About 20 years ago I got my first retail sales job in downtown Los Angeles. It was at a lingerie store -- which was not yet quite the household name it is today -- where the store manager was referred to as the "proprietress" of the "shop" and customers were referred to as "clients." Everything was geared toward creating a very genteel English ambiance: lush floral carpets atop dark hardwood, giant armoires, sparkling chandeliers, vintage-y floral wallpaper, plush loveseats, dressmaker forms outfitted in silk teddies and sheer peignoirs, and soft, classical music streaming gently nonstop.
I'm back where I started -- although not quite so. Everything's changed so much since I left the company as a store manager in 1995 (they dropped the "proprietress" title along with the decor and furnishings even back then). It's one of the biggest, most well-known brands in the world today and the culture is much more professional, definitely all-business, where managers use terms like "leveraging" daily and the tools are much more sophisticated.
I decided to come back because I needed a part-time job while I focus on trying to get more work as a writer and editor and taking classes to update my skills. It doesn't bother me at all that I'm not running the show at the store this time around; I rather enjoy seeing things from this perspective again, like I just gained fresh eyes but get to keep the old ones, too. I suppose my entire life has come completely full circle; I started out living in an apartment, working and studying, writing and editing, falling in love and battling all my fears, and struggling to pay the bills through it all. And here I am again.
In-between the two far points of my life thus far I (in no particular order) got married, owned a home with a garden I built from scratch, had a cat, managed more stores before I switched careers, stopped writing completely and then started a blog, ended the marriage, lost my 18-year-old cat and the home, and moved from LA to Manila to Seattle. The two points may appear similar, but the person I am at this end has been profoundly changed and is almost wholly different from the one at the beginning.
When you're starting over, especially at my age, it helps when you surround yourself with those that remind you of what you've loved most in life, especially when you've been through quite a bit of sadness. So I went home to Manila for a few months to reconnect with my family and closest friends, came back and dusted off this blog, started writing freelance, and got a job at the same company where I once excelled. Now, because I'm grateful for everything I do have (instead of bitter for what I no longer possess) I also found joy, at least wherever and whenever I can find it.
If there's anything I learned through the years, it's that even when you think you're starting over you haven't lost anything you'd once gained. What you have is an opportunity to get it right this time, to do things better, to see old things in a new light. You're not going backward if you're growing, ever. It's been said that people don't really change. What I've discovered is that we don't only if we don't want to or if we don't have to.
But we grow during periods of adversity, or at least we have to if we're to persevere. We have to do what we can, find all that's within us to survive and get past the tough times. There's just no room to be comfortable or to remain static. We have to keep moving forward -- hence the growth -- even when we don't know where to go or how to get there when we do. The alternative is too frightening to think about, and much too sad.
I have no idea where I'll be six months from now -- heck, not even in three. What I DO know, however, is that a year ago I didn't know I'd be here in Seattle and loving the Pacific Northwest. See, if you open yourself up to possibilities then the unknown is not quite as scary even when you're in precarious territory. I may never have pitched a tent or roasted marshmallows around a campfire in my life, but I sure know an adventure when I see it.
Twenty years ago, if I were told that I'd be here again, elbows deep in silky undergarments at work and cutting coupons at home, I would have considered my life a failure. Now I know better, and the main difference is really a matter of perspective. What I have before me now is a question, the topic of countless books and movies: what would you do if you could do it all over again?
I'm about to find out.
When I was growing up, I thought my parents failed me the moment they gave me my name.
The long version, my legal and baptismal name, was too long and unwieldy. It wasn't easy to learn how to spell or say and to this day I wish I'd made minor changes to it when I became a naturalized US citizen. The short version only proves that my Philippine National Artist father was completely lacking in creativity and inspiration on the day he and mom decided to christen me with a nickname (my theory is that they couldn't pronounce the first one in the long string that is my full name either). Why "Gigi" is so popular in the Philippines is beyond all my comprehension; I'm convinced there are more of us in the world who are Filipino than French. To make things worse, my surname is the equivalent of "Smith" or "Jones" in the US. If I were on a plane thousands of miles above Manila and hurled a ball toward the ground, I'm fairly certain it would land on a person with my same last name. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a relative of mine either.
