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.
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.
Kimchi ruining whatever I am working on. Such a petulant child. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I got stressed yesterday with all the drama that’s happening in national news that I was able to finish one curtain panel that I sewed by hand. Right after the 8 yards of fabric I ordered from Shopee arrived, I sewed like mad to relieve me of stress and forget that the Philippines will soon be doomed.
If only Singapore is not that expensive, I would be willing to move and forget about the idiots that will be voting for the equally idiotic people running for office.
Kinda proud of my dainty stitches. Photo by CallMeCreation.comNearly finished. It has a satiny texture to this. Photo by CallMeCreation.comEt voila! My first granny curtain panel. I intentionally made it short so the curtain wouldn’t cover the modem and the aircon unit. I need to finish the masks that I need to ship out this week so I can proceed with sewing the two panels of 3-yard curtains that I must immediately hang in this room so this 1.5 yard panel would not look out of place. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I’ll get rid of the stuffed toys on the shelf because they look so juvenile. I just put them there because the shelves were empty and looked forlorn when I sent the Gundam figures to J and I had to have something there in the interim. Now I can put books there as they started to overflow from my closet.
My daughter, Twin A, started choosing fabrics on Shopee and said I should start sewing the curtains for our future flat. I said, darling, we still don’t know how big the windows will be. That’s the reason why I’m not cutting this curtain rod because I’ll be taking this and the other the curtain rods with us.
I needed a creative outlet to escape reality for a while. So I resorted to sewing. I’m not yet brave enough to pick up the brush or charcoal. I need to watch more Domestika courses on sketching and watercolor paintings before I venture into those again.
I think I will be sewing a lot of things before I can get back into the groove and start traveling again. When I assume my new role probably by next year, I need to fly to all the cities we are covering, starting with Ho Chi Minh (I have already lined up my meetings). But Covid is coming back with a vengeance as cases start to rise again in Europe.
Last night the traffic was so heavy in our usual route that I had to drive an extra 20 km to take another route. It took me 2 hrs and 45 minutes before we reached our apartment.
So today I did all the DIY stuff that I left hanging. Stupid me, that made me exhausted today.
I refreshed the white paint on the wall where my living room windows are. I also finally changed the curtain rod brackets downstairs and was able to hang the Christmas curtains that I bought from Shopee one night I wasn’t able to sleep. I’m afraid I overdid the Christmas thing.
Looks kitschy. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
But I think it looks better at night, less overpowering.
I have to make it grow on me because these damned things cost me PHP 500. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
And I did not stop there. I added curtain rod brackets in my room because my annoying cats keep on climbing the curtains and they’re not exactly light.
Since I felt so energetic today, I proceeded to sand my closets because the paint is peeling and Kimichi kept scratching the corner so it was worn.
I turned my impact drill into a sander. I uncovered several layers of paint. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I chose Boysen Skyblue for my closets. There was something off with the Tiffany blue that came with the apartment when we moved in so I decided to go for a lighter shade of blue.
Unfinished. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I didn’t paint the upper cabinets yet because I was so tired and I looked like a Smurf because I was already blue all over. And my paint was the quick-dry type so it was sticky, smelly, and hard to even out. At least I was able to fill out with wood filler the scratches that Kimichi made and I was able to cover it with paint. Now I’m getting high with the smell.
As I was letting the paint dry, I grilled marinated chicken outside while my kids and our househelp, Ate C, lighted candles for our departed loved ones. Today is Dia de Todos los Santos (All Saints’ Day) and tomorrow is Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) but in recent years Filipinos started visiting the grave of loved ones on 1 November instead of 2 November. Traditionally the holidays are 31 Oct-2 Nov but was truncated this year to only the 1 Nov. Dia de los Muertos is more known to be a Mexican holiday but most Spanish and Portugese colonies have their own way of commemorating the dead. In the Philippines, it’s more subdued compared to the Mexican one. When I was a kid, some people spend the night of the 31st in cemeteries to hang out in their family mausoleum or tombs until Nov 1 and have some kind of family reunion there. Filipino Chinese families light joss sticks and offer food and flowers. In our family we just clean the tombs, offer flowers, light candles and say our prayers. We stay until the candles have died out.
Lighting candles in front of the apartment. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
This is the third straight year we just have lighted candles in front of our house. In 2018, the traffic was so bad that I just opted to stay at home. Last year and this year, obviously, we had to stay home because of Covid-19 restrictions. My mom is already contented that I brought her last week a huge pot of mums and the purple hydrangea for my father’s niche at the columbarium near my mom’s house.
