https://www.instagram.com/p/CNLKr3BgzNo/?igshid=3hooleqvryh5
As I said before, when anger hits me, it hits me hard. To the point that I regretted that I loved him that much. To the point that I wished that I never met him.
Because you know, it’s hard. I just want peace. I just want to be left alone. I just want to be… Just be…
I just want this to be over. Because it hurts bad. I don’t deserve this.
A doctor cycling last Sunday was arrested by a stupid policeman for not wearing a face shield while riding. Of course the doctor resisted arrest since the DOH and IATF already issued memos that bike/motorcycle riders are exempted from wearing a face shield because this is more of a hazard than a protection.
Incidents like this add to my roiling anger deep inside. I called the attention of my colleagues in local media outfits like CNN Philippines, Philippine Star, etc. so that they would be able to cover this. The Philippine National Police is the center of all things corrupt and stupid since 2016. I just can’t stand this. I no longer know how to contain this anger.
Meanwhile, I’m trying my best to help in the donation drive for Silungang Molave, which has been turned into an isolation facility in UP Diliman. I spoke yesterday with Ms. Perlynn and asked for e-money and bank accounts where we can deposit our donations. She also said their priority now is to secure N95 masks and latex gloves.
Paymaya 09173009064 Aleli B Bagawan and GCash 09173009064 Ma. Fatima B. Sapno.
A cousin has just sent money from abroad and I sent half to UP and the rest will be used to buy masks and face shields for delivery guys and to hospitals that may need mattresses or PPEs.
So last night I slept again very late (2 am-ish?) I was booking my vaccine schedule and what I got was 11 April. My neighbors, one of whom is a cancer patient and her mom has several co-morbidities, were able to have theirs today and they were quick. Unfortunately, the venue I chose is one of the busiest and my neighbor said it took her classmate 5 hrs of waiting even if you booked your slot and got assigned to a specific time. So I may have to rebook this again because the 11th is my daughters’ birthday and I can’t be away for 5 hrs.
I booked via EZConsult, Zuellig Pharma’s telemedicine platform that the Quezon City government is using. It’s easy to use and hopefully the backlogs in the vaccination centers would be ironed out soon. I also need to go to a pulmonologist by Friday so that my medical records can be pulled out of the polyclinic near my house where my recent records are. I need to present a medical certificate that I have chronic respiratory disease i.e. asthma to show at the vaccination center. Good thing also I scanned all my past Rx including Symbicort, which is used for asthma and COPD. I belong to A3 (18-59 years old with co-morbodities) that’s why I should be qualified to be included in this batch. I’m not really eager to get the China vax but you have to get what you can. I’m a single parent and my children have no one else but me.
I’m also preparing for the event that there might be COVID home care at some point so I will have to buy 1) pulse oximeter, 2) disposable and washable PPEs, 3) look for vendors of oxygen tanks, 4) stock up on flu and asthma medicines. The first two items can be ordered via Lazada. 3 and 4 can be obtained from Mercury. Being prepared can’t hurt because Philippines’ healthcare system is collapsing.
Doctors’ group laments ‘doomsday’ situation in Metro Manila hospitals
This guy is a partylist congressman, who is what I can call a political parasite/whore without any shame at all. I had interviewed him in the past a couple of times but I didn’t produce any story after those interviews because there was no substance at all. Such a waste of space.
Anyway, he has been spreading all over social media that he is freely giving away Ivermectin as cure for COVID-19. This idiot 1) wasted people’s money buying an anti-parasitic drug for animals that 2) could harm people taking it, especially with the wrong dosage. This is what the US FDA has to say about this:
What we need are vaccines, not anti-parasitics drugs for horses! I just want to hit his face with my classmate’s urn.
Meanwhile, I’m presenting my haul from the last two Lazada sale (3.3 and birthday sale)…I got 480 pcs of sticker tiles to make my ugly bathroom more tolerable. My landlady didn’t even fix the bathroom when we moved in. I refuse to spend so much for tiles to make my bathroom more presentable. Even this already cost me PHP 3,000.
I just have to solve the problem of the floor tiles. I don’t know if re-grouting will solve its dingy-ness or I should waste money for something that is not mine and have the floor re-tiled. I don’t think my landlady will be willing to shoulder an expense like that for aesthetic reasons. Maybe I should just buy more exchange traded funds (ETF). I bought it at PHP 100 per share last week and now it’s at PHP 98.35. I have to even out my portfolio.
So I have to hold out and make do with what I have and be satisfied with just repainting/refreshing the walls of the apartment. I should save up until I have my lot and tiny house constructed. My friend just told me the other day that there is a 150 sqm lot that is for sale somewhere in our hometown for PHP 1.6m, which is a bit expensive given its location. Maybe I should look around some more. I wish I can drive to Anilao and check out some lots…
Patience. Patience. No one is chasing me. A better option will come up.
Another friend asked me, are you still angry? I said, hmmmm somewhat. If my anger is triggered, then I will be a seething tiger and I’ll be in a bad mood for two days. But most of the days I try to bury it and try to move on. I just pray that he doesn’t catch COVID and his lover doesn’t mangle his home care if ever gets sick of it–he has an abnormally high risk of heart attack due to elevated LDL. If she turns out to be that young bitch, then I don’t know if she can handle 24/7 care of another person while she is still very much under the supervision of her parents.
Taking care of critically ill loved ones requires you to put brakes on your own life. Their needs come first before your own. I’ve had experience taking care and raising premature infants in the neonatal ICU (they allowed me to stay there for more than a month since I had two infants). My children battled sepsis, pneumonia, and a host of other things for more than a month and everyday I didn’t know if they would live or die. I was running around Metro Manila and Laguna looking for blood for transfusions. I diligently monitored their O2 sats and heartbeats every moment I could while watching various tubes sticking into their bodies that were barely bigger than my hand. I didn’t cry at that time; I could not afford to be emotional during those days. I learned how to be level-headed and be lucid in times of intense emotional moments. I’ve also nursed my parents, especially my father, when he was in and out of the hospital for years. I don’t know how I was able to do those things. I’ve schooled myself to be a highly functional individual and learned to compartmentalize so I could cope. That’s why when my father died, I was the only one who was functioning in my family even if I only had three hours of sleep that entire week. I facilitated the legal procedures, the paperwork, the arrangements for the wake, the housekeeping, the financials, the cremation, etc. Then I crashed after all was said and done. I crash only when I allow myself to crash.
So would you help if he gets sick, my friend asked. I said if I’m asked to, I will. But I just wish he’d just leave the country soon because he’s going to be safer elsewhere than here because this country is going to the dogs. You still love him, don’t you, my friend said. I told him, that’s already a given, I’ve already come into terms with that; you don’t easily pull a switch and that is that. Unlike J, who just–poof!–love is gone. I wondered if he really even loved me. Maybe it was just infatuation.
I am just waiting for the moment that I will become indifferent. It has been almost four months. Four fucking long months. I wish i could just fast-forward time and be done with it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 🚲
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.
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.
Maybe I need to rescue another cat 🐈
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.
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.
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.