In fact, I did a Facebook search for my name last night and the options kept flowing endlessly -- for both men and women. There are so many of us that I didn't bother getting to the end of the list, partly because I fear there is no end to it. I'm convinced all of us could start our very own social network and be more actively engaged than, say, all my contacts are on Google+.
So perhaps it's surprising that the first thing I did on New Year's Day was to informally change my married hyphenated name, which gave me a uniqueness I'd never enjoyed as a single person, back to the one that millions of people happen to share. But it's my name, damn it, even if so many can say it's theirs, too.
The first time I got married, I didn't change my name. My ex-husband demanded I either switch to using his surname or keep mine because he didn't believe in my using both. That was an easy decision and a convenient one, as I discovered five years later, when I didn't have to go through the tedious process of dropping his and reclaiming my own.
When I got married again, my husband said it was completely my choice. Partly because I was grateful that I hadn't married a caveman but also party because I knew he hoped I would take his, I did. In a way I kept mine, too, but seeing our names joint felt like looking at a third entity. It took me a few years to make the decision to haul my ass into all the various government agencies and show proof that I was married so I could change my name, but when I did I did it for love. In hindsight I realize that keeping my name wouldn't have meant I loved him any less, but I suspect I was simply trying to do the opposite of just about everything I did (or didn't do) during my previous marriage in the fervent hope that I got this one right.
Well, that didn't quite work out either.
The truth is that I never felt truly comfortable with my new name. I'd look at it from time to time and ask myself who that person was and what made her any different from the one I was used to. I sometimes wonder if men have any idea of what it might be like to, practically overnight, stop writing the name they learned how to write and start responding to someone else's. Adopting a new name feels like you've become a completely new person -- and yet you're the same exact one but only attached to another now. I do understand why many women I know embraced their new surnames when they began their new lives; I just never felt the same way.
I went to an all-girls school until college and when I get together with my former classmates we still refer to each other, more often than not, by the names we used to hear during roll call every morning. Otherwise it can get a bit confusing, especially if you don't know who married whom. Men don't have to bother with any of this: whether they marry or not, they are identified, even after death, by the same name they were given on the day they were born.
Eventually I will go through all the legal mumbo-jumbo of changing my name yet again -- for the final time. I suspect that occasionally I will miss the one I carried for the past decade, especially because of all the wonderful memories associated with that period in my life and the family I became part of. But nothing has felt like myself quite like my own name, even if I still could think of a few better ones. I'm certain that the millions of us who go by my name agree.
I have a milestone birthday coming up in a few years, and I'm already wondering how I'll measure my life when I get there. Not by my children, since I don't have any. Not by possessions; one quickly realizes that they can come and go far too easily. By love? That's a tricky one. I've had quite a few -- enough to write a book about (we'll get back to this later) and my two failed marriages are hearty fodder for pretty hardcore counseling, should I ever seek it one day. And yet I consider myself fairly lucky in this regard; with only a couple of exceptions, I'd be thrilled to see my past loves show up if I were featured in a '50s This Is Your Life episode.
I am surrounded by friends who are among the kindest, most decent people living, as well as sisters and nieces whom I would choose to be my friends if I weren't related to them already. My parents would never win any awards for parenting, but I've gotten to that point in my life where I wouldn't trade them for anyone else's. Besides, they managed to keep me alive this long, right?
But managing to live this long is not enough reason to pat myself on the back, especially in today's world when how we're supposed to look and feel is what we used to at least 10 years ago. Thus I've decided -- finally -- to give myself much to look forward to and aspire for and write it all down in a bucket list.
In case you haven't heard the term before, it's a list of things you plan to do before you hit a predetermined age. I'd never bothered to draft one before because I was content to simply live and see what happens while I'm doing just that. After all, something interesting always happened. But now I've realized that I need to actually MAKE things happen in my life -- and that it's never too late to make anything until you actually can't.
So what would be on it? Somewhere on top would be learning how to ride a bicycle; every year I say I'll finally do this but somehow I always get distracted and put it off for the next. This would be the most physically-challenging item on my list, I'm certain. I have absolutely no desire to run a marathon, climb a mountain, bungee-jump, or hurl myself off a plane high up in the air. NONE. WHATSOEVER. And when I finally learn how to ride a bike there will be no finish lines or stopwatches involved. Instead, think of a green basket on the handlebar and in it, a cute terrier of some sort, a bouquet of daisies, and a warm French baguette (in my mind the terrier never bothers to eat the daisies or the bread, by the way).
