A Fake Runner’s Story

One night in July, a smothering sadness overcame me.

It crept up in the worst possible way— unexpectedly and without warning— and like wildfire, the smothering sadness spread quickly all over my body— gripping my throat, piercing my eyes, churning my stomach, paralyzing my heart. It was an overwhelming kind of sadness, and so suddenly struck I was by it, I wasn’t even given a chance to cry.

All I knew this one night in July was that if I wanted to have a shot against my grief, I needed to move. I had to do something to kill my despondency before it got the best of me. I had to fight back.

It was that night in July when I learned to run. With my insides still stifling from dejection, I managed to lace-up a pair of sneakers, put on a pair of shorts and a shirt and bolt out of my condominium door, just when the temptation of hiding and crying under my bedroom covers got real.

I made a beeline for the overpass leading to my university, strutting with a rushed gait. I brisk-walked like my most fearsome nightmares were snapping on my heels— and in a way, they were. Finally, when I landed on the other side of the road, a breeze from some towering trees welcoming me in, I literally made a run for it.

I ran so fast, my legs started cramping two minutes into the sprint. I wasn’t a runner— never was— and my body didn’t take the strain of repeatedly pounding on sidewalk concrete well. But I kept running. I ran through my pain. I ran with a heightened mania, overtaking casual joggers and serious runners. I ran without knowing where to go, through building hallways and fields and parking lots. I have long forgotten my disoriented route, but I will never forget the five words that cycled through my mind during that first, painful run.

I need to get away.

And for a long time, that’s how I ran. In the gym, in villages, in city streets, I ran with a kind of overbearing anger that I would only let loose when I picked my legs up again and again and again and again and again. I cursed a lot during my first few runs, and I conditioned myself to keep going in hopes of being able to let all my anger out. And mind you, there was a lot of it.

But somewhere along the way, perhaps when I started getting stronger and breezing through my once-staggering 3Ks, I learned to enjoy running. These days, I run with a sense of tranquility and fulfillment, always pushing myself to go on the next kilometer— no longer to escape— but to see just how far I can go. I no longer have to get away, I just need to keep moving forward.

I can count on the fingers of my elbow the people I know who take me seriously when I go on runs. Hell, even I find it hard to take myself seriously. Just a few nights ago, when I was avidly going through a stack of Runner’s World magazines I had gotten for free, I thought— seriously, who am I kidding? I had a good laugh over the image— me, madly flipping through an article about interval training. Interval training! When I think about it, it still makes me laugh.

The thing I try to remember is, I don’t run to prove a point. If it sounds strange to you— a girl who talks an octave higher than most chicks, whose idea of a tragedy is a broken nail, somehow manages to run through five kilometers in 30 minutes flat— then it’s because it is strange. But it’s also real.

I’m a fake runner. I don’t train or take supplements, nor do I run with technique. I run for the hell of it, because running to me makes sense— it wakes me up when I’m tired, calms me down when I’m mad, and makes me even happier when I’m already happy.

I run and I keep moving forward.

25,000 Miles In Her Shoes, Part 1

I am forever indebted to my parents for purposely instilling in their children a passionate, early onset wanderlust.

As a family, we didn’t always have the luxury of going places whenever we wanted, but travel was always a priority in our household, coming in just a little bit below groceries and education. And though we couldn’t afford sleeping in five-star accommodations or dining in Michelin-starred restaurants, so long as the opportunity to travel presented itself, you could count on the four of us to suck it up, pack our suitcases and jet off.

During the early years of my life, my dad worked as a social worker, and my mom and I always tagged along wherever his trips would take him. Family photos tell me that my first trip abroad was in March 1995, as a three-year-old wrestling with the in-between chill of winter blossoming to spring in New York City. We also dropped by Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas on this trip, including a detour to San Diego, where I vaguely remember a llama snacking on the ruffles of my shirt at the San Diego Zoo.

