Oyen didn’t come home tonight. I think I was able to feed him this morning before I went out for my check up with my doctor. I hope he hasn’t been hit by a car since he wanders off farther than his siblings. The other kitties just stay within our compound. I also hope no snake bit and ate him up 😭 or a menacing male cat has gotten to him.

I went looking for him in the dark but he’s nowhere to be found.

Oyen come home!

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I can’t keep up with all the cleaning and cooking. If I cook in the morning, I would have to order out for lunch or dinner. I just can’t keep cooking three times a day 😩. Yesterday, I transformed leftover meatloaf into omurice for breakfast that turned into brunch. Then after church I ordered crispy liempo (for the girls) and siomai (for me) for dinner.

I couldn’t have fatty food because I have to keep my triglycerides and cholesterol down. Although my last bloodwork done showed I was fine (except for the pancreatitis in December), I still need to watch what I eat. I was supposed to have my blood test done this morning but I overfasted so I have to push it back for tomorrow. Aside from my gynecologist’s preliminary diagnosis of impaired glucose tolerance, my new gastroenterologist is also checking if my acute pancreatitis was just caused by too much alcohol (because of the high school homecoming drinking) or I really have an impaired pancreas due to worse causes (I hope not). So she added lipase to my long list of tests for tomorrow. If it comes back elevated, then I would have to do another CT scan. Same for the enlarged liver; she is checking if it’s alcohol-induced or I must do a radical change of my diet.

*Funny, I just checked if I had lipase test done to me in December and there was none. Same for the triglycerides LDL, HDL, etc. Geez, that’s why I don’t like that first gastro doctor 😡*

She said it’s not caused by bile duct blockage since my CT scan was clear. It’s not caused by gallstones since I no longer have a gall bladder. So it’s alcohol or high triglycerides.

I think it’s my alcohol abuse over the past 4 years, especially right after the breakup with the last ex. I was able to keep my triglycerides down after he was gone. I controlled red meat consumption after the blood work requested by my psychiatrist prior to medicating me showed that I had elevated triglycerides and bad cholesterol. Subsequent tests showed it went back to normal after refraining from red meat.

My prayer and fasting during Twin A’s hospitalization last year worsened my situation. Hyperacidity went from bad to worse because I just consumed fruit juices during my fast. Because in December I got in a very celebratory mood with my high school classmates—kablam!= Pancreatitis and enlarged liver/fatty liver. 

Fatty liver was also no surprise because I have PCOS. Ugh! PCOS also causes insulin resistance 😭

I really, really have to take care of my pancreas or else I may end up with chronic pancreatitis and then pancreatic cancer. 🤦🏻‍♀️

This means I would have to prepare separate food for myself. Fish, chicken, and veggies only.

Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Kim was a meme to me until today. Like he was the epitome of “there is always a better Asian than you” or “the Asian kid you don’t want your Asian parents to meet.” He is a Navy SEAL (sniper and medic), medical doctor, and now an astronaut before the age of 40. Without knowing his story, I assumed that he just went to become an overachiever because his parents were the typical Asian Americans who aren’t satisfied with their children just being mediocre, because they need validation to be accepted in white American society (well, I have half of family living in the US so I know their stories).

I was so wrong.

Jonny Kim is a survivor. His parents were first-generation Korean-American immigrants who brought so much emotional baggage with them to the US. His maleducated father (he didn’t know if his father even finished high school back in Seoul) was an alcoholic who was battling so many demons. At 18 years old, two months before high school graduation, Kim had to physically wrestle with his father to get the gun away from the latter because he was intent on killing his mother during one very bad drunken rage. The father managed to bludgeon Jonny with a dumbbell and as his head bled, the father probably woke up from his rage and fled. The mom called 911 and there was an altercation with the police and his father was killed.

He loved his father but he was deathly afraid of him. It’s a confusing emotion, which I guess some kids of alcoholic fathers bear (I do). Kim said he was a very angry man at that point but was weak and couldn’t stand up against the person he feared the most. He wanted to protect his mother and younger brother from his abusive father but he knew he couldn’t until he gets stronger and braver. As early as 16 years old, he knew college wasn’t for him, even though he was an A-level student, because he wanted to become a Navy SEAL to get rid of his weakness. So when his father died, what he felt was mostly relief. He didn’t have to protect his mother and brother from his father anymore but at that point he was just months away from going to Navy bootcamp.

He joined the most elite team of soldiers the US military has because of selfish reasons, as he put it. For others the reason was 9-11, for him it was his desire to be stronger to protect the ones he loved. Later he became a combat medic once he passed BUD/S because he looked for an easiest way in to join the special warfare team (“become a medic corpsman” was the advice). After he formally joined his team, Kim felt—for the first time—that he belonged, which he said something he didn’t feel while growing up. He said he didn’t belong anywhere.