There will be no possessions involved, for sure. It would be so nice to live in a quaint cottage with wood floors topped with slightly fraying rugs, a brick wall in the living room with lots of books on the shelves, and a small but fertile garden where I can sit outside in the Spring with my man and our dog and cat -- but in a way I have that already. It's the happy place I go to in my head when the world gets a bit too weary for words. Besides, I've decided that material things have no place in any bucket list I make because my tastes can and do change (except for the house I just described).
There will be lots of learning involved -- a lifetime of it, in fact. I want to go back to school, maybe for a Master's degree but definitely for lots of classes.There will also be relearning: I want to rediscover my old passions for art and photography. There will be certificates for professional makeup artistry and esthetics, too. And there will also be music; perhaps I'll finally learn how to play an acoustic guitar.
I will travel -- although I'd have to be completely honest here and admit that I'd require some degree of comfort while doing so. We're not talking a stay at the Four Seasons or some fancy private resort here -- but if I could afford either then, at least once in a while, then of course I would choose to (It's MY bucket list!). As long as I have access to air-conditioning in the summer and a clean bathroom at all times, I'm good. I hope that's not too unreasonable to ask for.
And finally there will be writing -- a book, in fact. Perhaps it will be a book consisting of short stories or essays, but most definitely it will be about love and loss and how if one had truly loved and been loved in return then everything in life would have been worth it. Because even now, without my bucket list in hand, I know that I've had a pretty good one. After all, I'm still forward-looking and learning (hoping) to love each day more than the last.
Bucket list on its way soon.
Deciding to get married should be like deciding to begin a diet. You make the decision because you believe that your good life will become better if you do -- and not because you're imperfect or flawed if you don't. If you've chosen to do either thinking that you're a bad person, then getting married or losing weight will not change your self-esteem in any significant way. You'll only be altering your outward circumstances. On the inside, how you feel about yourself will ultimately be dependent on a number.
Before you begin you need to understand that both require tremendous effort, infinite patience, and some kind of uncomfortable spending spike. You'll need to brandish a plan of action and keep daily lists in order to reach your stated goal. It requires the support and encouragement of all the people you care about, especially on those days when you feel hopeless and helpless or that you might possibly go insane. And when you do achieve your goal you may feel the same but part of you says that something's essentially changed.
That day your achieve your weight goal is like your wedding day. Everything seems to be about you: everyone around you will congratulate you on a job well done and wish you good luck and happiness for the future. You look at yourself in the mirror and feel like you're at your most beautiful -- and most people will probably agree. It's also all about this day, about how your life was turned upside down and sideways for months on end, only so that it would be just like this. Maybe you're already thinking about the next few days, about the things you still need to do, but at this point everything still appears to be related to The Big Day that just passed.
Marriage is equivalent to the maintenance phase of your diet, where you have to keep doing all the good things you've learned to do so that hopefully you won't have to stop and start all over again -- and this time with the knowledge, borne of experience, that what you thought would be the end point is actually where you truly begin. It's where all the fanfare has passed and no one seems to be watching; in fact the only time people seem to notice anything is when you're obviously struggling, faltering even failing. The only person who realizes that maintaining your weight is so difficult because you're battling tedium, perhaps even missing the absence of such clear-cut, well-defined goals, is you. Beyond the day-to-day you wonder if there's something else you might or should be doing. Sometimes you ask yourself: what next?
The difference, however, is that you are solely responsible for your diet. It's all under your control. But marriage takes two people. You can have all the discipline, perseverance, positive outlook and optimism that you know is required to make it work, but you just can't make up for what the other person lacks or isn't willing to do. Sometimes it even fails despite your best efforts and intentions. But then it also succeeds.
