The punches just keep coming

I’m not going to cry. I swear if I shed one more tear, ugh!

Disappointments just keep coming one week after the other.

 

The good ones always go first

It’s a sad news that greeted me this morning as I checked my yahoo homepage. Patrick Swayze has died at the young age of 57 due to pancreatic cancer. Somehow, this news has affected me more than the death of Michael Jackson. For what reason, I don’t really know.

As far as I can remember, the earliest I’ve seen of Patrick Swayze was from the series North and South. I was forced to watch it as my father borrowed dozens (and I mean, literally, dozens) of betamax tapes (’80’s flashback!) from the neighborhood video rental. It was a story of the  U.S. civil war (I think) and my father was predictably hooked. Almost every weekend afternoon was spent in front of the tv, munching on chips and drinking iced tea while watching canons go off. I was still young back then and I couldn’t really understand the plot. But the one thing that kept me watching was Patrick Swayze. He was just darned good looking, the kind you wanted to take home to meet your parents., even as he shows a hidden tendency to become the bad boy you’ve dreamed of taming. I remember asking my father if Patrick really walked with a cane in real life or if it was just his character. I can’t remember now my father’s answer, or even how the story ended. But I do remember Patrick Swayze.

Of course, to the masses, Patrick Swayze is more popularly known as the sexy dance instructor in Dirty Dancing. But, of course, at the time that movie was shown, my parents forbade me from even uttering the title for fear that it might instill dirty thoughts in me (hah!). It was only later on that I had the chance to see it and learn that he can really dance. It wasn’t the kind where actors where taught how to dance so it could be part of the film. Patrick’s moves were graceful and natural. Not to mention that he had a wonderful voice to match his moves.

And then there was the movie Ghost, very controversial back then. I remember it was shown as an R18 movie and I was still below 18. My mother and I wanted so badly to see it that she told me, if I was asked at the cinema entrance about my age, I was to tell I was 18 (even though I was only somewhere 14 to 15 years old). You can tell the movie is good when your own parent teaches you to lie. In any case, I was tall for my age. Nobody at the cinema entrance even bothered to ask me anything. As we watched, I could understand the R18 rating for the movie but what really struck me was the love story that defied death. And Patrick was just the right actor for the role.

Now, Patrick’s really dead. I wonder if he’s still haunting the streets looking for ways to contact the wife he left behind and to tell her he loves her. Patrick Swayze will certainly be missed. But, at least, now, he’s some place else where cancer can’t hurt him. There, he can keep on dancing.

 

Chris Farley chippendales original skit

R.I.P. Patrick Swayze.
(*Thanks to MAZLABEL4 for uploading this video.)

 

The hope that never dies

It’s that time of the month — again.

Yes. Like clockwork, it’s come again…perhaps to haunt me, showing me the bad lifestyle choices I’ve made when I was younger, the foresight I should have had and yet unfortunately lost. Perhaps this is a testament to the kind of life I’ve led before. And yet I can’t help defending myself. It was such a short while…so brief and so fleeting. I couldn’t have accumulated such amount of bad karma as to merit this… this… how can I even call it?

I’m a freak. That’s what it is.

It’s the same thing back in high school, I thought to myself last night as I stared helplessly into the void.  In fact, I feel like I’ve never left that point in my life. I look at all my classmates and my friends with a look of despair. I’m never going to be like any of them. I’m a freak, period. What’s wrong with me? Everything. I’m fat and ugly, short and stupid. Well, scratch that. I’m not really short…and perhaps not too stupid either. I have, after all, earned a degree coveted by no less than six thousand people, in this year alone. And yet, I still feel like some sort of failure. In the one thing that’s supposed to really matter, I can’t deliver.

It’s that time of the month — again.

Yes. Like clockwork, I’m sad again. No matter how many times I’ve tried to convince myself, told myself, that I wouldn’t give hope a chance, a ray always manages to slip in. Darn it. And yet, everytime, hope ends in vain.

And so, last night, as I watched this person unarguably more disadvantaged than I am in life, I couldn’t help but envy her. Here she was, freak to the core and yet, still normal like the rest of them. She functions like a normal person should, just as God intended humans to be. Here I was, on the other side of the world, having the appearance of a fully functional human being yet deficient in the one thing that matters. I’m a freak even to the freaks.