His decision to become a physician (Harvard) stemmed from his desire to help his brothers in combat, so he can keep them alive. This came from his experience in Iraq where his buddy was hit in the face and as the medic, he was the one responsible for assisting the military physician (Army) on camp. Because he was just 21 years old at that time, he couldn’t overpower the Army doctor (something about the decision of the Army doctor that was wrong and it wasn’t the right treatment for someone with facial fractures and later realized the situation was way above his head), so they wasted precious time and they could have sent the casualty to the base camp for surgery much earlier. Kim’s buddy became blind and went through so many surgeries thereafter and died. Kim’s biggest regret was that he wasn’t able to do so much for his buddy, and while he was attending to him, another friend from his platoon was also killed in combat and he wasn’t there for him. He said he could have saved him (as a medic).

He said he doesn’t know if he would die for his country, but without a doubt, he would die for his brothers in combat. The brotherhood in SEALs pushed him to become a physician.

According to Kim, he didn’t really set out to become a doctor and astronaut—everything was “an accident.”

I’m not sure if Jocko Willink (the interviewer) was the platoon leader of Team 3 at that time but it seems like that. He said that during that fateful August when they lost many of SEALs (same with the Army) in Ramadi, Iraq, Jocko saw the very bloodied Kim kneeling, washing the blood off his friend’s helmet. It was a poignant image that stuck with him. Jocko was the one who wrote the letter of recommendation endorsing Kim to Harvard Medical School.

The point I’m driving at is, Kim’s motivation for achieving what he has achieved and trying to achieve is mainly his need to cope with/from trauma. It’s trauma response. His abusive childhood could have turned him into a bad egg but kudos to his mom for raising an upright man. I think him being raised in the church also helped a lot because his language (“the light”) was very Christian. He said he had so much anger in his youth but he didn’t hate his father. He understood why his father was like that. I don’t know if that understanding came with forgiveness but I think Kim already made peace with that.

And OMG, he is so humble. I think guys in the SEALs special warfare ops were taught to keep their head low all the time. Jocko, to his credit, could look as tough and egocentric as Joe Rogan but he is very respectful as an interviewer. He never cuts off his interviewees.

The first I read about Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Kim was on LinkedIn. I thought, is this guy for real???

Yes, he is very real. With so many traumas to bear.

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I know how it is growing up with an alcoholic father. I told my mother, not too long ago, that I think we his descendants have inherited his mental issues or whatnot. I told her my father has an undiagnosed clinical depression (at the minimum) or he was bipolar. He had so many demons, and his wild mood swings were scary. He admitted to me one time, towards the end of his life, that he was always drunk because it was the only time he was happy. That hurt my mother so much because it seemed like he was never happy with her.

But I think I get what he said. He used alcohol to numb his pain, he was chemically treating his depression with alcohol. He was trying to chase serotonin when he was drunk. Because you know, going to a psychiatrist wasn’t a thing then.

Speaking of doctors, I just saw my gynecologist last Friday and we talked about me getting off my meds and had been “clean” for two years. It sprung from my comment about being on the pill still despite having no partner because it regulates my hormones that go wild due to PCOS (so I can have a more regular menstrual cycle), I have less dysmenorrhea, and my mental state is much better than when I’m off it. My doctor agreed that it’s all part of having PCOS and she wants me to continue with the pills so my transition to perimenopause until menopause is smoother in the years to come. The conversation touched on the time I suffered from post-partum depression (PPD) that I didn’t tell her about because I didn’t know I should tell her at that time. She told me that those who had PPD are prone to having depression later in life. Just like when one had gestational diabetes is more prone to having full-blown diabetes later in life (like my younger sister).

For now she diagnosed me with impaired glucose intolerance (based on the labs I’ve shown her from the last time I saw her) and I would be going through a battery of tests this week while I’m on leave. She ordered me to have the whole abdominal ultrasound just to see if my pancreas and liver are still enlarged as my CT scan during my hospitalization in December showed. However, I will see a new gastroenterologist tomorrow so I would hold off with that ultrasound and see what she will say.

So anyway, about having a manic-depressive father who chemically treated himself by getting drunk and going into rage, I know the feeling of being so scared of a loved one that you could only cower in fear in your bed as he goes into his rage-filled drunken rants that could be heard around the neighborhood. I remember that one time that my brother had to shield my mother from my drunk father and my father almost punched bro but he caught himself in time. I remember another time I was thrown by him across the floor for being a difficult teenager (I threw a stapler against a mirror that broke into pieces).

I never knew what having a “normal” father was like. I harbored complicated feelings about him up to this day. I loved him and grieved when he died, but at the same time I was relieved that we no longer had to walk on eggshells around him. He mellowed during the last 5 years of his life, well because he only had 30% of his heart muscles working at that time after his massive heart attack. It was as if God had given him a few years to mend fences.

Along with it is the co-dependency relationship that enables this alcoholism. That’s the one I grew up with and as my first psychiatrist said, I learned co-dependency from my mom. My father’s narcissistic personality disorder is also the reason why I have this low self-esteem growing up. I always had to prove myself that I am worthy of love, that I always had to win him over, so at least he would love me. But no, it was always about him and my mother enabled that. We always had to adjust to him. This caused me to always seeking validation from the opposite sex. It is also the reason why I allowed myself to sleep on the floor in that tiny bit of space at the foot of the bed while the ex slept on the real bed because I thought lowering myself to that level, sacrificing my comfort, would make him stay.

