It’s hard to be an adult

I watched Beauty and the Beast and cried a small river of tears. No, truth be told, I was sobbing. The husband and the child were laughing at me, this grownup, crying helplessly over what was a happy ending no less. How’s that for confusing?

It’s hard to be an adult. When life has not scarred you yet, when you did not yet have battles to win, dragons to slay, humps to get over, you can watch any movie and maybe walk away from the experience in one piece. I saw Beauty and the Beast when I was in college, and I loved it just as much. But it did not make me cry. I watched it during our honeymoon in London, and I took home the playbill plus Lumiere (the stuffed toy version) that I still have to this day. I’ve placed him on a shelf, leaning against some books and always, he/it makes me smile, making half of me want to break out in Disney song.

But somehow, at this point in my life, half-steeped in a detox I have taken on mostly as lifestyle shift instead of the usual one or two week stretch, there I was in the cinema, crying, ironically at that portion when they started turning back into humans, that portion when love triumphed over all that was imperfect for a while, that part when all panned out perfectly as it should. As Beauty and the Beast danced in the beautiful garden, I cried, not silently, but that ugly-face cry that makes your nose red and your eyes puffy. Then we went to Salvatore Cuomo and I ate pasta and cheese. I went home  and climbed into bed feeling like a new person. Crying can feel so good.

My friend Denise says it is hard to be human. I agree. Especially when you become an adult. She tells me about how she randomly picks an innocent-looking folder on her desk, as she wants to check just one thing about the factory operations. Simple, right? No, it’s narnia as soon as you flip the folder open. You see one thing wrong, then as you try to find out the hows and whys, the whole thing just becomes bigger, deeper, it’s never just one department’s fault, one person’s mistake... it’s all connected. And that’s just one folder, in a sea of so many that need equal attention, each of which carries with it an attachment of problems waiting to be fixed.

Life is hard. I tell Juliana that when, burnt out from workday stress, I pad into her room. There is something comforting about my teenager’s  room. Her music is always nice, her sheets are always rumpled, the aircon is always too cold but somehow nice for short bursts of time, and she always has food, the kind that you eat guiltlessly when you are young and invincible. She laments about how chemistry zaps at her being, how schoolwork can pile up and drain a student, and I tell her there will always be something like that in life. If it’s not school, it’s work, or family, or co-workers, or the staff — but always, something that stretches you, defies you, challenges what you want to do because you must do first what you have to do.

I try to make her understand that, there as I sit in her room, surrounded by happy posters of Pink Floyd and the Beatles in psychedelic colors of the flower power era. I try to lighten the resident “burden” of every student by telling her what it is like to have an adult workload. Same stress, just different stressor. Bigger. More serious. Same but different. All relative. I stay in her room to eat, breathe young air, steep in a space so different from mine, with my oils and diffusers and pink salt lamp.

I see the floor lamp she has positioned by her dresser. I feel tender inside for it was light from that floor lamp that I would breastfeed under, when she was but a tiny human fully dependent on her mother, who was but a child herself, all of 26 years old with no manual about motherhood to cling to. Time has gone by so fast. We laugh again about why Beauty and the Beast made me cry, and I tell her maybe it is because I watch it now as an adult, and somehow as grown ups we inadvertently do not see things as they are but as we are. There, as I sat on the plush chair in the cinema, I was no longer this blank canvass that I entered the world as. Already, I was a grown up,  bringing with me the sum of all the personal experiences a human being like me accumulates through decades of living — the highs and lows, all the wounds and balms.

When I was young I knew I always wanted to write. In my mind, I had many stories to tell. So I would get a notebook, but there were no words to make a story. Instead I would fill the pages with random scribbling, doodles actually, paying close attention to loops and swirls, taking pleasure in improving my cursive. Then I moved on to writing on diaries. The stories did start coming, more naturally than they ever did when I was much younger. And now, this space. Plus all the notepads and notebooks and the notes section of my smartphone.  Now, I don’t think I will ever run out of something to write, whether for my own eyes only or to share with others. Because that’s just the way it is. We live, life happens, it is so easy to share and tell story (or many little ones). Because always, things outside just have a tendency to reach inside, to bring out again some parts of you that are raw and tender, maybe unresolved. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be bawling if I watch reruns of Voltes V and Mazinger-Z because thankfully, real life is much closer to castles and imperfect creatures waiting for redemption and second chances,  and good that somehow always triumphs over evil. And somehow, as I eat from her bowl of rice fried in butter, dunked with eggs, and then eaten with tuyo, even all that is imperfect about life really ain’t so bad at all. As my aunt shared with me via Viber, it’s all about consenting to what is, and then trusting that grace (via God’s mercy) will meet you at your point of need and do its own miracle, thus giving you the courage to forge on like every good soldier does.