It’s the height of incompetence and arrogance of this government that has brought us to this situation. Yesterday we logged 15,310 new COVID-19 cases. Severe patients are already in tents and countless more are being turned away by hospitals because they could no longer cope and have no more facilities to take them in. Even corridors are filled with intubated patients. They don’t have enough ventilators.
I pray that none of my loved ones get infected.
Lord, have mercy on us. Especially the poor and vulnerable.
My veggies to save my sanity. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
My lettuce are doing fine after i transplanted them to a bigger pot. My pechay are slowly pushing their way up. I haven’t seen what happened to my kale. Probably it’s too hot for them to germinate.
My container garden. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I have to transplant some unidentified plants are crowding the pots. My okra plant is thriving at the back, so is my gabi (yam). The bell pepper is growing nicely, so are the several bird’s eye chilis (siling labuyo).
I think I’m going to try microgreens. I’m inspired by this video.
Tomorrow I will put on my gardening gloves and start propagating again. I no longer know what to do with my hands. I no longer know what to think.
I was chatting on WhatsApp last night with a colleague who just left my company last week. She told me about how she couldn’t take her manager anymore and she tolerated that abusive creature for four years before my colleague has finally called it quits. She’s supposed to have started her therapy today. I told her it’s smart of her to seek counseling after the shit she went through with her boss, whom I don’t have to directly deal with, thankfully.
This colleague also sensed that I’m almost at the end of my tether and she told me to jump before things get worse. With the way things how the new owner is running our company, it looks like things aren’t going to get better. I told her I will just have get my shit together first and get out of this funk before I could pivot. It’s hard to think straight with the lockdowns, the entire shit that is the pandemic, and this heartbreak. I need to be level-headed about this and make sure it’s not just the anger and grief that are doing the thinking for me. It’s also hard to make the jump when almost all companies are laying off people.
The right time will come, I told her. In the meantime, I need to do everything I can to stay sane.
Relief goods for a friend. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I have so much love to give but I no longer have the right to give it to the person I wanted to receive it so I channel it elsewhere. So I cooked for a friend whom I call a condominium-stranded individual (I’ve patterned it after the government’s term, locally stranded individual) and sent the food via Grab this afternoon. I knew that ordering food via Grab by tomorrow will be difficult because traditionally businesses shut down during Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. This is to give appreciation to this friend who always checked on me if I slept well and pulled myself out of my bed during the darkest days. He said he knows the road I’m traveling on now very well because he has been on this road when he broke up with his boyfriend some time ago. Days after J and I broke up, this friend took me out to lunch to cheer me up. Then last February, we had lunch again somewhere near Tomas Morato just to see how I am progressing because I’ve been shutting myself out of the world. In March, days before the cases started spiking, we dined al fresco in Makati with some friends in the industry just to check on each other. We all work for competing newswire agencies but it has never been a hindrance to our friendship that has been blossoming for 15 years now. We don’t see each other often but they’re there when I need them the most. Right after J and I talked in his condo for the last time in December, I drove straight to one of those friends’ house in Parañaque because I couldn’t face going home to the apartment that I used to share with J without going through some debriefing. I needed somebody to talk to, to make sense of what just happened. This friend is deathly afraid of Covid but she let me in her home and offered her spare bedroom for me to sleep in that night because it seemed like I was in no condition to drive all the way to QC. I declined and told her I need to go home that night because I’m just delaying the inevitable. I needed to be alone.
I have so much love to give. So I send it to people who do not reject it.
My muslin curtain. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I already finished one panel that is 2.5 yards long and 60″ wide. I’m already on my 2nd one. Well technically I already finished two panels but the other one is much shorter because that panel will be used for that section above my aircon.
Handstitches. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I’m even surprised at how my hand stitches look even and dainty. I sew my curtains while watching Youtube videos of small homes and alternative living setups, to make my brain occupied and not overthink about somebody.
Fruits and vegetables along CP Garcia Ave. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
So yeah, despite having a really bad night waking up at dawn because of a dream, I managed to ride my bike this morning to buy fresh vegetables because we’re already running low on supply. I wasn’t able to buy from my suki inside UP because the university is in a total lockdown since Monday. So my bike trip last week Thursday was my last ride there. God knows when they will open again. 🚲
Breakfast and lunch. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
That workout this morning wasn’t much but it made me hungry. It was freaking hot outside!!! Made myself ham sandwiches for breakfast and lunch. I’m still not losing weight.