That was so wrong on so many levels.

We arrived here with our entire lives packed in boxes on the 16th of May last year. For the rest of the month, I was navigating through boxes and crates of our stuff. By June, I was able to tame the chaos but we were still unpacking, sorting, throwing or giving away stuff. My staircase was still being finished, my laundry area was still dirt.

One year later, I no longer have boxes, things are off the floor now, but I still don’t have a vegetable garden. All the things I told myself I would be doing didn’t really materialize. I didn’t realize that all of my time would be eaten up by cleaning, cooking, and keeping chaos to a minimum. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Being near family is a blessing and a curse. Skirmishes arise, like the matter of foster cats, so it is a good thing my walls are thick and soundproof so it feels like a totally different world out here.

Giving my girls more independence is much easier here since they don’t have to depend on me driving them to places all the time. They can move about on their own as everything is walkable or a short jeep ride away.

I’m still getting used to this life. I’m not used to having to chase businesses, like salons and car wash places, as they close by 5 pm. I have forgotten that they keep provincial hours here; I’m so used to Metro Manila where businesses can service customers until 7 or 8 pm, restaurants can be open until 9 pm or 10 pm. There are no more jeeps at 7 pm here. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I don’t remember being bothered by this when I was still living here 25 years ago.

So far I’m loving it here. I didn’t realize the extent of my exhaustion of the city could be this bad.

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I don’t need to justify my existence.

I don’t have to work so hard…I may lose all the joy and playfullness in life, making it not worth living.

It’s explained here in this reel, which is a part of a longer podcast about validation and living a better life.

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A post shared by Dr Rangan Chatterjee (@drchatterjee)

This need for validation was the one that screwed me up in the first place. I sought validation from the wrong people and I ended up dying. I killed a part of me. However, the moment I chose me by never begging for someone to return or totally cutting off communication is a way to wean me from seeking validation from others. Otherwise, I would continue to be a doormat and be used over and over.

It’s the simplest of joys that could erase the need for validation. Choose yourself—make yourself happy.

I have seen, I have been
to places far and deep in my mind only to find
Comfort in your Strangeness

For all the mistakes and trials we’ve been through, we can only forge forward.

This is the reason why I am ok being single. Nope. If all the men I will be meeting are like this NFL buffoon here or user narcissists like my exes—I swear I am never going to want to try another relationship. I’m good where I am now.

God have mercy on the women they are with right now.

I fear for my daughters though. They haven’t had any good model of what a healthy love is. How a good relationship between a man and a woman looks like, a relationship that has a healthy dose of respect for each other. All they have seen is me being taken advantage of and treated like dirt. I don’t want them to fall into the same trap.

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Meanwhile, I tried to push my luck today. But nope, still a couple of mistakes. This is still unfinished. I should make the leaves on the edge of that tree silhouette darker. I should try experimenting different values to indicate ripples on the water.

Ah well, that’s why this is on a watercolor sketchbook because this is my practice book.

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I’m so tired. Only one day more before I go off my medical leave. I need to finish one more article for editing tomorrow then I’m off!!!

But first dinner. Potato dill soup. Because we need something comforting on an exhausting day like this. My kids are also exhausted because the school year is about to end soon. They’re rushing projects and next week is their final exams.

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I’m excited to see this, to see how they have translated the musical from stage to movie. I want to hear Elphaba’s piece d’ resistance while she is suspended on air.

It’s time to try defying gravity
I think I’ll try defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye, I’m defying gravity
And you won’t bring me down

I just wanted to paint, sketch, sew—indulge in my many creative endeavors without having to worry about finances. I would still work to earn a little bit extra but I want to just have the financial freedom, by living off my investments and savings, so that I would not be pressured to hold down a job that I’m no longer enjoying.

That’s the main tenet of the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement. I had been reading about this for years, starting with Financial Samurai, Mr. Money Moustache, JD Roth (Get Rich Slowly)–and of course, The Millionaires Next Door.

Some of them are featured here in this New York Times article last week. I didn’t realize that there are now several iterations of FIRE that it got me confused.

This got me thinking again. I’ve written here some time ago that I shouldn’t be emotionally tied to my job so I wouldn’t be so pissed at management or at my boss…Of course I’m not successful at that.

But now I should heed that thought more so I don’t have to rush and take the next available job just to alleviate the stress. Just use this job to sock away money and to double my investments, especially my balanced global mutual fund. It has been giving me dividends every month, surprisingly.

If a better opportunity comes along, then I will take it. The pay should be a vast improvement over what I have right now so I can carve out 75% of my income and put them into investments. Then I can reach FIRE status before I become 65 years old.

For now I will use my income from my side gig (that I will start last week of May) to buy bonds or mutual funds invested in fixed income assets or a combination of equities and fixed income. I will try to get another gig to gain experience and income that I could shove into my existing porfolio so I can accelerate my savings/investment rate.

It helps that I don’t have consumer debt or mortgage. I eliminated rent by building my own tiny home with the help of investments. My house is already paid for with cash. No 20 to 30-yr mortgage.

The article reminded not to fall again into the trappings of consumerism and remain frugal so I can have more financial freedom.