Dieticians famously measure success according to the number of years a dieter maintains his or her weight. In a way, that's also how traditional society evaluates the success of a marriage, too. But one thing I've learned is that marriage is not a number; it's not about how long a couple can keep it together and celebrate wedding anniversaries or how many children are produced and raised. For me its success is about many, many things that can't be outwardly measured or quantified, and can only be determined by the two people within it. Even when it ends, no matter how short or long it lasted, no one else can say if it was worth all the time, effort, and expense. No one else but you.
And here's another thing I can say about marriage and dieting: the decision to do either one is solely up to you, not because people are saying you should. You are perfect whether or not you do, just as you are. If anyone else seems to be truly concerned about marriage or weight loss, they should simply pay attention to their own. If you give in to the expectations of others and you fail at either, I assure you that they will not carry your burden. It will be yours alone to bear.
Last word. Even if you fail, even if your marriage ends or you gain all the weight back, you are not a failure. No one said life was all about being married or being thin after all.
All my life I've wrestled with my hair. Countless hairdressers, come to think of it, have, too. If you ask anyone who knew me through high school, you'll hear stories about how my hair was so heavy, thick, coarse, and dry that it had a (sad) life of its own, perpetually powerless against teenage hormones and Manila's tropical climate. It couldn't be conquered by huge tubs of conditioner, and woe to anyone who tried to tame it with a blowdryer.
When my friend's sister, fresh out of cosmetology school in the U.K., claimed she would be the Hillary and Norgay to the Mt. Everest on top of my head, I knew she was merely being naive. She was the first to cut expertly plotted layers into my hopeless mop, and although she was able to decrease its heft and bulk somewhat my tresses remained defiant. I suspect the reason she was never really friendly with me afterward was because I remained a constant nagging reminder of her limitations.
Boys teased me mercilessly but girls were somewhat kinder (I suspect they were merely mocking me behind my back). Some of my more helpful friends instructed me to brush my hair a hundred times every night and taught me how to create a more flattened effect with headbands and barrettes. I often forgot to do the former (who has the time?) and the latter's effect was like trying to make a curvy bombshell look like a flapper girl by sticking her into a girdle: eventually the flesh is going to have to pop out somewhere -- and it ain't pretty.
Then one day, just when I'd given up completely, my hair decided to cease its rebellion. It simply went straight. Throughout college I was able to style my hair almost any way I wished; I had an asymmetrical cut, a layered bob, a rocker shag, and during a brief but horribly foolish period in the '80s, I even got a perm. Somehow the irony of making myself look like a cauliflower after suffering the indignity of looking like a mushroom for years was completely lost on me. Still, I continued to enjoy my freedom throughout my 20s and early 30s. I'd stroll into my hairdresser's chair, sit down and say, "Do with it what you will."
And just as sudden as my hair became my friend, it decided to resume its fight. I fought back harder -- with $200 blowdryers, a battalion of boar's hair brushes, and enough hair products to fully stock a beauty supply store. Silicone became my friend. "What's going on?" I cried out to Chassi, who had tamed the beast for nearly a decade. "Hormones, most likely," she replied gently but matter-of-factly. "And gray hairs are kinky. You have quite a bit more now and it's changed your hair's texture."
I was done for. Age had done me in.
I decided to cooperate, resigned to my inevitable defeat. I grew my hair long so the weight would stretch it out, had layers cut back in, and ceased my carefree ways. Because my biceps were now a bit too weary from wielding tools and appliances, I gave them a break on weekends with a professional blowout as they continued their punishing workout for the rest of the work week.
And then a couple of months ago while I was in Manila, I decided I needed a haircut. After a thoroughly relaxing shampoo, the stylist's assistant sat me down in front of the mirror and combed my wet strands. "Ang nipis pala ng buhok mo! (Your hair is so thin!)," he exclaimed, perhaps a bit too artlessly. And in one fell swoop he destroyed every belief I've ever had about my hair -- and a little bit, too, of my self-esteem.
Now I want the rebellious hair of my youth back. Apparently age couldn't force it into submission and so it simply stripped all its bluster away. But I'm fighting back once more, this time with Biotin and possibly even with Viviscal. Bring on the mushroom cloud -- I'll win this one yet.
