Burnout

I just found a gem hidden somewhere on Youtube. I first fell in love with this song when 3D (Dancel, Dumas, Danao) did an acoustic live version of this, which felt like…burnout. Or the middle of a burnout. This version, on the other hand, feels like a breeze caressing your cheek after a meltdown. Especially the part where Clara Benin sang, “tinatawag kita/sinusuyo kita/di mo man marinig/di mo man madama…” I felt that.

Unfortunately for me this is not available on Spotify so I can’t add this to my playlist. So I always have to hunt this down on Youtube.

…Tinatawag kita, sinusuyo kita
Di mo man marinig, di mo man madama
O kay tagal din kitang mamahalin
O kay tagal din kitang mamahalin…”

Hanggang kelan? Hindi ko alam pero ang alam ko lang ay pagod na ako.


I went food shopping this evening and I bought slabs of steak for me to grill tomorrow because my very good friend, K, will be coming over. Must have heard that I got sick.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

But I wouldn’t eat this after my tests came back and indicated that I am a walking heart attack. I will have grilled salmon instead. Made potato salad tonight to go with these and some steamed veggies. No alcohol, as the doctor ordered so I just bought sparkling grape juice for me while K will have red wine. I also bought brie cheese to go with the wine.

And yeah, no caffeine for me either.

I now only have flower teas or milk for breakfast. Then lunch and light dinner. Can’t wait for this lockdown to end so I can bike and burn calories.

Death of a star

Because J has fallen in stature in my eyes, thinking about him hurts less now. Or maybe this is because I have been sleeping better that’s why I can talk like this now. Maybe if I start to become sleep-deprived again I would be back to being emotional again.

He used to be the only star in my night. Now that star has died.

Maybe I needed that jolt that I’ve experienced these past weeks to be able to realize that, hey, he isn’t really that special. And he is not a nice guy after all. I died several times over this person but he really can’t destroy me. I know who I am and what I am capable of. I may not be a CEO of a company or a high-flying executive that he could admire but I know Iā€™m very good in what I do. I have everything that I needed. I have a home and I have love in the form of two not-so-little girls.

While he doesn’t have those.

Death of a star. He has now become a stardust.


To add to our worries, here comes another variant. We are going through the entire Greek letters while the Duterte administration is raping us wide eyes open.

To calm my frayed nerves, I ordered new cloths to make into masks for my friends’ children in appropriate kid sizes.

From Shopee. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

The weekend is coming soon. Let’s see how many I can make.

Blinders off

This incident with J chasing the kid in my circle has slowly peeled off the blinders that has taken a hold of me for years. Maybe he wasn’t really a nice guy after all.

I remember him asking me the week we first got together if I thought he was with me because I am a journalist of xxx that would give him advantage. I said no, it didn’t enter my mind. Now, I am doubting myself and his intentions toward me then.

I’m confused. Like it shattered my core belief and everything I thought was the truth then.

Was everything a lie?

I can’t believe he could sink that loooowwww, pursuing that kid šŸ¤¦šŸ»ā€ā™€ļø. I had held him in very high esteem, even during his most difficult time the last time he was in the US. I even admired him for toughing it out there. But now?

But maybe I was wrong about everything.

Maybe I fell in love with the person I thought he was and believed it. Maybe he was just like any other mercenary out there taking advantage of vulnerable people like me. And he’s still out there looking for another victim. Just like that kid.

This is giving me a headache. My emotions are in a turmoil. I don’t know what to feel. It’s as if I’m going through grief again but this time I am grieving over his death… The death of a person I thought he was.

Questioning everything

photography of night sky
Photo by Juan on Pexels.com

I am sleeping better the last few nights compared to the previous weeks when I wake up almost every hour. The pain was just too much that it has completely wrecked my body clock. My body is now recuperating by sleeping every chance I get during my leave from work.

Lying on my bed before falling off to sleep, be it night or day, gave me a chance to ruminate over the things that happened recently. J’s recent behavior made me question everything about him and everything that went on between us. I probably put him too high on a pedestal that’s why I didn’t question things that I should have. Now, I am questioning whether there was some truth in the sexual harassment case against him in his last firm. When he told me about it after he was stripped off of his company phone and company laptop when he was forced to go on garden leave, I totally accepted that it was false accusation and that it was an injustice and that they just wanted him out of the company.

Now the way he pursued this kid from within my circle sounds so carnal. As one of my friends said, he is scary creepy.

It puts things in a new light that I haven’t viewed before.

Maybe his scary creepy behavior would be ok for some local woman/girl who wants to snag a foreigner boyfriend to milk or wants him as her ticket to going abroad and out of poverty.

Maybe I was too blind, gave him too much credit. Excused him too many times. I believed in him so much that I ignored everything else.

I don’t know what else to think. I wish he would leave the country soon so he could stop hurting me. This city is too small for the both of us.

I want my sleep back. I want my sanity back. I want peace. I want to stop hurting.


The world around me is collapsing; everything is on fire and yet this administration is doing nothing but politicking and ransacking the coffers. The healthcare workers are going on strike tomorrow. Our foreign debt has gone into trillions but we couldn’t see where the proceeds of those debt went to. No vaccines, no wide testing, no effective contact tracing. Those useless face shields are sources of corruption. Every corner of this administration was flagged by the state auditor.

We are a sinking ship.

From the dark pit I arise

silhouette photo of woman
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

I have to admit that the latest discovery about him chasing the kid in my circle hit me so hard like I was back to square one, like back in December-January. I had avoided him all these months and yet he is still capable of killing me several times over. How many times do I have to die?

I don’t deserve this pain. I don’t deserve this. I’ve tried so hard to claw my way back up and be normal again. But no, he pushed me back into that dark pit again. It took me days to feel a little bit myself again.

What my friends pointed out though is that with his latest antics, he sounds desperate–enough to chase shallowness (the kid) and not to mention creepy. If a much older guy goes pestering us on chat and goes personal, automatically we would think he is a dirty old man (DOM) and I’ve had my share of those kinds in my business. And Jā€™s impulsiveness now has ruined his reputation within my circle. Even though I chose to remain silent, I can’t say the same for my friends and that girl’s friends and everybody else in my circle. They know who he was to me. We belonged in one trade organization anyway, where everyone knows everybody’s business. It also includes some of the country’s biggest publicists as affiliates.

I can’t do anything about it. He brought it upon himself.

It’s really, really painful. It put me down for a while and I got physically sick. I had to have myself checked and had to go through some tests. Well, the results of my lab tests aren’t pretty, based on the ranges as some of my numbers were out of range. I don’t know how my ECG fared so I would only know when I have my next check up.

I swear, I will be back on the saddle and will put on my running shoes again and do cross-training. I will be back to climbing mountains in no time.

I swear I will rise from this darkness. I swear you will regret everything.

I will never cry over you again.

I swear.