I now have somewhat sunken cheeks or my cheekbones became more prominent and my face more pointed. I did not weigh myself because it’s too exhausting to excavate my weighing scale under my bed. Not being able to eat well for two weeks will do that to you.
I call it the Covid weight-loss program.
But then–kapoof! I celebrated today with food because I was able to publish again today and edit three stories. It got out of hand though…
No meat. Vegetable salad, pinangat (taro leaves in coconut milk and chilis), noodles and a bit of omurice. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
To celebrate the fact that I can already taste some food, I wanted something spicy and so I had pinangat that some Bicolano friends of mine sent me when I was in the middle of my Covid-induced sleep marathon. I ate a lot tonight so I have to refrain from doing that if I want to keep my current post-Covid weight.
I am now used to not having breakfast and only a shot of Berocca to start my day. I should keep my Covid appetite.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll try some crunches, if I am not going to chase my breath. But fixing my dinner tonight took a lot of effort on my part and it kind of left me breathless so let’s see.
My boss couldn’t help it. She messaged us on MS Teams, flabbergasted, after reading the news that boxer Manny Pacquiao is running for president next year. And other clowns like Panfilo Lacson and Tito Sotto are also vying for the president and vice president seats. Then here comes wishy-washy opportunist Manila Mayor Isko Moreno and this Willy Ong (where did he come from???) announcing their candidacy yesterday.
Isko’s announcement crumbles the idea of a united opposition. I guess he is another weapon by the Marcoses so the opposition under Leni Robredo’s banner–if she decides to run for presidency–would be broken. He is, after all, a politcal butterfly. Isko knows he doesn’t have the machinery to win but if he is under the good graces of the Marcoses, his future by 2028 would be assured if Bongbong–God forbid!–wins next year.
And Duterte is running for VP, without a president yet, so he will be assured that graft cases and ICC human rights cases would not be heaped upon him if an ally wins the presidency.
How do we solve this problem of ever worsening politics in this country? Everyone should probably read the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, so the intelligentsia would understand that we are not the ones who should be teaching the masses but rather we join them in learning how to get out of this oppression through their own experiences and social construct. I first learned about this during my theater + activism years, when we have “teach-ins” and when I attended classes for community theater. It’s not easy; it would take a revolution to change all this. (And I now sound exactly like my father!)
I don’t know how we would end this rotten system.
Meanwhile, I’ve been getting better but I easily get tired. Today is the first time in two weeks I went out of my room to take a shower and do my bathroom business at day time. I had ordered a new car battery to be delivered and installed at home because my old one died and my car wouldn’t start. I edited a story and wrote my own story, albeit a simple one, without my brain bleeding. I still had this headache after lunch and tried to sleep but I couldn’t so I just stared at the ceiling, at my ipad, at my cat.
I had been imbibing Berocca the past two weeks, the supplement that helped me get over the flu-like symptoms of Covid, especially the sniffles.
Berocca, every Philippine business reporter’s friend. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Every reporter I know has this in her/his bag when we still roamed the metro digging for stories. We still worked even if we were sick. Nowadays it sounds so reckless…Oh wait, I’m working even if I am sick. Oh well.
One of my best recent discoveries on Youtube is Rajiv Surendra, a very curious and very creative person who is like a Renaissance man. His enthusiasm for art was like that of mine before I lost myself in ugly relationships. Rajiv, however, is more talented than I am and I just attended classes and apprenticeship because I could, not because I was talented.
I remember attending writing workshops in Philippine High School for the Arts, script writing for play workshops, theater directing workshops, theater workshops, song writing workshops–all classes and workshops I could attend because I was curious and wanted to learn. Because I wanted a creative outlet. Just because.
Watching Rajiv reminded me of those times that I got excited by art, by beautiful craftsmanship, by learning new skills. I want that again–that zest for life. I remember I used to make my own writing pads, my own notebooks (I learned book binding in school), and I used to have sketchpads and watercolor notebooks with me. I lost all that.
I suddenly realized that I’ve been dead for 20 years.
Now that I live solo (I mean without a partner), I can rediscover that part of me again. To be curious again and have that eagerness to learn. To be creative again.
24/7 live streaming of lo-fi music.Photo by CallMeCreation
To make my confinement a little bearable, I’ve been live streaming 24/7 lo-fi music either via Youtube or Spotify. I hope my Edifier speaker won’t conk out on me for abusing it.
I’ve been arguing with my sisters and mom regarding my Covid symptoms. They insisted that I should consult other doctors because of my lingering symptoms. To make them stop nagging me, I booked another teleconsult, which I doubt would help.
Number 1) I had Sinovac for vaccine (and my mom had it too) because we were the first batch of people to be vaccinated (people with comorbidities and senior citizens) so that’s why my symptoms were worse than my sisters’ (they had J&J) as they only had one day of fever and just loss of sense of smell and taste. Sinovac is known to be less effective for other variants of Covid compared to the initial variant when it first appeared in China. So my cousin who had Covid last year before the vaccinations began said in our chat group that it took her four months to completely recover. She had fatigue and often had to chase her breath when exerting effort, which I suffer from these days especially when disinfecting the bathroom. I no longer have fever and cough, only fatigue and random headaches, which my cousin said are normal long-haul symptoms. And also hair loss. Lots of it.
Number 2) I am also taking other medicines for my other illnesses, specifically for my PCOS, which may or may not have contributed to my heavy menstruation, which is an anecdotal but documented symptoms of some female Covid patients or those who received the vaccine. Not enough research is done on this so what can the doctors do? Prescribe more medicines when they don’t even know why are some patients are heavy bleeders and some aren’t? The most that they can do (which I read) is to recommend to the patient to supplement with iron. They cannot over-medicate me so that is that.