I saw him in 1999, right after our divorce was finalized. I can't remember the last time I saw him before that morning because he wasn't around the day when I finally moved out of the home we once shared. I'll never forget that bright afternoon the year before: I'd locked the door behind me, with Stacy walking ahead, to lead the movers through the 20-mile drive to my new apartment building. Before getting into my car I paused and turned around to take a long, sweeping glance at the house I knew I'd never see again. I can still see it now in my mind today, and I sometimes wonder if the new owners have made any changes to all the many changes I'd made when it became mine.
So on that day when I saw him for the first time as my ex-husband, he came up with me to the ninth floor to drop off a few things I'd left behind and to see where and how I now lived. Before we finally parted ways, I leaned in to kiss him on the cheek and he moved away from me quickly and said stiffly in a low voice, "No, that's too weird for me."
I never saw him again.
Until, I think, last year. Not too long before I moved out of yet another home and began another life, incidentally. If you haven't noticed, I said I think I saw him. To this day I have no idea if the man I saw at the Chinese restaurant far away from where we once both lived was my ex-husband. The one I was with for eight years, married for five. And although the time we've already spent apart is more than the years we were together, it makes absolutely no sense to me that I would not recognize someone I was once married to.
I saw him about two tables away from where I was seated. I stared ahead, frozen in some combination of dread and astonishment, my gaze locked firmly on his face. His hairline was further back from his forehead than I'd remembered, but his jaw was still as strong and determined. His eyes crinkled at the sides underneath the glasses he wore and his entire body shook awkwardly when he laughed, just like a stiff board would, the way he would have if he were my ex. He even dressed the same way, in the kind of clothes I used to buy for him. For a second I thought he saw me, and I would have ducked if I weren't too shocked to move. It wouldn't have mattered though; if he were really my ex he wouldn't have been able to see my face from where he was, even with his glasses on.
I wanted to open my mouth and call his name, just to see if he'd look my way. But I couldn't -- I still don't know quite why, but I couldn't get the words out. If it were him then what would we both do? Wave and say hello, ask what the other was doing there, laugh, and then politely say goodbye? If I had to ask him who he was, wouldn't he be offended that I couldn't recognize someone I once built a life with? What if he didn't recognize me? What if we acknowledged each other and then had to pretend now that we didn't spend all those years pretending we'd never been married to the other?
In the end, I stood up from my chair and slipped away quietly, hoping he wouldn't see me. To be face-to-face with him again -- no, it would have been too weird for me that day, too.
First, a disclaimer: I am not a prude.
But when it comes to folks with non-romantic intimate access to my ladybits, only females are allowed. My primary doctor, gynecologist, acupuncturist, masseuse: all women. My dentist, EENT doctor, allergist, hairdresser: all men. I hope I've made the distinction clear.
I can't explain why I'm this way, especially when I frown on sexism of any kind. I suspect it all began when I got into a car accident in my early 20s, and the creepy (male) doctor who examined me for whiplash and subsquent back pain decided to give me an impromptu breast exam as well, with no other female in the room. I was completely stunned, petrified even, and the words that were screaming in my brain ("Is that really necessary? My boobs don't hurt! ") wouldn't come out of my mouth. My fears were further solidified when, many years later, my then-boyfriend attended a bachelor party and met a drunk gynecologist who boasted that he took his time while examining any attractive patient so that he could spend more time "down there."
So imagine my distress when I walked into my local Massage Envy during my birthday last week and realized that I hadn't requested a female therapist when I booked my two-hour appointment. But my profile clearly specifies my preference, I repeatedly recited like a silent mantra. I'd never experienced a mix-up at the Southern California location I used to visit, besides. I thought of asking the receptionist about whom I was booked with anyway -- but decided to shut up when two male therapists stepped up to the desk.
One of them was tall, tanned, blond, athletic-looking -- gorgeous, with a killer smile to boot. Oh, please, not him, I thought, in a way that sounded almost like a prayer. See, another of my quirks is that I don't like beautiful male strangers touching me. It's like whenever I'm in the presence of a male stripper, I look away so they know not to go near me. Of course that never works. I liken this to being with cute cats and adorable children. Because crazy folks keep trying to grab and squeeze them, they gravitate to those who simply ignore they're there. And so it goes; oiled and perfumed naked men inevitably gyrate their way straight to me, slither and sashay mere centimeters away, trying to get my attention when all I want is for them to keep their hands off me.