Folded folding bikes of my girls. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
It’s a sad sight. My girls’ folded bikes are a reminder that it will be a long time before we can ride out again. Everything is depressing right now. I’m searching for places where I could catch some sunshine to make this dark world brighter.
As I told a colleague, this is the worst time to be nursing a broken heart because I can’t see my friends, can’t escape to anywhere (the four-day Anilao trip is cancelled indefinitely), can’t do anything but be stuck in this room with his ghost. I can’t watch movies because that too reminds me of the moments we watched movies together on iPad or on the TV screen in his Airbnb apartments. Gardening is gardening. Sewing curtains make my hands busy but it doesn’t make my mind occupied. It actually encourages introspection, which is the last thing I need right now. I don’t want to be overthinking the entire lockdown or else it will drive me mad.
We’re on the third day of ECQ a.k.a. No One Leaves the House. It’s dragging me down mentally and emotionally. I couldn’t bike or walk outside the 6-9 am window because I’m a nocturnal creature so I wake up late. I tried exercising every morning a couple of years ago but I always end up tired by midday, which is hard for me when I need full concentration during writing or editing. So now I’m stuck.
I haven’t had any in-person intelligent adult conversation in weeks. This is driving me nuts. I just want to randomly call friends but I know I would just be a nuisance to them so I haven’t done it. Been ranting about this government on Twitter for God knows how long. It’s maddening. I must stop doom-scrolling in the next few days to ease the tension in my mind and body.
I had been sick the past few days; it’s probably psychosomatic. Probably too high gastric acids due to stress. I just woke up with this gut-wrenching stomach pain that I associate with hyperacidity, an affliction I haven’t experienced again since 2014 when I had my gall bladder removed. Following that stomachache on Monday was the debilitating diarrhea that left me weak and almost dehydrated.
But I had to work yesterday. I edited one story and wrote one story as well. The day before I did an hour-long interview despite the pain and overall weakness that I felt.
Cat loft. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Again, thank God for cats. They’re my stress-relievers. It’s also a constant battle to keep Kimchi from climbing the curtains and going up the windows and the shelves.
Kimchi up again on the shelf. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Despite that, they’re good company and they always crave my presence and always beg to be let in my room and just lie on the floor to be with me. For them, I am their mommy.
Sushi keeping me company while I sew curtains to replace the ones destroyed by her sister. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I asked myself this question when I was analyzing the situation with my ex-partner, J. What we were was really a combination of so many layers, of so many things. One thing about us is that I felt like I was not part of his plans. I never figured in it.
One time we were watching this Indian movie about the ‘Pad Man’, the true to life story of a guy who invented low-cost menstrual pads for Indian women. He was ostracized by everybody (because, India) as menstruation is taboo and a man tackling that is double taboo. Anyway, J asked me if I would support him if he was Pad Man. I said, I would, all the way. Even if it sounds crazy, even if it is daunting, I will give all I got to support him
Which I did. I never discouraged him from anything that he was thinking he wanted to do. I helped him do the leg work. For everything. The co-working space idea, the medical cassette whatever that is, and the last one was investment banking and consultancy. I pulled all the stops and did whatever and supported him to be where he is now.
But then, I couldn’t see myself in this future he was building. He didn’t include me. I asked him the last time we talked face to face, where are you headed? I don’t know where you are, I can’t see you, I no longer know what’s inside your head.
Maybe he doesn’t know what he wants. But he knows what he doesn’t want. Me.
I may be wrong but part of his restlessness is brought about by this need to prove something to other people. I don’t know. I just feel that he has to put on a face to his family, especially when he hid himself on LinkedIn from his cousin after he quit the large firm almost 3 years ago. I asked why. He said I don’t want them to know I don’t have a job/not successful/whatever. Aside from that I always felt that he was on a race to something, that by xx time he should already yy.
Meanwhile, I am probably on a different plane. I don’t have anything to prove to anybody. I’m not on a race. I have a classmate who is a literal rocket scientist helping to launch satellites into space. Half of my classmates have PhDs or whatever. My siblings are PhDs and experts in their fields, and so are my parents. However, I don’t feel any urgency to follow their paths. I may aim to be the head for Asia Pacific for my company and I can achieve that if I put my mind to it but it’s not something I would be killing myself over for. It would look nice on my CV but if it happens, it happens but it’s not really the goal.
