Nevergirl's

I wrote this two years ago. I stumbled upon it today, and I couldn’t stop chortling. It amuses me how very much true this post holds even to this day. But come to think of it, I doubt this mindset will go a’changing anytime soon, anyway. Every day I foray into the kitchen, I bring my world so much closer to an apocalypse. I kid not; it really is that bad. Why do you think a gobbler with an immense appetite as I stick to canned goods of late? Because it rarely requires messing with, that’s why.

When I was 14, my father’s then new bride asked me to cook rice; I ended up with porridge so soupy you could have used the surplus liquid to boil monggo with. My lola used to joke it’d be a cold day in hell before somebody marries me since all I’d be feeding the lucky guy is microwavable food, can after can after can. So really, it’s a good thing I haven’t taken the time to chronicle more recent kitchen catastrophes except for this and this; friends and family might stage an intervention.

I’ll let you in on a secret: I want a huge family. I’d like four kids, minimum; a house with five rooms and a library; a garden bursting to the seams with sunflowers, tulips, and homegrown vegetables (Hahaha! I may have to rethink this one at some point; I’m the world’s biggest carnivore after all!); and a Siberian shepherd. The only catch to this plan is that as eager as I am for little feet, pregnancy is hell on the female body. I should know because I’ve been pregnant twice. I went from 86 pounds to 130 while pregnant with Alex. The day I popped, I hit my all-time fattest – 136 pounds, barefoot (so I couldn’t very well pin the blame on my footwear). Still, if there’s one thing a newborn will do aside from cry over just about anything, it’s ask for milk every two hours. There’s really nothing new mothers can do except wake up every two hours to make milk and feed the babe – unless they want to put their newborns on forced diet.

How difficult is it to wake up every two hours? Veeeery. Sleeping in two-hour increments will drive you mad. It will make you cranky. It will turn your eyeballs red and veiny. But it will also make you lose weight – lots and lots of weight. By the time we’ve had Alex for a week, I was down to 115 pounds and had become a steaming, seething mass of hostility and irritability. It got so bad I made uranium look non-volatile in comparison.

Today, I tip the scale at 94 pounds. No, I am not on drugs. The weight just dropped a long time ago, and it’s been off ever since. I’m still irritable but I take it out on my keyboard. I play ‘Punch Your Co-Worker’ and it’s been good therapy (and no, this isn’t a subtle threat to co-workers who read this blog). I tried to cook but the attempt was short-lived. Even though no one was expecting a miracle – only something edible – the meat was so tough it made some of our forks bend.

This latest run-in with the kitchen reminds me of the first and only time I tried to bake. In Mrs. Ello’s Home Economics class in high school, my groupmates and I ended up with a cake so sturdy it fell off the table and didn’t crumble. In fact, I could have sworn the cake bounced! It wasn’t edible, either; it would have required a chainsaw to cut through the chocolate marble. This was the only time in my life when I loathed having my cake and getting to eat it, too.

Back to the present, to this botched-up meal on the table. The assault on kitchenware notwithstanding, I wasn’t through playing domestic. I tried doing the laundry but just had to give up. Who knew the wash could be so complicated? Stripes, lights, darks, hand-washables, delicates, warm and cold rinses – these concepts make the head spin! Methinks it would be easier to just go build a working nuclear submarine using only staplers and staples.

So there, now you know. My life is so exciting the only things I have time to write about are sleep loss, spoiled meals, and establishing a relationship with the wash.

(A premise)

So she’s leaving you?

Write to her. Put your pen to paper, your fingers to keys, and write from the heart.

Write honestly, write precisely.

Tell her what we both know to be true: that you love her, that you’re sorry, that all the girls that came before and all the girls that came after do not matter.

Write to her in the morning, and just before you go to sleep. Tell her what you see, what you’re doing, how you’re doing, where you’re sleeping, how you wake. Tell her what it is you hope for, what it is you long for, why you’re scared. And if you run out of things to say, tell her what you ate. It does not matter what you say, just write to the girl you love and hurt love and hurt love and hurt and maybe sometimes even hate. Tell her about the songs you write, the songs in your head, the songs you covet. Tell her about the food, the pavement, the wall, the cold. Tell her the truth: that you do not understand why you do what you do but you do it anyway, and you are always, always sorry after.

