To feel love's sting

I had a friend, back in high school, who was being beaten up by her boyfriend. I'd see her with bruises on her arms that she'd sometimes try to hide; sometimes not. She was a truly, truly beautiful girl--part Egyptian, with big dark eyes and milky skin--and I had no idea why someone who loved her would want to hurt her. I'd try to tell her to leave the man, and she'd tell me with a look part rueful and part secretive, "Oh Kay, love hurts."

I never really understood that. I guess, even now, I still don't. Instead, now that I've grown up a bit, I understand better what it means to say "Love hurts." Teenagers love the mooning about, the constant waiting for calls or text messages, the delicious excitement of dressing up for a party where the loved one in question would be in attendance, the posting of song lyrics on blogs or Facebook, the writing of sad poetry or morose blog entries on unrequited love, the quoting of certain uninspired-but-quirky indie films like "500 Days of Summer" and the like. And there's a part of me, to be honest, that misses that sort of thing. To be young and to feel love's keen sting! I'd say to myself.

Not that I am any sort of old lady or mature personage of advanced years and wisdom. Most of the time I still behave like a teenager. I'm just happy to say that I know better, now, what it means to say that love hurts: it isn't the keen sting in your stomach when you think about the person you're infatuated with; it isn't even looking up from your food in a Chinese restaurant, as I did years back, and realizing that you're so in love that you're unable to eat. It's knowing how to give up certain things for love. It isn't generosity until you feel the pinch; likewise, it isn't love until you feel the sting of sacrifice.

If you're a mother, you get up early in the morning to wake up your kids and prepare breakfast for them, as my mom does heroically these days now that I'm shuttling daily between home and school. If you're an older sister, like my friend Nicole, you act like a third parent, enrolling your siblings, bringing them to class, picking them up from futsal practice, taking them shopping for clothes and school supplies. If you're a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you make certain sacrifices of time (within reason, I hope): you drive or commute somewhere though you could use that time to rest or to read yet another trans; you invest in the things that are important.

Furthermore, if you're a boyfriend or a girlfriend and you love both God and your significant other, you make certain sacrifices in the name of holy purity; you try your best not to be alone together in secluded places, and you take care that your expressions of affection do not endanger both the dignity of the loved one, and your devotion to the Loved One. That is what love is. Unlike what some proponents of holy purity say (with the best intentions, I'm sure), true love doesn't wait; this is what love is; the sacrifice itself is the expression of love, and you don't just begin to express that love when you're finally married and certain things are "allowed."

And if you're someone who knows that your love and destiny is to serve God in the gift of chastity and singleness, there are certain things you know how to give up; let's not be ridiculous and say that it's always easy, as though the part of you capable of feeling for the opposite sex had somehow been surgically removed when you made the commitment to serve God. Sometimes you may sit around thinking, "God, this is so hard; are you sure this is for me? Have you really got some reward waiting for me in exchange for all of this?"

Well, all you have to do is to remember that it isn't Love until you feel the pinch--and to trust in your Loved one and know that, no matter how generous you're being, he will always be a thousandfold more generous. And love will not sting so much.

An entirely different outlook on life

I only recently learned that Jeremy Irons is Catholic. I don't know why this was so important to me. I guess I just wanted to be certain that the man who was the center of the definitive adaptation of Brideshead Revisited should understand what it was about. Because no matter how clever you are, if you aren't Catholic, there isn't a single chance that you'd understand even half of what the book tries to say. It's as Sebastian Flyte says somewhere in the beginning (while talking to Charles):

"I wish I liked Catholics more."
"They seem just like other people."
"My dear Charles, that's exactly what they're not--particularly in this country, where they're so few. It's not just that they're a clique--as a matter of fact, they're about four cliques all blackguarding each other half the time--but they've got an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people. They try and hide it as much as they can, but it comes out all the time. It's quite natural, really, that they should."

I guess it's important to me, because if he were not Catholic, then I shouldn't be able to watch the series with any serious amount of belief. It would be just as false and ridiculous and missing-the-point as that new film with Emma Thompson in it, no matter that it (the series) was better casted and much better crafted.

---
edit. Apparently there's some debate online as to whether he is actually Catholic. This website--http://orientem.blogspot.com/2009/08/jeremy-irons-on-catholicism-and.html--does have a bit on him and Catholicism. I am pleased that he has at least read up on the faith and is actually Christian, whether or not he is a baptized Catholic or not. It makes his conversion as Charles Ryder more believable. More specifically, he said in a 2005 interview:

"Am I a spiritual person? I hope so. I'm not very intellectual, I'm instinctive. My family's Catholic," he says, referring to his wife, the actor Sinead Cusack, and their sons Sam, 27, and Max, 19. "I don't go to church much because I don't like belonging to a club, and I don't go to confession or anything like that, I don't believe in it. But I try to be aware of where I fail and I occasionally go to services. I would hate to be a person who didn't have a spiritual side because there's nothing to nourish you in life apart from retail therapy."

Case Files

To continue: (revised chief complaint)

CC: KR was admitted to PGH for episodes of dyspnea, probably due to PND exacerbated by hypersensitivity and panic attack.

HPI: Five hours PTA, the patient was sitting in IDC (Art of Medicine) class in BSLR-W when she coughed and began to wheeze due to aspiration of mucus from PND. Though she was eventually calmed and escorted out, she still sought consult in FMAB/Ward 10/OPD and desired to be admitted to prevent further episodes during day time.

Course in the wards: the patient had two similar attacks. The next day (one day post-admission) the patient felt well enough to be discharged after being given Seretide, nasal sprays and montelukast, plus salbutamol inhaler as needed. Psychiatric and spirometric evaluation will be continued over the next months.