Several months after, on December 1995, my parents and I went to Bangkok, Thailand. I had already turned four at this point, and some of my happiest childhood memories took place in that beautifully exotic city, like having my photo taken with a tiger, riding an elephant and giggling at the name “tuk-tuk”.

My brother was born on June 1996, and for almost a year there wasn’t any traveling. We jetted off again on March 1997 to my first domestic destination outside of Luzon— Cebu. We stayed at a family favorite, Shangri-La Mactan, although we left my brother behind because he was too young to travel. I don’t remember anything about this trip, and I was actually surprised when my mom told me recently that we had already gone to Cebu when I was five.

On May 1997, yet again tagging along with my dad, my mom and I traveled to Singapore where we were meant to meet my dad after his business trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh. He met Prince Charles there, and to this day, he thinks of him as the most important person he’s ever talked to in his life. I was already six when we went to Singapore, and I have really fun memories of Sentosa and pretending to look like the Singapore mer-lion in pictures.

Then came the longest travel hiatus I have ever had in my life. For three years, my family and I didn’t go anywhere. Looking back on it now, it was a result of a double whammy— 1) the Asian Economic Crisis that hit the Philippines around 1997 and 2) my dad’s occupation changing nature, shifting from social work to the corporate world. There were no trips to tag along with at this point…

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My First Love

Four months ago, I did something on impulse. Running high on—in retrospect— really, really schizophrenic emotions, I “deleted” this blog and announced to the virtual world that it was done “for good”. I continued writing on a different handle, and though I had my reasons back then— I had wanted change, a clean slate and a new life to live— beneath them all was the nagging feeling that this blog was too familiar, overdosing on sentiment and feeling that I all wanted to go away and forget.

And so I wrote elsewhere. Looking back and reading back, I’ve come realize that a lot of the things I wrote in the span of the last four months—both online and on empty, lined spaces of random notebooks— sounded too eager, even impatient if you will. I think I was so focused on being a completely different person, that I rushed so many things that I didn’t know then would take time. Academic achievement, early success in the working world, putting myself out there again. Healing, even. I did a lot of things I never would’ve thought I would ever do, a lot of them petty, like maximizing my cuts in all of my classes; some of them more serious, like picking up new vices.

But I also learned invaluable lessons along the way. I spent time with a lot of close friends whose company I haven’t truly enjoyed in a while. I traveled my own country, and saw with my own eyes a different kind of beauty about it, unfound anywhere else in the world. I realized the value of hard work and hard-earned money, and joined the ranks of fortunate people who get to do what they love for a living. Best of all, I learned how to truly appreciate and love myself, even without the presence of another person doing it for me.

Life goes on, even after a relationship lost and a regretfully reckless semester. Things keep moving forward, even with the positive things, like uncovering enthusiasm for a new job. Today, I’m slowly picking up the better, more familiar parts of myself that I thought I had discarded for good. I’m really happy I’m excited for school again, that I’ve gone back to praying every night, that I’m going back to my first love—writing to express—and that I’ve returned to where I first learned how to do it—this blog.

People change, but we have certain things that are truly us, that ground us to who we really are, even with the chaos of everyday life. That’s what writing is to me, and as silly as I was to dismiss it four months ago, it will always be a part of me. It’s my first love.

Now blogging

Here :)

The End

175 posts, 29,000 hits, 20 months later, and Letters by Larissa is done for good.

In November 2009, I created this blog to give myself an outlet for writing. I had a surplus of inspiration going on at that time– a new ambition, a new relationship, the markings of a new life to live. Since then, I’ve written for major newspapers in the country, gone abroad to hone this pesky love for writing and learned to love like I’ve never had, and won’t ever for some time.

I grew up, and I no longer am the same girl who began writing about her fears, dreams and insecurities here, 20 months ago. I had everything at the tips of my fingers then, and finally now, none of what I used to have.

I’m now writing on a new blog handle, one which I will share as soon as it’s ready to be shared. For now, it’s time for a clean slate, a new life to live, and I am thankful for every single hit this blog has gotten, whether intentional or accidental.

Don’t Feed the Plants!

