So I have this friend (the one who coined the term “human appliance”) who ranted to me yesterday that her surviving child, her four-year-old son, is being hurt by the “other woman”–the same one who got pregnant by her husband (now ex-husband but still legally married).

Wait whut, you say.

Again, again, again. So I wrote here last year—I think—about this friend, let’s call her N, who lost her daughter due to seizures since hospitals brimming with Covid cases couldn’t admit her child to the point that she was having seizures in the hospital parking lot and that cut off oxygen to her brain and rendered her brain dead. Her (ex) husband is a reporter not directly under me since he writes for a different title but sometimes I get to manage him, depending on circumstances. I knew them from way back, during our newspaper days.

Anyway, the (ex) husband has been playing around and gotten a young reporter pregnant and there you go…Fast-forward to the current situation, the father has joint custody of the boy and he has the child on weekends. Now the boy—a child that has yet to have acquire/learn malice—told his mom that Tita Y (the “other woman” that his father is now living with; the boy still doesn’t know the truth) has been hurting him. The child has been telling his playmates that Tita Y always hurts him.

And the father is siding with the abuser, gaslighting his legal wife by saying she is teaching their son how to lie.

OMG!!! The child is four years old! He is so innocent! The fact that this friend is allowing the father to have access to their son is evidence that she is being fair and has no motivation to teach her son to lie. What for?

I told her to talk to her lawyer and ask for a court order to keep full custody of the child.

Today she ranted again that she is asking for child support and she didn’t get any positive response. The father always has some excuse.

I told N that do not expect, or keep your expectations low to keep your sanity. Your mental health is more important and squeezing blood out of stone will only anger you and will keep you from moving on. Since he is not giving financial support, you have 100% right to keep the child from seeing the father. Besides, the boy is also being abused by the mistress. “Remember, there is no law in the Philippines that would punish a parent who does not give child support. Better keep your son with you before he forms core memories that involved physical abuse from the mistress. That will surely wound him for the rest of his life,” I told her.

I also told her to be 100% financially independent because life is unfair to solo mothers. Dead-beat fathers will remain so until the day they die. Besides, the father is not doing well at work; I just received this morning the performance metrics of the editorial department for APAC and I saw his name in yellow highlight, which was a warning.

I told N that I had always been financially independent so breaking away didn’t hurt my pocket that much. I had just transferred houses—but there was minimal disruption since the running of household was still the same as the ex didn’t have any contribution to child-rearing, aside from zero financial support, even when we were still figuratively under one roof (but he was seldom there anyway).

“You are capable of earning as much as you did before, or even more than your ex. Go build yourself up again. Dream again,” I said. “The best revenge is us living the best life we can.”

“Thank you, CallMeCreation. Seriously, I need someone to verbalize things that I already know that I should do but because I’m in the denial stage, I find it difficult to do,” N said.

Dream again, I urged her. My tiny house was just a doodle on my sketchpad while I was building a dream. The what if…Because I was hurting so much from my last relationship that I now regret. Who knew that a year and a half later it would become a real house? This house helped me build my life again, I told her. Build yours.

And my daughter, Twin I, forgot her art kit this morning so I was forced to drive to their school this morning and take it to her. 🤦‍♀️

Which was in a way good because it forced me to work earlier than usual. I started sending emails to people, chatting with people on multiple messaging apps (setting up appointments), and do some admin work. I received a rejection email *sigh* so I must scrounge for more people to interview. I only had four stories in September—which was excusable given the shit I went through the last two months. But this time I need to pick up the slack and work doubly hard. I already have two floating appointments in Singapore and I still don’t know yet whether it’s safe for me to fly out again. I need to meet our oncologist first next week so I would know if we are already cleared from her cancer watchlist or not.

Right now I’m working overtime as I am live editing a story from Dubai about a Malaysian regulatory issue. The reporter is having a hard time understanding what the story is about since he is from Dubai. I have a long night ahead of me.