Category Archives: mental health

Messed up

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My body is still battling with this weird internal clock of mine. I had trouble sleeping last night that at 6 am today I was still awake. I decided to go downstairs and tackle long-forgotten chores. I stored our Christmas decor in that closet under the stairs but I had to take out a lot of crap before I can shove it in. The crap got brought outside our gate for the dumpster divers. Then I cooked rice and steamed mantou before finally I was tired enough to fall asleep at past 7 am.

Woke up at 10 and cooked lunch.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

After lunch I slept again until almost 5 pm.

I feel like a vampire. I don’t know if this is long-Covid, withdrawal symptoms from my alprazolam that my shrink is weaning me off from, or anxiety because of my blog entry yesterday. My body is so messed up right now.

Because I am basically a zombie today, I decided not to cook dinner. I ordered pizza from Yellow Cab.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Good thing I was too sleepy or else I would have gone to SM Marikina and would have shopped. I already see a pattern here. Whenever I get upset, I wanted to shop for crap. Some kind of serotonin boost, to make me feel better about myself. Because I was feeling sorry for myself yesterday, remembering how loathed I was/am.

The thing here is I shouldn’t be seeking sources of serotonin boosters because I have another medication for that (escitalopram) that balances this out.

Staying cooped up really makes things worse.

It’s a wonder that one person/trauma can really affect one’s life, no? It’s so fucked up that I want to scold myself for being so weak like that. It’s so unfair too. What did I do to deserve this?

Ok stop it. I need to get out more tomorrow.

Coffee conversations

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I miss having coffee conversations. After an event/coverage, my journo friends and I usually work in some coffee shop in Makati or Ortigas. In-between typing our stories are conversations that can be mundane or these can be mature talks about life.

It has been a long time since I’ve had that. I miss it.

Everybody’s sick right now. Friends are posting their Covid-positive results on FB or are counting the days they would be out of quarantine. So it’s very scary to venture out right now. After my bout with Covid last year… Nope. I can’t even go out to the neighborhood Bo’s Coffee to change scenery to write. I’ve had another excruciating afternoon polishing a story I did with our new hire. I think I need better mental stimulation other than reading news.

I think I’ll cheer myself up by buying flowers tomorrow and set up a working space outside our front door so I won’t be too cooped up. I’ve been having conversations with my cats lately 🤦🏻‍♀️

Labor

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Writing a longish article today was super laborious that it felt like giving birth. I wanted to crack my head on the table just to get things going.

And I have three more articles to go. Why I’m in a rut like this again?! 🤦🏻‍♀️

I need to go out.

Where will I go? Yesterday we logged 37k new cases. People around my apartment are coughing. My other neighbors caught the omicron bug.

I need to drive tomorrow. Writer’s block again.

Earlier tonight I was able to open my Shutterfly account, which is a repository of all my digital photos in the early 2000s. And I saw these:

My sister just called him Baby so the name stuck. He was our cat who stayed with my dad in his room when he died in his sleep. He didn’t leave my dad until my brother came. He was such a beautiful cat. A week after my dad was cremated, this cat just ran away.

He reminds me of my fat cat, Kimchi, who currently has an infection on her right eye (see the pink rims?). It’s such a labor of love catching her and restraining her so that we can give her eye drops at least twice a day. She’s such a grumpy cat.

A few words of wisdom

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A friend just sent me this via FB Messenger a few minutes ago. She and I are both trying to heal from bad breakups. She even flew to Maryland from here to be with the guy but he just took her for granted. She went to NY and stayed with her brother to heal. She says she will be coming back home here if things don’t pan out there.

I told her, the reason I’m going back to my past is to rediscover some things I lost.

I may be wrong, but this is how I am coping with this trauma. This is how I pick myself up when I sink into my episodes. Because when you have trauma, the triggers will surely be pulled and the bullet will go straight into your head. Healing from trauma is managing how to get the bullet out of your head. Later I would learn how to dodge the bullet when the triggers are pulled.