The other guy, though, was a shorter, stockier version of John Oates. Together they resembled one of my favorite 20th-century pop duos, but even that thought offered me no relief. "Gigi?" he looked at me and smiled. Oh, say it isn't so.
My desire to up and run out the door was so strong, the only thing that kept me walking toward our assigned therapy room instead was that I didn't want to hurt his feelings (okay, and pay a last-minute cancellation fee, too). So I undressed, got on the table, lay face down, and opened up myself to this new experience. Pretending he was female didn't hurt either.
Two hours later it was over and, thankfully, I didn't feel traumatized the least bit. It wasn't bad, actually, but I just couldn't relax enough to sleep. Maybe sometime in the future it won't matter, but today I made sure I'd booked a female masseuse. Besides her strange choice for small talk (natural disasters and climate change in Washington state) when I'd specifically mentioned I wanted nothing else but stress relief and sleep, I didn't have to do anything else but shut down for business. And when she heard my first gentle snore she stopped talking, finally.
That's another thing about me. Whenever I lie down and close my eyes, all I want to do -- whether I'm being massaged, tweezed, waxed, examined, probed, even getting my teeth cleaned -- is think of nothing and sleep. I'm certain even all my ladybits feel the same way.
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.
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.
I opened a Tumblr site a couple of years ago and putzed around it, not quite sure what to do with my new online toy. I've decided to use it as a media folder of sorts, with photographs, links to audio and video files, news blurbs, and the like. We'll see how it goes. If you'd like to visit my not-so-new site, you can click on the Tumblr symbol under "I'm Also At" (above right, between the Pandora and Twitter symbols).
First there was the Hemline Index, then the Lipstick Indicator. More recently we've seen the Nail Polish Effect and the Necktie Index. Even bra sales recently pointed the way, it seems. But now the latest consumer category to lay bare signs of our economic condition is, literally, a much sexier one.
Consumer behavior changes accordingly as confidence in the economy falls, we've seen that time and time again. For instance, I'll still part with $25 for a luxury lipstick or limited-edition nail polish occasionally (although I'll give it way more thought than I used to), but I haven't purchased a bag or pair of shoes in a while. Still I have to admit that I was a bit surprised when I read that sex toy sales have boomed as a result of this bust.
According to the online sex toy distributor quoted in the CNBC article published last Thursday, “At a time when unemployment is high and bank account balances are low, people are passing the time by getting busy." I suppose it helps that with more people unemployed, there's more time for couples to spend together; after all, one can only update and send out resumes for so long until feeling disheartened and weary. And when one's spouse or partner is also homebound from being unemployed, there's not enough funds in the piggy bank to dine out or watch a movie (around $10.75 per person in my neck of the woods!). So what do you do?
At least, that's the theory. My guess is that because you can now buy your pack of condoms or vibrator along with, say, your beach read and sunscreen at Amazon.com, doing so is just not as daunting a task as it used to be. Once upon a time, it would require a drive to the nearest sex store (which usually was not just around the street corner, depending on where you lived) or remembering to clear your internet browser history when you searched for "sex toy online stores." And while friends and associates may not necessarily give you a gift certificate to The Pleasure Chest or Good Vibrations, they have absolutely no idea how you'd spend your Amazon gift card (my former boss sure doesn't know what I did with his Christmas present to me -- thankfully).
In other words, I'm wondering if, once again, sex has benefited from technology, more than from the faltering economy. We can go down the list of all new technologies from the past couple of centuries and discover how sex was always right at the forefront. For instance, many early filmmakers tantalized audiences with depictions of sexuality until government censorship came into the picture. And even if online shopping has been around for a long time, there are considerably more places to shop on the internet now. I still remember when I certainly wouldn't have looked for lube at a bookseller site!
Whatever the reasons may be for this sales surge, it's clear that sex sells -- always has, always will. Even when not much else does, apparently.
Note: You know the Swedish product that Stefan Dallakian of Paris Intimates describes in the CNBC article as “the Bentley of vibrators at the price of a well-equipped Hyundai"? I'll spare you the research: It's this brand, I bet. You can take it from this gal who remembers what it was like when it wasn't so easy to shop for a little self-satisfaction.