Since I’m making the most of my stay here in this apartment, I will be filling up the walls with crafts and art. Next time that will go home to my mom’s house, I’ll be taking my old drawings with me and put them in frames and hang them in my room. I bought some frames from Photoline in SM that were on sale last week.
J left his drawing on my refrigerator door and when we broke up, I shoved it in my closet and let it stay there almost 11 months. I decided to take it out again and put it in one of the frames I bought. He drew this scene from Istanbul when he was demonstrating to the girls how to use their color markers.
Photo by CallMeCreation.comPhoto by CallMeCreation.com
I had hung his drawing in the place where his workstation was. He may not be a nice person, but for old times’ sake this is how I am choosing to remember him: a traveler. I am just one stop.
Soon this room will be filled by my old drawings/paintings and cross-stitch projects. And probably new ones too. His drawing will just be one of the many that I will have on my walls.
I know that tourism is the lifeblood of some cities, provinces, and countries but until we have everybody inoculated and not take precautions (please, no to crowds!), the virus will continue to mutate. Chinese tour groups are notorious for the lack of crowd control or the volume of people. If the virus mutates again from China, God knows what kind of monster will come out of there again. We should refrain from encouraging this kind of complacency.
Meanwhile, the dolomite beach along Manila Bay is I think politically instigated, to show that stupid project is not a waste of people’s money when funds should have been channeled to pandemic response.
This is really stupid.
What Dr. Mojica says is true. Presidential aspirants who promise to build hospitals do not know what the problem is, therefore, they do not know how to solve a health crisis like Covid. Mojica says that hundreds of hospitals will not solve the pandemic if you do not fix the contact tracing, air circulation in public utility vehicles, offices, schools and public places and not enough vaccines/low vaccination rate. These hundreds of hospitals will still be filled with Covid patients to the brim. He asks, where will you get healthcare workers? “We do not multiply when we get wet,” he said.
As I said in my post on LinkedIn, you are like groping in the dark and Covid will just hit you from out of nowhere because there is no contact tracing, no access to low-cost testing, and no support for quarantined breadwinner from poor families. You can’t just go on cycles of lockdowns that kill livelihoods and spur reckless behaviors, like that of the uncontrolled tourists in the two examples above.
I don’t want to get sick with Covid again. Nope.
Adjusted floor plan. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
So after discussing with my siblings and mom the plan, I was told, no, I cannot eat floor area in the main house so the room that I will be taking from the main house will remain narrow. So I decided to keep the existing walls and just make another wall to extend my room and make a separate office/walk-in closet. The girls’ room will be transferred to the corner of the unit and will be occupying the rest of the eastern wall. There will be just a wee bit of space for hanging out/lounging for my girls and their friends. We don’t really watch TV that much but this will be for the girls’ movie nights with friends, which I regularly had with my friends when we were in high school because our house was so near our school.
It looks tight because I have my dimensions off (this is not to scale) but the general idea is there. The bar stools can be pushed under the counter for more walking space but I think this will not be that small. I have inspected the space yesterday and it’s doable and is more spacious than I thought. I can also have transoms all around the entire east, north and western walls because there are gaps between the support beams and the naked ceiling. There will be sunlight all around.
Then I told my mom that I will just follow the vaulted ceiling and not have a dropped ceiling so that the entire unit will feel more spacious. My house will feel like a church with super high vaulted ceilings. I think I wouldn’t need a/c in the living/kitchen area and just have my window-type inverter a/c units in our rooms because of the number of windows and the vaulted ceiling will keep it well ventilated. Plus my hometown is generally cooler than Metro Manila since it is at the foot of a mountain.
Meanwhile, the girls are having fun with their older cousin and the younger one. They played all day long until it was time for Kuya P to go home at around 8 pm.
The four of them in a group hug. Another kuya in the background.Photo by CallMeCreation.com
We brought their bikes so at least they can bike around the area. They need a lot of exercise and fresh air and more playmates.
I have one week of freedom. And the cats have peace.
Kimchi taking advantage the absence of the girls and my bedsheet-changing day.
Friends and family had been sending messages, greeting me and asking me what my plans for today were. I said I just want to lay down in bed, savor my airconditioned room while the girls are downstairs doing their crafts. Which I did.
However, I had to attend first to my new babies, my plants, and had to water/spritz on water, and make sure there were no caterpillars. Then attend to the cat litter. Other than those chores, I did zero. Ever since our other househelp left, the dishwashing duties, dusting and vacuuming are now assigned to the girls. I really have no reason to get up from my bed because they can take care of themselves now. My ideal day.
