lives of others.

Courage is a grace that can only come from having a relationship with God.  .   Let Psalm 145:14 explain it to you “The Lord lifts the fallen and those bent beneath their loads”.

I picked up a beautiful quote from my friend Sally Z.

‎”There are times when being truly listened to is more critical than being fed… Children speak their pain automatically when there is a listener, but learn to hide it when there is no ear to hear.”

I agreed that it held true for all ages.  I began to share the quote with a few other friends.  And we all clucked our tongues, shook our heads and made remarks about how people don’t really listen anymore.  People like to listen fast and short.   They ask  how things are and as soon as you talk, you notice a glazed look in their eyes and you just know for certain they’re not there anymore. Why do they bother to ask, I wonder.

But listen to this.

This morning, as we were sorting clothes for laundry, I asked my labanders “Kumusta?”

She began to tell me that her son had had a seizure from high fever the day before.  Distractedly, I looked up from my pile and said   “Ay, ganun?   Ahm…(pause, blink-blink) ano na nga magandang suka ang ginagamit sa kinilaw?”.   Shame on me!  Totally random.  And totally un-listening.    She was sharing her anxiety about a seizure and I wanted to know what vinegar to use on a dish.

Ofcourse I tried to recover by asking more details (about the seizure, that is — not the vinegar).  But it was lame.  It shamed me that I was doing exactly what I had just renounced.

Sigh.  Dear Lord, I talk too much.  Grace me to walk my talk.

Hilarious what some people prescribe.   As most of you already know,  I’m sick with MS.  And because of that,  people like to fix me.  You know, like I’m their special project.

I have been  prodded,coaxed, cajoled, badgered  to take in  suggestions.  Often having to do with  consulting  this or that  one special herb doctor.  One insists  that the herbalist  in Batanes is more superior to the one that holds clinic in Chinatown.  Another swears, the bestest is the  guy who can tell me what disease I have just by holding my hands and feeling my pulse.

Other curious sure-cures had to do with concocting strange brews.   Once, I was   gifted  with 6 rocks.  I was to solemnly and meditatively  boil and distill  the rocks and drink it  daily.    Another one urged me  to gather pancit-pancitan  from the slopes of Taal (groan!) and brew it as a tonic.  This next one, takes the cake!   I was told that  eating certain crawling animals were good for curing chronic diseases.  Not just curing ailments, but for gaining the skills and the “spirit” of that animal.  To be specific, the crawling animal referred to here is the butiki.  The instructions were fairly simple: Catch, roast, pulverize, dissolve in boiling water and gulp down.  Within a week, the disease would be gone.  I didn’t believe that for a second — and I suppose, neither would you.  I don’t picture myself catching and roasting house lizards.  Let alone, drink them!  I’m not interested in catching their spirit either.  I don’t care to live my life  promenading  ceilings and circling flourescent bulbs.

At  the start? —   I took   everything in  because  as a child, I was always chided:   “Rosanne! Don’t be chongga!”   I thought then that chongga must be  female for chonggo and chonngo is you know what.  What it really meant was — Be polite, be nice and oblige.

The effect of that was, I got tossed north to south, east to west.  Physical pain is not the worst of MS.  There’s frustration, dismay and a sense of defeatedness that must be addressed..  Allowing myself to be dragged here  and there,  just made it worse.  I asked God for grace to pull myself together. Isaiah 41 gave me back my focus… “So do not fear for I am with you.  Neither be dismayed, for I am your God.”

At some point, I learned to say NO.  MS takes only  a segment of my life.  It’s not what my whole existence is about.   Life is good.   I have an excellent neurologist.  I have an alternative medicine doctor who helps me with the more common symptoms of MS and who most importantly respects my neurologist’s inputs.  I am kept abreast of world-wide research on MS.  (Butikis , live or roasted, are not in any of them.) I’m no longer in a panic for  astonishing  miracle cures.  Go for it, if you want..  Just leave me out of it.  God’s given me my balance back.

Life is terminal. I don’t need to find a way to change immutable laws like that.

What I need is to acknowledge that my life is in His hands (what a great thing) and I only  need to finish well.

I had a condessa I constantly had to deal with before.  Then the “constantly” became “rarely”.  Which was good for my heartburn.

But life can be  cruel sometimes.   Hence — I, as of late have another condessa in my life. GROAN.  Condessas are those who believe they have to be better  than most everyone else…smarter, craftier, prettier.  What do I care?  It’s true — so they’re prettier, smarter, craftier, more admired  and  whatever-er.

So listen Condessa —  As Proverbs 31 says:  ”You surpass them all!”.  Bow!

The trophy is yours. I’m not in the race,  so don’t pick a bone with me.

Hi Chinks. Personally, I feel it gives people a good excuse. No one wants to argue with a good excuse. I guess its the same thing with blogs. Same things could go on. I don’t like facebook because I don’t like people from the past looking me up, period. For me that’s not flattering. Which is why the husband of my friend Tina, registered a JOINT facebook account. Maybe that helps to keep inappropriate people out of the bakod.