Hourglass syndrome

Suck it in.

When I was seven, I vaguely remember standing in front of our large, full-body mirror and saying those exact words in my head. I would roll my shirt up and stick it under my chin so that my plump, childish belly would be on display.

I’d press the soft plush fat in and hold my breath. For a while, I could do it even without my hands. I’d just suck it in. Because my parents told me I was fat. Because my titos and titas called me “tabachingching” or “batchoy.”

I am now 15, turning 16 in July, and I feel as though I am 50 with the way I can’t even stand straight without hurting my back.

For as long as I could remember, I’d been sucking my stomach in to appear thinner. It became a dangerous habit, one that could cause pelvic floor dysfunction, back problems, and the reason I can never seem to catch my breath.

My diaphragm now works backward. Instead of expanding down, it expands up because of the way I’d been holding my stomach, and at times it causes me to feel a slight twinge of pain near the back of my spine, near the flesh of my organs, and then I’d get lightheaded. Doctors from the internet say it’s an actual phenomenon—hourglass syndrome, it is most commonly called, despite not actually being a syndrome—and it is dangerous. It could cause pelvic weakening, and in severe cases, pelvic prolapse. It causes difficulty in breathing, and dimple-like crevices under the ribs that show the long-term effects of tensing the upper muscles of your belly.

Those are its effects. But to me, the effects aren’t only physical, but also mental.

I had an incredibly thin older cousin—my best friend when I was young, my “Ate.” She was older than me by four years but still came to our house to play with me. Every time she’d be spotted with me, my titas or titos or even my mother would call us “10.” My cousin would be “1,” and I would be “0.” Or lechon. I’d be the pig, she’d be the stick.

“Barbecue” was sometimes added, too.

Those names bore down into my skin until I developed not only the habit of sucking it in but also the habit of standing in front of a mirror and saying, “Ang pangit pangit ko.”

I was only 9.

My mother would scold me, and tell me otherwise. But she’d still continue to lambast me about my weight, constantly commenting, constantly comparing me to my Ate. Constantly calling me tabachingching. It wasn’t until she warned me that words have power that I stopped. But for my other habit, it was infinitely harder to change.

Sometimes I’d catch myself again, standing in front of that full-body mirror, and sucking it in ever further. And then I’d release. And a gloomy sort of feeling would rise upon me, I’d sweat and feel as though my heart itself is about to bulge out that pouch in my belly and escape. Sucking it in became comfortable, natural. Releasing became incriminating, scary.

Even more so now. When I was 11, I weighed 68 kilos. Now, I’m 15, have a normal BMI, and weigh around 50 kilos. But I’m still relearning just what it is to be human, to have that natural pouch in my lower belly, to have a bit of fat along my wrists.

I still shake whenever I look at myself, and I still suck it in. That habit didn’t just affect the way I see myself, but also how I express my feelings and communicate with other people. I grew up to be quite the surface-level girl because I was sucking in my emotions, sucking in my feelings, sucking in the truth I wanted to speak. Needless to say, I became bland. Unable to connect deeper with people my age, unable to form bonds aside from the friends I was blessed enough to keep since my childhood.

That habit doesn’t just go away with the fat.

And it was all because of tabachingching.

My parents and my titas and titos are nice people, but the Filipino habit of calling names and constant, “innocent,” degradation stays. It stays until you graduate grade school—until you graduate junior high; it stays until you get married, have children of your own, until you take your very last labored breath. And yet they still call it normal. They still accept it in the household and still continue the practice. I see it in the way I see myself in my 7-year-old younger sister, who grew too far into her clothes a little too well. My sister who is now “tabachingching 2.”

Every day I pray she doesn’t suck it in, too.

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Lois Gargar, 15, is an aspiring journalist who is always hungry for new stories, whether within her campus or herself.