Number 3) People do not have uniform responses to Covid as it depends on how their bodies responded to the vaccine, the kind of variant that hit them, and other pre-existing conditions. When I had my initial dose of Sinovac, my body responded like I already had Covid: I had allergies and flu-like symptoms for 48 hours. So I guess it is not surprising that I have lingering symptoms now.
I am just thankful that that vaccine I had, albeit less effective than what others had, kept me from being rushed to the hospital. Otherwise I would have been dead by now because of lack of beds here in Metro Manila or intubated in an ICU. Because I have a chronic respiratory disease (asthma).
I also read that those fully vaccinated who became breakthrough Covid cases would have better chances of withstanding other future variants (Mu) that may come given that they have more antibodies now.
So to keep my sisters and my mom from panicking, I cited all these things.
It’s a good thing I love my room or else I would have gone stir crazy by now. This is my 11th/12th day of isolation and all I have with me are my cats for company. I miss hugging my girls but I have to be careful just in case what they had initially was not Covid (but I seriously doubt that was not Covid because I got it from them). So being an introvert is an advantage during these times of isolation and hunkering down in place because we have logged 23,000+ new cases today again. I could amuse myself and live in this 10 (or 15?) sqm room and not feel resentful. Having 400+Mbps of internet is also a God-send during these trying times.
My kitties. They’re just happy being with me in the same room. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
We survived the weeks by ordering food via Grab and ordering groceries through the Puregold app. I love Puregold! They assign you a personal shopper and they call you when they don’t have stocks of the items you wanted and they call you again when the orders are ready for payment and delivery. It was so seamless. Now I just have to figure out how to buy fresh vegetables and fruits via this vendor on Facebook whose store is in Nepa Q Mart. I also need to figure out how to have the Monterey Community Market to deliver to me.
I learned that Southstar Drug delivers the next day, which is much better than Mercury Drug–my orders from that store never came.
I am also so thankful that we didn’t live in a condo. I would have gone bonkers with all that confinement if we spent the pandemic in a condo. Here in this apartment complex at least we have a small courtyard in front of our front door where we could sun ourselves if we wanted to.
Once I get out of Covid isolation and get better, I will fix my container garden and add plastic vegetable pots in our kitchen/cooking area that gets great natural light. I will tack them on the walls. Or have some in hanging planters.
Meanwhile, my kids are now regularly doing chores since one househelp left my household because she got pregnant and went to live with her boyfriend. Twin I can now cook simple stuff like instant noodles and fried egg. She and Twin A now regularly wash dishes and clean up after themselves. Twin A used to be very messy and her spot was a pigsty. When we transferred her computer desk under the stairs to be nearer to her sister, she cleaned up and matured a bit. In a blink of an eye they would be teenagers soon.
I’m thankful that it’s just the four of us right now (my girls and I and one househelp). Covid is manageable this way.
So my sisters also caught it. Everyone in my mom’s household is sick and my brother is their runner. Covid is everywhere; you wouldn’t know when and where you’d get it.
Meanwhile, the worst of my symptoms are over but just when I thought I’m already ok, here comes the headache that would knock me out to sleep. I do nothing but sleep these days. I’m so tired and it felt like my body went into battle. Sometimes my back hurts when I cough.
I take one edit a day so I won’t be marked absent. I don’t know how long I will be suffering from headaches and brain fog. My boss in Japan knows I have Covid so I may be excused for not being fast and sharp these days.
I can’t be agitated like the other day (see previous entry). It just added to my headaches and slow recovery. All I should concentrate on are good thoughts and shallow stuff. Scrolling through Twitter makes my brain bleed.
It’s my mind. I’m on my 9th day confined here in this box. The previous days I have more hours sleeping than awake. However, I have more waking hours now but I can’t spend too much time scrolling through my phone or staying at my computer because it gives me headaches.
So there are moments I just spend staring at the ceiling and walls. And remember.
A few days ago I discovered some stuff that J left behind that I should send back to him. I could just burn them but I have no means to do that here unless I want to burn the whole apartment compound down. I needed to purge him from my life. For my peace. I needed to do this exercise, this act of purging. It’s like this is with finality: I’m done grieving over you. I don’t want to have anything to do with you. I don’t want to remember you, just like when you erased me and pretended I didn’t exist.
I don’t want to die with this bitterness hanging over me. How he treated me like I was just a servant, a sugar mommy, and how I just accepted a small nugget of affection, which I thought was love. In his eyes, if something was wrong it was always my fault. Everything was my fault. I get blamed for so many things even when I tried my very best.
Having lived through Covid gives me a new perspective. Choose people who choose you. I now realize many people love me. They kept sending me food and medicines. They’ve been sending me help. One friend even offered to look after my kids if I’m taken away by the LGU.
I don’t have to beg. I don’t have to fight so hard for it. Love that is not freely given is not worth fighting for. This person, J, is not even worth fighting for. That person is not worth remembering.
For months I’ve grieved for somebody who didn’t even grieve for me. Who never regretted hurting me. I nearly went out of my mind because of somebody who was not even nice to me.
I asked this here one time: if I no longer exist in memory, do I no longer exist? Now I flip it: Yes, if he doesn’t exist in my memory, then he no longer exists. He does not deserve to occupy precious space in my head and heart and I must make more space for more beautiful memories with people who genuinely love me and who would fight for me until the end.
