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.
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.
US is full of racists and I understand, based on first hand stories and literature, that Asians are the invisible colors there. We tend to try our darned best to blend in and not raise hell.
From J, I learned that the affirmative action was a disservice to Asian Americans. They get left out. They get dismissed and are the least priority.
From my relatives, the stories are like the expectation is that they need to do well, extremely well, for them to be acceptable. There was no other way. Asians needed to work doubly hard so that they can achieve at least the same level of acceptability or success as the whites do.
What I miss about J is the dining table conversations we have about these things (well it was just me listening and him talking). The Atlanta shootings of Asian Americans would surely fire him up and he would be talking nonstop over breakfast about this and that. The photo of that Chinese grandma attacked in California would make him worry about his grandma and also his brother in Alabama, of all places.
They were actually the first thing on my mind when the killings in Atlanta happened.
Asian discrimination of Asians is present too and I’ve been a recipient of that. There was one time I cried when I was explaining to J why I didn’t like being in Singapore. He didn’t understand the hierarchy among Asians, him being Korean and all.
Since working with this xxx who looked down on Filipinos, he somehow got the idea where I was coming from. Why I had to assert myself, that I’m as good as everybody else. That our being poor is not an excuse to dismiss us that we are all gold diggers, incompetent, and brainless.
I remember a coworker remarking that I must have Chinese blood because I was skilled, very good in what I do, and well spoken. I say WTF 🤬 can’t I just be Filipino and just as good? That’s how low the view us.
I always get this: “Oh you’re not Filipino/can’t be Filipino. You’re fair and pretty or this and that.” WTF WTF WTF!
Yeah, racism is one of the evils of this life. It tastes bad.
Yesterday I had back to back webinars and calls and I was writing and editing in between. I barely had time to eat.
But it was good. It made up for the patapon days I had that dragged me down. I have to admit my blog post the other day riled me up when I recalled this young biatch of J’s and the treatment I received. I keep suppressing my emotions so I can move on but when they surface, it’s like being hit by a train.
Repeat after me: I deserve better. I deserve better. I deserve better.
What is better? Me. I should love me. I don’t need anyone. No one else would look out for me. No one else would love my children and accept them. Except me.
No more emotions. It makes me weak.
If there’s something that I’ve learned in the past 20 years is that there are things that I can control and I should let go of the things I can’t. And I shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.
I may be past the prime age for child-bearing but at least I have with me maturity that some 20-year-old girl can only acquire through time and experience. Maturity is not just taking on work responsibilities seriously, because, (WTF!) that is part of being an adult.
(*As a side note, J kept on singing about how glorious was his biatch of an employee, D, for being “so mature because she is taking work seriously” and he was full of praises for her while I who had done everything for him–from small stuff like folding his clothes to the big stuff like financially supporting him when he was still struggling, received nothing but disdain and he treated me like I’m nothing more than a cleaning lady and chauffer, and blamed me for every little thing. I remember it vividly, as I wrote in my journal sometime July or August last year*).
Part of the maturing process is the increase in internal locus of control and minimizing the external. Part of it is the mastery of the Prayer for Serenity. Part of it is the ability to take the focus off myself to shift to the bigger picture.
Anyway, what I’m driving at is, the 21-year-old me would have freaked out at what’s happening around me. I would be so focused on it that it would either make me catatonic or send me into hysterics–both of which would jeopardize all the things I have worked hard for.
Since I’ve been through hell and have scars to show for it, I now have learned to calm down and focus on the things I can control so that the road back to hell–if I have the misfortune to be back on that road–would be less bumpy and violent.
The government’s handling of this pandemic is a mess and the greed and incompetence of Duque and the rest of the Duterte administration is killing us all. The situation in the hospitals is indeed heartbreaking and scary. So in order for me not to lose track of what is important and get gobbled up by anger, I need to focus on the things I can control and let go of the things I can’t. Do this refocusing and purging daily.
Thank God for cats. They make me laugh.
My girls and I rode our bikes to UP campus yesterday (we had to walk with our bikes along some roads that had a lot of cars passing through though) and cycled around the campus. So yey, I don’t have to bring the car and fold and unfold bikes when we go to the university campus.