I don’t have that much chip on my shoulder professionally. I am my profession, which is also a vocation. I’m in that unique space where my job is my passion. Which is in some way limiting as well because I couldn’t leave it without being torn apart. At some point I would have to leave because I have two dependents and their father is not contributing financially to their upbringing. Staying as a journalist is not financially rewarding but it feeds my soul.
So do I have anything to prove to anybody now that I’m in my 40s? Do I feel some pressure that I should be this xxx by age yyyy? I don’t know, not really. It’s hard to set lofty career goals when you’re also the primary caretaker of your children. Their needs come first. Women, especially solo parents, most of the time dial back because they have to take into consideration how career advancement would affect the children. I honestly haven’t been on top of my children’s school work because my own team at work is struggling and I manage them remotely while I need to hit my personal goals at work at the same time. For the life of me, I don’t know how I would be able to manage them if I don’t have my helpers to do the household chores. I don’t have the mental space for anything else. So when the grief button is pushed at random times, my weak walls crumble, become inanimate for a day or two and I have to work my way back up again.
What do I want to prove? I don’t know. I just want to live peacefully and meaningfully. I no longer think about what others would think. I don’t have anything to prove to my mother and she accepts me for what I am and what I have achieved so far. I don’t need my siblings’ acceptance and approval. As long as we stay away from each other’s business, we’re cool. My children love me. I no longer think I need a partner to make me feel loved and important. I’m still working on this mantra but just thinking about the work it entails to have another person in my life is exhausting. Besides it would surely lead to heartbreak that I don’t have the capacity to carry anymore.
Everytime I step out, I am playing hide and seek with death (reports of lung opacity and intubation of 19 year old COVID-19 patients with no comorbidities mean everyone is fair game), reminding me of my mortality. It makes me realize I’m on borrowed time. On our deathbeds, we don’t say I wish I became the global head for this and that before I go… My dad, a few days before he died, told his friend that he can already go as he already made peace with his children and he had settled all the things he had to settle. He was already satisfied.
So what do I want to prove? Nothing. I just want my children to be good human beings. Nothing else.
We’re back to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) a.k.a strict lockdown where you need quarantine passes or IDs if you are an essential worker i.e. healthcare, food service, and logistics.
And just like last year, this stupid and incompetent government still doesn’t have contingency plans!!! The presidential spokesperson said wait for the details on Monday… WTF!!! why can’t they treat this with urgency?! People need to go to work on Monday and there are no clear rules on transportation, financial support for the most vulnerable…
But unlike last year, we are now logging 10,000 new COVID-19 cases the other day. And these new variants are overwhelming us as the government is bungling our vaccine procurement.
I knew I would be so distressed so good thing I was able to make it to the Fabric Warehouse along C5 before everything shuts down. I bought 18 yards of fabric to make into curtains. By hand. To destress. To relieve me of my anxiety.
I just sewed one panel tonight and finished it at 2 am today. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I have seven panels to finish until Easter Sunday so I guess I will be pretty occupied until April 4.
Since weekdays bleed into weekends and the distinction is getting blurred once more, I am putting more effort in cooking on weekends, just to make it distinguishable from workdays. So every weekend, I barbecue meat on skewers or chunks of chicken in sauce, grill stake, or do Korean barbecue… Just like what we did when J was still here.
Just because he’s no longer here doesn’t mean we can’t have good food regularly. I am getting better at starting the fire and have ember as soon as possible.
On a related note, the girls are now learning to eat spicy food bit by bit. Last week I ordered the spicy Korean fried chicken from Jjangkae along Kalayaan Ave just the other day. Yes, they struggled but at least it’s a vast improvement from before when they simply had refused anything with a hint of spice.
Spicy Korean fried chicken with side dishes. Photo by CallMeCreation.com.
Although this is not really spicy but at least they’re already eating yellow curry (either the Otogi brand or McCormick). It will take a long time before I would be able to serve Thai green curry or red curry. I still have all those Thai and Malaysian curry mixes (rendang!) here stuck in my shelf. Because no one eats them here except me and J.
Ah one of these days I’m going to cook them and send to friends who are stuck in condos with no proper home-cooked meals.
