My Own Romance

Music affects me in ways that are often unfathomable, even to myself.

Right now, I am listening to Gil Ofarim as he warms my cold, cold heart. And, after repeating the song for several times, I think: Why can't I have something like that?

Well, as a learner pointed out to me earlier with her "pa-slim ka bala ma'am lines", I am not a heroine material.

My long time love affair with books confirms what I know to be true...I have never read any romance novel with a fat (and in my case, obese) heroine. I have encountered Class A heroines: the beautiful bombshell type with all the right curves or litheness and willowyness, plus the perfect girl morals with just a tad arrogance and egotism thrown in for conflict. There is the more acceptable Class B heroines who are characterized with plain prettiness, just a little physical eccentricity like being a tad small or short (making them pocket venuses for the males who fall for them) but with the same amount of ferocity as the first. Then, there are my favorites, the Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick heroines who fall into the plain, ordinary, but curiously sunny and intelligent types who equally captivates big and bear-like men who seem to have something caught between their paws. Then, there are the Class C types who are plain (almost dumpy or dowdy), shy, and solitary...but, there is something always adorable in them that the males prefer to posses..

How about fat girls like me who have not chances of ever, ever slimming down?

Nada.

Oh, there were several movies or two about these non-heroines like Monique's Phat Girls...and that Sam Milby flick...Then, I once read a Jude Deveraux novel on one fat girl during the medieval ages. She fell for a warrior so she decided to slim down...and she did, making her a little unrecognizable..

When two of my learners were talking about their sons, conception and giving birth yesterday, I felt a little left out. ..and a bit freaked out too. The one with the seven month old son is only fifteen years old but she seemed more mature than world-weary and overly exposed "Me". The 20 year old learner with the six year old son regaled us with tales of how difficult her pregnancy was, how she jogged with her husband every morning and how she had an easy birth afterward.

There was silence on my part. Truly, you can't share what you do not have. I can spout a lot of factoids about Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson. I can share a lot of historical gossips. I can even talk about the process of conception, birth and even growth...but I can never really share experience about such.

Wow. I felt a little left out too...Yes, I am young but no woman is more suited to motherhood than I am(yeah, this freaks me out a bit too but I feel as if I was born for the family life actually). I know a lot abut rearing kids and I had first had experience through my little brothers. I also mothered five younger siblings when things went a little haywrire in our lives two year ago. It was supposed to be my destiny...(what, become a mother? Good grief!, is this me talking?).

Anyway, I realized the impossibility of such a conflict when I turned fifteen and found out I could not give up my eating habits. Aside from being born a potential mother and wife material (goodness!), I was also born a sloth and a glutton. I don't want to give up my lifestyle ( I was tempted once, in grade four when I developed a tendre for a guy who is not worth it).

So, I went to bed and cried myself to sleep, that night (I was fifteen), thinking about a bleak future with only myself, some stray cats and dogs, and a drafty old cottage...wine too, red... Heaven the spinster, heaven the old-maid..poor auntie Heaven who is all alone in her witch's cottage...

I also fell in love with the image of bad witchy witchy old spinster heaven who will curse kids and children who would dare walk on her part of the village (that consoled me too, that night).

So I turned into the fat, career oriented academic and solitary scholar who wanted nothing to do with boys, babies, husbands and family - and that happened overnight too. And it so affected how I viewed the world - I became the starchy old spinster even before her time.

I just grew alarmed at the almost vocal way I scoffed at motherhood and house wifey things when a classmate called me a feminist (I really never considered myself one but yes, I am for women's independence too if that's what a woman prefers). That was many years back when I was still in college and thoughts reflected like the ones I had often reflected on school outputs and works.

Now, with talks of marriage, family and how some gets so cynical about it, like I used to, I realized I actually wanted a family of my own or at least, a baby to love and adore...But, there seems to be no chance of that budding because I tend to gravitate around guys who are not in my circle or are not within my reach.

I have set an imaginary standard and not one could seem to pass it...except for more impossible obsessions on my part.

Add the fact that I am not a very attractive package to the opposite sex... Well, I guess I was destined to spinster hood ...but no regrets. I promised myself that one. No regrets. I will live my life, really live it...and enjoy it, with or without love, romance and magic in it...