May 2010

A friend I love dearly sent me a message over at FB and I loved how she said that she’s coming over and that we should remind each other who we really are…I got emotional after reading that.

I think I desperately need to remember.

So in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been blogging from the heart. Why? Because I am sick of reading posts about the following: senseless questionnaires, what bag you want, why you shouldn’t buy that bag, how you need to diet, etc. I realized that the reason why I was able to build friendships through my blog is because in the past blogs were about people and their lives. They were honest.

So much of that is gone now. Most blogs have a lot of things on them but actually say nothing…my blog included. I decided that it’s time to get real. I want Andrea to grow up, see this blog and get to know what her mom was like back in the day.

A few years back, I asked my team to answer a questionnaire which will create a Johari’s windows graph for all of us.

This basically shows us parts of ourselves that everyone sees, only we see, or only others see. You could then say this shows us different aspects of ourselves. It was extremely interesting as the way others perceive us can be very surprising. You see, the way others define you is a function of their own life experiences and points of view. So some people define me as being extremely quiet while others think I talk too much.

I realized though that who we are is also somehow affected by who we were. I was talking to Ruy about conversations I have with friends who talk about how I was in the past and expecting that I still am like that. I almost feel sorry for disappointing them. I also mourn the loss of this person they’re talking about. She sounds really fun, funny, interesting, wacky and exciting. Of course she also sounds insane and irresponsible and other negative things. But still, she seems like someone I’d like.

I wonder how long before you can stop defining yourself by who you were. A month? A year? A decade? Do I stop saying I’m crazy about make-up now? Cause the last time I bought make-up was over 18 months ago. Do I stop describing myself as crazy now? Cause practically every single thing I’ve done this past year has been reasonable.

I really don’t know the answer to these things and this is the kind of thing I think only Affie, Numi and Vicki can discuss with me so I’m looking forward to hearing their thoughts this Friday. And maybe, just maybe, I can find the crazy, funny, make-up-loving Liv there with them

I smile a lot. I laugh a lot. This comes naturally when you spend 24 hours a day with a 3-year old toddler. It just dawned on me, that I don’t laugh as much as I used to. When I say laugh, I mean the pee-inducing kind. This realization came about because I literally laughed my ass off this afternoon because of my mom and Ruy.

So Ruy and I were texting each other and our conversation went like this.

Ruy: Posporo ka ba?
Liv: Huh?
Ruy: Posporo ako, sana posporo ka rin para match tayo.

Isn’t that the most retarded thing you’ve ever heard in your life? I was laughing so hard while in a car with my mom, aunt, sister and daughter they had to ask me why I was laughing. This brought about a conversation about a certain missent text message from my mom a couple of years ago.

You see my mom accidentally sent an sms to the condominium security guard saying “Ilabas mo yung hotdog”. Can you imagine how possibly dirty that sounds? OMG. It made me laugh so hard to the point of snorting.

I miss those kinds of laughter.

I have a stuffed dog which was given to me on my 7th birthday. Now this dog is really special to me for several reasons.

1. I thought I wasn’t going to be given a gift because I was convinced when I was 7 that we didn’t have any money. Seriously. I remember wondering when I was 7 what people had to give up just so I could have that dog. I seriously thought we were dirt poor when I was 7, I don’t even know if we really were.
2. It was a complete surprise. I was really prepared to not receive a gift cause I couldn’t see any wrapped presents and I just found out that they hid it in one of the cabinets in my grandmother’s house. Yes, I still remember where they hid it.
3. That dog is my crying buddy. I don’t even know what I cried about when I was 8, 9 or 10 but I just remember squeezing that dog really tight and then rubbing my nose against her nose.

So I called her doggie, because I’m just creative like that you know? =) So anyway, doggie and I have cried together A LOT. Hell I used doggie up until I was 23. Then I got married.

It just seemed wrong to have a stuffed animal with you when you get married. So I didn’t bring her with me. And there are times at night, when I’m really sad and I have to hug myself to feel better that I wish doggie were with me. Cause doggie never really asked why I was sad..she just hugs me. And I never have to explain or justify anything to her cause she just loves me regardless of how screwed up I am. =)

I’m waiting till Andrea grows up and I will give her doggie. I just hope she won’t need her as much as I did.

In high school some friends called me Bato (stone). I was practical, cold, and not very emotional. I remember talking to an aunt of mine after shopping in Greenhills and telling her that I don’t feel emotions…good or bad. I know how I SHOULD feel, but I don’t really feel that.

Several years and several therapy sessions later, I started feeling the emotions in droves. It was with Ruy where I started feeling comfortable showing and feeling my own emotions. Ruy was basically part of the collateral damage of all the emotions I felt and didn’t know how to handle.

Now, I’m slowly trying to find the middle ground between these two extremes. I find that opening up about all your emotions when you’re married is not really very smart because at the end of the day this is someone you have to share a small space with …and really all these negative emotions just make things very uncomfortable.

I have realized that I have lost so many things in the past couple of years.

- My waistline.
- My spunk. Ruy looked at me last night and said “OMG you’re a Lola! What happened to you? You’ve become such a prude”. He then went on to say “You used to be so foxy, so crazy. Now you’re so stable”. Stable. YUCK. If you had told me 10 years ago that someone would describe me as stable I would have laughed like crazy. Liv isn’t stable….but then again maybe that sentence is not accurate anymore, maybe I should say “Liv wasn’t stable” . I’ll talk more about this later.
- My job
- My outlet. Most of my friends are either single, gay or separated. Seriously. I don’t know who to talk to about Ruy problems. I’ve also stopped talking about our issues here in the blog for several reasons. 1. I don’t want to air dirty laundry, 2. Some of his relatives might read this, 3. I don’t want to post anything negative about my daughter’s dad. To be fair, I don’t really have anything dirty and nasty to reveal. It’s just that sometimes you need to have someone to whine to and honestly it seems insensitive to whine about let’s say Ruy’s toe-biting habit (disclaimer: this is untrue) when my friends are going through MUCH bigger issues.
- My communication skills. Somehow, I always seem to mess up when communicating with the people I’m around with. My husband and Andrea’s nanny. It’s so frustrating. Like last night, I spent 10 minutes talking to my maid about the three items she’s going to buy in the market. She’s going to buy Pork Kasim (1 kilo), Pork Liempo (1/2 kilo) and Gata. That’s it. 10 minutes, I had her repeat it. I repeated it. I broke it down. And somehow she still got it wrong. I now have 420 pesos worth of pork cooked as adobo. I know exactly what I should have done. I should have written it down. But you see I was in the middle of watching something with Ruy and I somehow didn’t find the time to write it down. This threw off my budget, threw off my menu for the week. And really made me feel useless. I can’t even talk to one maid? What the hell’s wrong with me?