Riding from the apartment to UP and around no longer exhausts me–that’s a major concern. So maybe I need to do cross-training to supplement my exercise with walking two laps around the academic oval…
I need to exhaust myself to be able to sleep. Either I need to be spent or super busy so my brain no longer has the energy or capacity to think about him or the past and my heart needs to be the same as well so it wouldn’t spend its waking hours angry.
These are the longest three months of my life.
Another day without riding the bike today. I wasn’t in the mood yesterday because I had a home massage via Zennya (their therapists are in PPEs so more or less I feel safer). As a reward for a really crappy long weekend due to lack of sleep. Probably it was the tea I’ve been consuming lately that’s been keeping me up until the wee hours.
Today I was too engrossed writing a scoop and then editing in between. Being a workaholic has advantages, especially in times like this. (What is this this, you ask. The this I am pertaining to is my journey to self-healing and forgiveness of myself)
I’ve always been busy, never been bored. My hands always needed something to do, like sewing, writing, paper crafting, reading, reading, reading, and more reading. Even when I was on hospital duty (either my dad or mom required long hospital stays), I always had a cross stitch project with me, tons of books, and notebooks to write on (this was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before mobile Internet was democratized). Unfortunately, my cross stitch projects remind me that I stayed as a caregiver for a long time that’s why I was able to finish them in one go.
I can’t remember when was this but I think this was when I was in college when my mom, older sister, and I took turns in taking care of my father when stayed in the hospital for three months because he had a diabetic foot wet gangrene that almost cost his leg to be amputated. It required him to stay for that long because he needed to grow back his flesh then they grafted skin from his butt onto his leg to close the open wound. The cross stitch project I was able to finish that time is now hanging over the shelf containing my Totoro collection at the landing of our stairs.
I’ve been sewing face masks since February last year. At first it was due to necessity because there was a huge shortage of face masks because 1) Taal Volcano erupted, scattering ash all around; and 2) COVID. My first attempts were crude because I was just experimenting and I did everything by trial and error. I made the first batch of those for my girls and for him because they were my priority. My regret is that I wasn’t able to hem the seams properly so his masks are still fraying on the inside. I didn’t have pinking shears at that time and I still don’t have now (which reminds me to order from Lazada tonight). I was able to refine my masks only later and I wasn’t able to replace his masks before he dumped me. I only managed to make one improved mask, which I stuffed into his weekend bag the last time he was here at home.
The reason why I continued to sew masks and give away to friends is that it helps ease my anxiety. Imagine the huge burden I had at the height of the lockdown, I was trying to keep six people alive by my lonesome. I had nobody to share that responsibility. Yup, by my lonesome. Upon reflection–which is the only thing that I do whenever I sew because you know, the mind wanders when you sew–yes I carried the weight of the world at that time. I was the head of the household. It took so much gumption and nerves of steel not to freak out at that time. I had to have it together. People were getting depressed left and right; some even died by suicide because it was simply too much. But I could not afford to succumb to depression because I have had five people depending on me.
I am still sewing masks even though I shouldn’t because it encourages my mind to wander while I sew. So what I do is I watch Youtube videos like this below so my mind will not wander.
Because the whole point of making myself busy is to keep me from thinking about him and if I could, I would just want to erase him out of existence.
Now, you may think I’m an 80-year-old granny in a 41-year old body because I’m just sewing myself out of existence. To get myself out of my head, I ride my bike whenever I could. One of my girls asked for a bike and gave me her savings from Christmas presents she received so she can have her own bike. I bought my reporter-friend’s folding bike, which he was contemplating on selling to his TV crew (who in turn refurbish bikes to resell) because he is now very busy with a toddler son and an infant daughter and has no time to ride.
We rode last Sunday together in UP. I had to have training wheels attached to hers because I wasn’t able to teach her properly how to ride a bike. By the looks of it, it will take us a while before I could have the trainers removed.
Hopefully by next month we can have our first dive in six months. I need to book a resort, buy new flippers for the three of us, and have my COVID test. (Ugh! The endless poking on my nostrils!)
So yeah, I’ve been a kickass journo and editor today and will be tomorrow, and the next day, and the following day.
Because I am no one else’s sugar mommy anymore.
(*Oohh yes, the bitterness and anger are dripping from that sentence above. It won’t go away anytime soon*)