The truth has set Aiza free

Everybody loves a winner. The winner is adored, glorified, praised to high heavens. The non-winner is shunned, forgotten, ignored.

Ask Aiza Seguerra. When she lay low in the biz after  she reached the awkward stage (translation: The tween years when you’re no longer a child but not yet an adult), the fans dwindled, the screaming voices fell silent. And she felt crushed. It was too big a blow to handle at first.

But slowly, Aiza came to terms with it. She learned that those shrieks, those fawning looks are only as good as her last movie or TV show. That’s when she took a long, hard look at the situation and made up her mind.

“I learned not to expect anything anymore. I learned not to feel hurt when the fans are not that many anymore. There will always be someone younger, even better than you are,” she muses.

More than that, Aiza learned how to value her family more than her work. Not that she won’t give her career her shot. She does. Aiza doesn’t mind accepting low-paying gigs as long as she can strum her guitar and sing her favorite tunes. Aiza loves music so much, talent fee has become secondary to the high she gets as performer.

It’s just that from now on, she’s  putting her work second, her family first. This way, Aiza won’t feel bitter about sacrificing family time for work when the time comes.

Maybe it’s best that Aiza learned that lesson on the fleeting ways of fame early on. It’s keeping her grounded, now that she’s enjoying an unexpected second wind in her career as a singer and stage performer.

Aiza plays real-life character Gary Coleman (Diff’rent Strokes) in Atlantis Productions’ restaging of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Avenue Q from  Dec. 14 to 23 at RCBC Plaza.

Like Coleman, Aiza is a former child star. And just like her character, Aiza did not lose her confidence when the screaming and shrieking grew fainter and fainter for a time. Unlike Coleman though, Aiza is happy with her family: Daddy Dick, Mommy Caring and an adopted brother.

Her family has accepted her for what she is, warts and all. A worried Mommy Caring may have asked Aiza if she won’t end up lonely and forlorn someday because of her preference for someone of the  same sex. But when Aiza shook her head, the relieved mother said no more.

“I’m open to my parents,” Aiza relates. Their acceptance has emboldened Aiza to be herself even in public, to pull down the veil that has been hiding her true self. Of course, she had her initial fears. What if people won’t understand? What if they withdraw their support?

But Aiza told herself, “If my parents accepted me, why can’t the others?” The truth finally set her free when she agreed to pose on the cover of Icon Magazine with her girlfriend. No words needed to be said. Aiza let her actions speak for themselves. And luckily, the world didn’t start caving in on her career.

Mothers and grandmothers come up to Aiza and tell her how much they idolize her and that they have a child or granddaughter who acts just like her. Televiewers still continue to watch her show and listen to her songs (e.g. Para Lang Sa ‘Yo, theme song of the ABS-CBN soap Ysabella). Lovers of theater still watch her plays for Repertory Philippines.

The career debacle Aiza feared never came. Relieved, Aiza can never be more grateful.

“Today’s audience can divorce a performer’s personality from his job. Talent, for them, comes first.  Personality comes second,” says Aiza. Such maturity, she adds, is laudable.

Today, she can go to the mall with her girlfriend without being afraid people will stare and jeer. Aiza has even become a counselor of sorts for closet lesbians afraid to come out for fear of censure.

“Try to have your own keep,” she advises them.  “This way, you can stand on your own if your family fails to understand.”

The truth has set Aiza free. And the public appreciates her honesty and transparency. Perhaps this is why she’s still very much around, long after her contemporaries have settled down to a non-showbiz life.