A down-and out skid row floral assistant becomes an overnight sensation when he discovers an exotic plant with a mysterious craving for fresh blood. Soon “Audrey II” grows into an ill-tempered, foul-mouthed, R&B-singing carnivore who offers him fame and fortune in exchange for feeding its growing appetite, finally revealing itself to be an alien creature poised for global domination!

Presenting Ateneo Blue Repertory’s 20th Season Premiere, Little Shop of Horrors!

With all the pressures in a fast-paced world obsessed with money and beauty, it isn’t hard to imagine that anyone would do absolutely anything to fulfil their dreams – whether through hard work or Faustian deals. But with the allure of earning fast bucks and becoming overnight sensations, shady businesses have become a lot more common.

Even the honest-to-goodness nice guys aren’t immune to this kind of temptation, and Seymour Krelborn is one of them. He is the protagonist of Little Shop of Horrors, a black comedy musical satirizing old-school sci-fi movies and one of the longest running Off-Broadway shows of all time. This July 2011, the Ateneo Blue Repertory presents Little Shop of Horrors as its 20th season’s premiere.

With book and lyrics by Howard Ashman and music by Alan Menken, Little Shop of Horrors is the story of a miserable shopkeeper’s yearning for a better life and a chance at love, all encouraged by a devious plant who manipulates him into quenching its thirst for blood and world domination in exchange for his heart’s desires. Thus, he must choose between right and wrong, all for the sake of a bit of glory.

Directed by Toff de Venecia (director of blueREP’s All Shook Up and Freakshow) and Musical Direction by blueREP’s Artistic Director Ejay Yatco (musical director of blueREP’s Edges), blueREP’s Little Shop of Horrors runs from July 27-August 13 at the Fine Arts Theater, Ateneo de Manila University. Tickets are P199. Please contact Mica Fajardo at 09178908795 to purchase them.

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On a side note, I’d like to extend a huge bunch of enthusiastic congratulations to blueREP for finally making Little Shop of Horros happen! I have to admit I’m not so familiar with the material, but I understand it’s a Broadway classic, and to have (the best) college musical theater organization in the country stage it is very exciting. And if anyone’s going to pull it off, it’s definitely going to be blueREP! So watch, guys. If you aren’t satisfied with your P199, sagot ko na– that’s how sure I am of this production’s ability to astound!

Dream Defect

I’ve been getting the most vivid dreams lately.

Like last night, when I dreamt of CSI actress Jorja Fox beating me up, because I had morphed into a black girl. I have no idea if her reason for hitting me black and blue had anything to do with the race I magically turned into, but I think the good amount of time I spent in Paris’ more “colored” neighborhoods taught me not to be racist, so that leaves me (with no choice, but) to conclude that Jorja Fox probably, possibly is.

I like to check Dream Moods  whenever I have strange dreams. They always seem to have appropriate interpretations, and although I do believe that dreams can be utterly be useless and devoid of any meaning (my trained neuro-linguistic programmer boyfriend thinks so too), sometimes it doesn’t hurt to check. It’s like taking a peek at your horoscope in the morning, and ignoring it if it doesn’t make sense, but also, getting really excited when it’s totally applicable to your present life situation.

I recently had a very weird dream, involving someone I knew from school who I wasn’t very close with. And now, whenever I see that person walking around campus and we say hello, I feel funny and awkward, because no matter how off-the-mark they are, dreams tend to be very personal– and to dream about someone you barely even know feels like an invasion of privacy of sorts, both for the dreamer and the dreamee (hello, made-up word).

I’ve been thinking about how that person will never, ever know about my dream. Because, as much as we’d like to, we never can really tell what people think of us and how they see us. If you had a choice, would you like to be gifted with the power to know how people perceive you? I wouldn’t, and not just because I don’t think I would be able to take so much honesty that brutally (although that’s partly it), but also because the gift (yes, gift) of not knowing is what makes life so interesting. So we really don’t have much of a choice dreamee– here’s to more awkward and embarrassing on-campus hello’s with you.