Well, one of my worst nightmares has been realized: I had an attack in a public place, and I couldn't just have it while block B was present; I had to wait until 1:30 Friday afternoon, the only time slot in the entire week when the whole class would be there. Yay me. I suppose it's an exercise in humility; the mortification (of feeling like some attention-seeking damsel in distress) is unspeakable.

The Last Time

Because of an unidentified pathogen that has been plaguing me since December, I can't relax. At the moment I'm supposed to be studying for my exam tomorrow (20% of my module grade) and on Thursday (30%) but all I can do is worry. Usually when I'm like this I go to sleep, but I'm afraid to go to sleep. So I'm trying to wring a blog entry out of myself to see if I can feel better after.

General information: KR is a 22-year old medical student with a city address in Ermita, Manila.
CC: 3-pillow orthopnea and obstructive sleep apnea
HPI: 3 wk PTA, unproductive cough thought to be due to acid reflux.
2 wk PTA unproductive cough had become productive. The patient consulted in a hospital in Laguna and was prescribed Cefuroxime and erdosteine.
1 wk PTA symptoms unrelieved and seem to be worsening. Episodes of obstructive sleep apnea were almost nightly.
5 days PTA patient consulted with two doctor friends and was advised to take Azithromycin.
3 days PTA symptoms appeared to be worsening. The patient consulted at Manila Doctors Hospital and was prescribed Moxifloxacin, as well as a decongestant and salbutamol via nebulizer 2-3 times a day. The nebulizing, if done before bedtime, appeared to prevent episodes of sleep apnea.
1 day PTA the patient left her nebulizer in Laguna, instead using an inhaler as a substitute. Consequently she experienced another episode of apnea. By this time the patient also experienced right lumbar muscle pain and worsening pulmonary function, resorting to mouth-breathing.

Diagnosis: ???
Management: ???

It looks so clean put like this, and it doesn't include the fact that I have to worry about exams in renal, and that the nebulizer doesn't belong to me so I couldn't bring it to Manila, and that the episodes of apnea are terribly frightening. I always thought, Catholic that I am, that I would face death with equanimity: that the prospect of it would bring me no fear. But now I'm afraid every day that, when I go to bed, it will be for the last time. It isn't pain that frightens me exactly. There's just something about being unable to breathe that knocks all the common sense out of you and drives you into a panic. My roommate, whom I love, makes fun of me for it, in her oblique mocking way; when I'm having an episode I jump out of bed, stomp around and roll around on the floor, crying while wheezing and really frightened. I suppose I must look funny. But I can't laugh about it yet. It's not funny to me. I'm afraid.

I guess all I really want is spatium vere paenitentiae. Time for true contrition. When I'm rolling around the floor gasping for breath, thinking, is this really it? Am I going to die?, all I can think about is getting air, and for some reason, I cannot think about making acts of contrition in my mind, or of the assurance that sin is the only disaster--not death, nor illness, nor misfortune.

I'm scared.

The Anniversary

ALL kings, and all their favourites,
All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The sun it self, which makes time, as they pass,
Is elder by a year now than it was
When thou and I first one another saw.
All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay ;
This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday ;
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

---
Because I can't explain, in my own words, how important this day is to me, and how its anticipation has made me happy since the end of 2010. I have no idea how many years are left to me in God's service; no matter how many, he's already caught me 'with an unseen hook and an invisible line, which is long enough to let [me] wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring [me] back with a twitch upon the thread.'

Cordelia's shoes

Did you ever find a book you couldn't criticize? I mean, not even a little bit? For me, Brideshead Revisited is that book. It's so clever and multilayered that Catholics love it as a Catholic novel, while pagans miss the point entirely and think that Waugh is defending their camp. This is my favorite scene. I didn't really think about it until I saw the miniseries, which is so beautiful, and which I also couldn't criticize. It's a dinner scene and the conversation is between Cordelia and Brideshead Flyte, sister and brother. To see the expression on Cordelia's face at the end of this exchange... that split second taught me a lot about obedience.

"My sister Cordelia’s last report said that she was not only the worst girl in the school, but the worst there had ever been in the memory of the oldest nun. "

That’s because I refused to be an Enfant de Marie. Reverend Mother said that if I didn’t keep my room tidier I couldn’t be one one, so I said, well, I won’t be one, and I don’t believe our Blessed Lasy cares two hoots whether I put my gym shoes on the left or the right of my dancing shoes. Reverend Mother was livid."

"Our Lady cares about obedience."

Cordelia, I believe, was a saint. This is a video of her (as played by Phoebe Nicholls) and Charles Ryder (Jeremy Irons).

A small life

I lead a small life. Well, valuable, but small. And sometimes I wonder: do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book when, shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So... good night, dear void.

My family and I know these lines by heart; they come from our favorite movie, "You've Got Mail." All this time I've been thinking along the same lines. Life is confined to these small and shabby streets in Manila; the circumscription extends a bit to Laguna, a bus ride away, and to one other home in Manila, close to DLSU. It is a small life--valuable, but small--and I have often wondered if I did it because I liked it, or because I hadn't been brave enough to pursue any of the things I really wanted to pursue. Day in and day out, a routine.

I guess I should have stopped to remind myself that bravery doesn't consist of great deeds or of living a swashbuckling or particularly romantic lifestyle. It may take great bravery to die for something, but it's a special, heroic brand of bravery that makes you get up every morning for an ideal. This is the bravery asked of us--living the same routines and struggling not to get bogged down by discouragement or daily difficulties, by a rude store clerk or the sneer of a classmate or traffic or smoke or illness. I may be like an ant moving over the same little anthill over the same tired little paths, but in some ways my heart is large enough to contain the universe... because my eyes are set on heaven and my mind turned to eternity.