In the meantime, I am sewing these masks so that my co-hosts and I would have uniform masks on Saturday for our high school alumni homecoming. Our class shirt is light blue so these teal masks are unisex and would go with our shirts. Sewing these keeps me busy and helps me remove the bullet from my head. Especially now that my first death anniversary is coming up on the 17th-18th–that is already next week!

Hand-sewn masks. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Picking my brain

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I don’t feel ok.

Just had a session with my doctor this evening and i feel like my brain was drilled open and the things that I had been burying were hauled out. The things I keep suppressing burst out like a geyser.

It’s not your fault, she said. Stop whipping yourself. Give your self some credit. Be kind to yourself. He was just the wrong person. It’s not your fault; it’s just you had a lot of love to give–that’s all. You have to love yourself more, she said.

“Did he apologize to you?”

“No, not really. It’s a ‘sorry’ that went along the lines of ‘Sorry, it’s just that.’ But not really apology for hurting me. For using me. For his treatment of me towards the end that sent me over the edge,” I told my doctor. “But I have to reconcile with myself that I will never get that so I deal with it. I have to accept that I won’t get answers. You don’t get closure from someone else; you get your closure from within yourself.”

“What are you doing to get out of your episodes?”

“During lockdowns I couldn’t do anything much. Not even go biking to clear my head. Then I got Covid that further trapped me indoors and in my brain. Now that I can drive, I can see friends from way back. Those who knew me before shit had hit the fan. That’s why I’m going back to my roots; to what I was–to who I really am. To the things that made me like myself. It’s my way of loving myself,” I said.

“Good that you are able to pick yourself up now,” she said.

She then lowered my dosage of the anti-anxiety med, which may have been causing me to get sleepy more than necessary. She asked me if I could already sleep on nights I’m off it (because I now take it once every two nights). I said yes, I think so I can now.

I no longer wake up every hour, I said. Covid was bad; I was asleep 75% of the time but it was good that I made up for the months I haven’t been sleeping. It felt good,” I remarked.

Nap time. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Just like today, I was joined by my cats during my after lunch sleep. I always get sleepy by midday. Because of this I will just take my anti-anxiety med once every three days.

But my anti-depressant will still be there during my entire 12-month therapy. Hopefully I won’t have triggers by then. I wish the things that hurt me and had killed me over and over will just be a bad dream.

Confronting trauma

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Exactly a year ago today.

I have to confront these feelings again that I try to bury because whenever I get triggered, I go through the cycle again of being at the bottom and then struggle climbing my way up from that dark hole.

As a reply to all the things I wrote on this same date last year: NO, he does not miss me, he does not regret it and I just disappeared (no fading away). That’s it. That day I was writing about has never come and it will never come.

Confront these feelings. Don’t run away from it, don’t hide. It’s for my own good. There will come a time that I won’t get triggered anymore. That it won’t hurt anymore. That it’s not my fault and he wasn’t just a nice person. He was a coward for not telling it to my face and resorted to just breaking up with me on the phone, didn’t even give me that dignity after all the things I’ve done for him.

I have to confront these feelings head on.

I have to admit that writing yesterday’s entry got me triggered again. I stayed in bed the entire morning and I finally pushed my butt to get on my seat to work after lunch. My shrink was right, my trigger is anything connected to my feelings about him. It bogs me down. It’s not stress about work that keeps me from writing–it’s this trauma.

I have to fight this trauma.

man in black shirt and pants standing on the floor
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

My kids are preteens now. They’re starting to get pimples and their bodies have started to change. They have grown so much that the top of their heads would soon reach mine. And yet, a part of them are still children. Like how they jumped up and down my bed, damaging a part of my new bed frame.

At the welding shop. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

So I had that part of the frame welded and reinforced at a shop near our old house. Now my bed no longer creaks, thank goodness.

I have a towel hanger that has collapsed already. I’ll bring it to this shop for reinforcement.

Meanwhile, Kimchi is begging for some petting.

So fluffy! Photo by CallMeCreation.com

She’s so squishy! She’s a stress reliever.