And if she does not write you back, dear boy, keep writing anyway. Write her a second letter, a third, a fourth, a fifth, maybe even a sixth. It does not matter how many, how long, how often, how quickly, how much. Don’t stop, don’t tire, don’t falter. Tell her everything that’s in your heart, and everything that’s not. Write to her. Make it simple.  Start with “Dear     ,” end with “Love,“. That is it. That is all.

———–

Look, Siroymylab! I jazzed this up a bit by adding a photo! Haha!

FACT: we look like the biggest retards this side of the hemisphere in this photo. Then again, when have we not look retarded? This was taken back when we lived in Cebu, in 2008. This was in David’s Salon Banilad, where I marched in for a haircut and promptly got refused.

“There is nothing for me to cut!” the stylist huffed.

She was a good girl, that stylist. Unlike most, she actually cared how my haircuts turn out. She told me to try growing my hair. I told her I couldn’t because I get bored really quickly; and my face bores me the quickest of all.

I spent the last few minutes dawdling over this photo, and then chuckling because it reminds me of many things about us that still hold true today, for instance:

1. Wett hates being photographed, which explains the iffy faces.

2. I don’t hate being photographed, but I look just as weird in photos anyway. It’s nearly impossible for me to keep still. If my arms or legs do not move, trust my face to do the moving. As a matter of fact, I’ve lost count of the number of group photos I ruined just because I can’t not move (so I end up blurry-faced, or funny-faced, or two-headed, or three-legged depending on the camera). Clearly, I need awkwardness like a man dying of lung cancer needs a whiff of the finest cigars.

Meream is convinced I have ADHD. On top of being fidgety, I have the shortest attention span in the world.

3. Wett likes wearing only one color: white. (Technically, that’s not a color but let’s leave the hairsplitting for another time.) I’m convinced this love for white is genetic. His dad wears white 365 days of the year. So do his younger brothers whose home wear consist of the staple white shirt PLUS white jammies and shorts!

4. The Kongs’ devotion to white is why I no longer wear white (because holy macaroni, we can’t all go out looking like walking commercials for Tide!).

5. I have the most boring closet in the world. Its stash can easily be divided into two groups: a handful of reds, purples, whites, and browns, AND THEN BLACK—truckloads of black.

Once upon a time, I wore nothing but black. My color repertoire has since then expanded—but only by the slightest bit. I still wear  a lot of black. That white dress I’m wearing in the photo? I have the same dress in black, thanks to Rose. Look!

Before we moved here, I wore outfits like this almost every day. Now, I go around in sackcloths and slippers hahaha!

I don’t know why I like black so much. It’s an addiction, a sickness. I wear black at home, to work, to the mall, to weddings, exhibits, parties, birthdays. I think the only occasion I haven’t worn black for is a bar mitzvah, but that’s only because I don’t know anyone Jewish. Proof?

(WARNING: A smorgasbord of photos lie ahead!)

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Do you talk to yourself? Cry over soldiers dying in the movies but never over fights? Chew on your hair? Pace about a room enough to burn holes on the carpet? Are you scared of elevators? Do you always have a line from a Shakespearean play playing on loop in your head? Are you so anal about spelling you literally itch whenever you see a common noun capitalized? Cubic Zirconia, for example? Do you count everything when you’re nervous—the marble slabs in the garden, the stairs at work, the ruffles in the curtains, the bathroom tiles? Are you incapable of recognizing most of the local artistas because you watch TV once a blue moon? Do you stay awake at night, convinced you just heard the flapping of manananggal wings, the rustling of a white lady’s skirt as it hits the floor? Are your dreams about zombie invasions and viruses mutating into ugly life forms with chainsaw-sharp teeth? Do you hoard pencils and notebooks? Do you talk to your things? Are you secretly scared of the people you meet in the physical world because they seem so grown-up?

Welcome to my world.