I tried to stifle the sobs that wouldn’t quit for fear of being discovered. I buried my head in my pillow and pretended to fall asleep. I couldn’t let the husband see what I was going through. Even though he’s accepted my frailties, I’m still afraid he may not be able to come to terms with my deficiency. It’s a paranoia, unjustified and unfair, but that’s how it feels.

Having cried through the night, it was inevitable that I would wake up today as if yesterday never happened. Perhaps I was made to be resilient. Or maybe God is molding me to be one.

Another month is up ahead.

I can feel hope crawling underneath my skin.

 

Not a good way to go

Trina Etong, Ted Failon’s deceased wife, was cremated at around 11:00 a.m. (Phil. time) today. She has left this world, her suicide creating more, instead of solving, problems. While she is (probably) no longer bothered by this material world, her family, on the other hand, is left to suffer the fate that she has bestowed upon them. It appears that her method of dealing with her demons has caused the creation of demons for her family. In the end, suicide is not a solution after all.

It’s not that I blame Trina for the troubles that have been heaped upon her household. But it cannot be denied: her death has become the cross which Ted Failon and their kids must carry for the rest of their lives.

I was watching the news this evening. ABS-CBN was showing the footage of Failon’s youngest daughter crying out to her dead mother. It was heartbreaking. The pain of losing a parent in itself is devastating, even more so when the cause of the loss is the parent herself. I cannot even begin to surmise what went through Trina’s head to push her to such an extreme. But I can only wonder if she even thought of her children when she committed such a selfish act.

Taking one’s own life is indeed a selfish act. There is no other way to classify it. A person taking the easy way out for him/her to escape/avoid/end his/her problem. Such a solution does not take into account the people who care for him/her, those who will suffer, those who will live with the trauma. On the other hand, for the person who has taken his/her own life, there is no longer anything to worry about.

While I cannot even pretend to have an inkling as to the solution to Trina’s problem (whatever that may be or however hard it may have been), but I am certain I can never forget her youngest child’s cry at her deathbed.

 

What’s the deal?

I can’t understand all this hulabaloo about the death of Ted Failon’s wife. Why do they wanna push it?

As stated in news reports by friends of the deceased wife, the latter has already been spreading around hints that she intends to do away with her own life. In fact, in their own words, it wasn’t actually hints but outright declaration of her suicide. Apparently, she has manifested that she would only wait for the graduation of her youngest daughter and then off herself. What other proof would you want?

It would have been different if Ted Failon’s wife did not even drop a word about having problems or wanting to leave this god-forsaken-earth and then, out of the blue, she suddenly dies in an alleged suicide. That, coupled with the other allegedly suspicious acts done after the killing, would have justified rousing suspicions of a foul play.

On the newspaper yesterday, the secretary of the Department of Justice supposedly received a text message that there was another guy in the house of Ted Failon who helped the latter carry the body of the wife from the bedroom to the bathroom where she was later on killed. I mean, honestly, for a lawyer who’s occupying one of the top spots in the government, this text shouldn’t have been really a matter worth investigating.

I mean, for crying out loud, if Ted Failon really wanted to kill his wife, why couldn’t he have done it inside the bedroom? Why did he have to move her in the bathroom? Was he afraid of soiling the bedsheets? I’m sure he wasn’t thinking of sleeping in their matrimonial bed on the night that his wife has died. Any blundering idiot would have seen that text message for what it was: just another stupid and senseless ploy! I mean, really!?!

Since the news broke out about the death of Failon’s wife, the whole office has just been occupied with rumors and debates about the entire thing. That’s hours upon hours wasted arguing whether or not Ted Failon killed his own wife. Initially, I joined in the argument, stating my case — which involved only the obvious, without the need to delve into speculations bereft of factual basis. By the end of the second hour, I was tired. It was pointless, after all. I mean, even assuming for the sake of argument that he indeed shot his wife, who’s going to testify against him? There’s no evidence at all pointing towards him. No witnesses stating they saw him do it. What now?

In the words of Bart Simpson: “I didn’t do it. Nobody saw me do it.”

Why don’t we move on to other better things? With every second we breathe, the mother earth is deteriorating. Let’s put each second to good use.