About Sophie

Even If Saving You Sends Me To Heaven

It was a moment, a split second, when everything that could possibly go wrong did.

We started the day full of excitement for Sophie because we planned on surprising her with a happy meal at McDonald's as a family, before going to visit her other lolo, RJ's dad. Everything was going well for us; Everything felt perfect. I guess I should've realized earlier that it was too good to be true, because just a few hours later, I found us trapped between a throng of aggressively excited people and a wall.

As soon as someone yelled my husband's screen name, all heads snapped up and turned to our direction. At first, I didn't know what was going on. But when one after another started moving toward us, shock planted me in place and I willed everything to stop and freeze. One should find it funny because the scenario as I saw it was like a zombie apocalypse movie on pause, where there were only five of us left standing as humans, while at least a couple hundred of excited, smiling, and some crying zombies had their claws and phones up. It was as if the number of people inside the restaurant seemed to have doubled at the mere mention of my husband's name. I should be thankful that we lived in a world of smartphones where camera flashes were deemed obsolete, because if all those cameras were flashing, my daughter and I would have been blind in seconds.

My husband didn't look like he was panicking, based on his stance. It's possible that it was because he's just so used to this kind of thing. I was sure that this was not new at all to him. He looked more annoyed than anything, if I was being honest. He tried to reason with the crowd, almost begging them to let us through, but they would not have any of it. He still smiled amidst the annoyance and creeping stress on his face, but when he caught my eyes and probably saw the terror in them, his face changed from annoyed to apologetic to terrified.

"I'm so sorry, love. We'll get out of here soon." His worried voice broke into my thoughts and unfroze time for me.

Fan-demonium ensued but fear completely paralyzed me. I didn't know what to do or say but to hold on to my daughter and repeatedly whisper in her ear that everything was going to be okay. At that moment, I was not sure whether I was trying to calm her or convince myself. Maybe more the latter, I had to tell myself that everything was going to be okay. Or at least, I hoped. I tried to put a brave face on but there were just too many of them and my anxiety and panic attack did not help our situation at all.

"Mommah, I'm scared." My daughter whispered as she held on tight to my neck. I had both my arms around her as we tried to take at least a step closer to the door. But really, we didn't have to take any step, because we got pushed toward it anyway. Just a few more feet, I thought, and we'd be out and would be able to run to the safety of our van. I had it all planned out in my head and was ready to make a run for it.

But sometimes, even if you had a plan already formulated in your head and you just needed one small window to go for it, you end up failing and ending up in a worse or the worst position.

I knew how famous my husband was, it just didn't register to me that this sort of thing could happen to him... to us. I've seen paparazzis in New York, but they've always kept their distance from the celebrities, except if you're Kim Kardashian, then yeah, expect cameras on your nose line. I didn't realize that this seemed to be a normal thing for my husband.

As a mother, the only concern I had was to protect Sophie, even if it meant I get all the pulls, pinches and scratches from my husband's fans. They were screaming our names-- Alden! Maine! Sophie! This was the outcome of RJ's revelation about us. For a moment, I regretted wishing what he'd done. But I had no time for regrets nor my internal thoughts. There was one thing I had to do at that moment-- to get Sophie out of there. By hook or by crook, I had to get her out of there.