Tonkatsu ramen. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
If it weren’t for the kids, I wouldn’t bother with the food. But of course I had to feed them so I ordered ramen from Botejyu via Grab. Yesterday I already ordered 3 tubs of ice cream for the girls and my househelp and a blueberry cheesecake from Conti’s and have them delivered at home while I was having my car checked. Twin I has been singing praises about the cake sent to me last week by a friend so she pestered me about ordering cheesecakes.
So it seems like her prayers had been answered again after I received two cheesecakes today from a good friend from the industry and another from a PR person.
I honestly haven’t had any of the cakes yet. I’m controlling myself. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I have the girls off my hair today since they were busy eating and painting or doing some crafts. Which was lovely as I get to have peace and quiet.
Photo by CallMeCreation.com
For dinner, we just had leftovers from yesterday and ham & egg sandwiches. And oh, I was able to revitalize leftover rice from the fridge into fluffy white rice using claypot.
Claypot rice, Ottogi yellow curry with mostly potato, bell pepper and carrots and few meat. My bowl is above the claypot. I limit my rice intake.
Tomorrow I should keep myself wide awake because I will drive the girls to my mom to spend their semestral break there for a week. Then I drive back here tomorrow evening because I have back-to-back calls on Monday.
I’m a year older.
What have I learned from the past 12 months? Last year I was miserable and I took an antidepressant so I can balance all the things I had been juggling without having to dwell on the fact that I felt rotten and spent and that pill kept me from breaking down. I knew I was being treated shabbily but I pushed on, thinking that things might get better if I did more.
But no, you cannot win the love you already lost. Or never had.
Last year on this same day I was so lost and alone. I was the loneliest with J. I was confused why I felt that way. I couldn’t fathom why I was wretchedly unhappy. I felt like I was sinking into an abyss. Like it was my fault that it had come to that.
But I was always gaslighted.
I felt helpless.
I was always dragged around because it was always about him, him, him. What about me? I needed comfort and support too but I didn’t get it because it felt wrong if I asked for kindness and love. I felt neglected and tired. But isn’t it enough that he was there with me?
But no. He wasn’t there with me for quite some time. He was already so far away.
It was unfair. He was unfair. He should have left in June, the time when I felt I lost him. He shouldn’t have used me like that.
I’m in a better place on my birthday this year. I have showered myself with love today by being kind to myself. That for once I am not mommy or a woman who must attend to every whim and caprices of her partner. Friends have sent their support and love to me today. I didn’t have to ask for it.
It hurts just thinking about it now. How could have I been unkind to myself for letting me think that I do not have to feel special and loved? That I should just accept what I had then?
I think my return to my hometown to raise my children is my way of sheltering myself from being hurt again like that. You don’t know how much J killed me everyday for several months, especially after that thing with that kid in my circle. What’s worse is everyone knows that by now. And my friends explained to me, in my drunken stupor, that J was chasing her so he can tap into her network, which she doesn’t have. As if she can summon conglomerate owners and C-level people to talk to him like I was able to do for him. As my friends said, why would he go for someone like her when clearly she didn’t have anything on you except youth? “Sex maybe?” I answered in my alcohol-fueled raspy voice. Being infront of the camera doesn’t mean you are the best there. It just so happened a lot of them in that network left (the network is not doing that great) and they had to promote people from within. After one year or less as a researcher, she became an on-cam reporter because she was there. Of course J doesn’t know that; he just probably thought that being on cam she would have more clout, my friends said.
It’s only during my Covid isolation that I firmed up my decision that I should make some drastic changes so I can never let anybody kill me like that again. Now I am beginning to realize that I am retreating from the world by returning to my hometown and will be embracing spinsterhood. My hometown is a small world and there is less chance for me to get involved with someone else because I know everyone there.
Once I uproot ourselves here, that signals that I have finally closed the door. I will start building a fort around me on top of that duplex that I just have drawn plans for. Yes I would still have a queen-sized bed but that is all to myself. Yes, I will be traveling more frequently by next year because of my job and meet a lot of people but I will never ever let anyone near me again like I had let J. It will all be distancia, amigo.
That is how I will love myself–self preservation. At 42 years old, I don’t think I can waste more years and energy again for somebody who never thought I was precious and never put me on a pedestal like the way I did with him.
I cannot afford to be that unhappy anymore. Life is too short.
If there’s one thing Filipinos are good at, it’s poking fun of ourselves, even if the issues are of grave importance. This meme shows the incompetence of this administration that resorts to drama if they can’t even–ah well I no longer know what to say.
Meanwhile, our healthcare workers continue to bear the world on their shoulders. There were photos of exhausted nurses leaning on cars or walls outside hospitals, evidence of their exhaustion.
And as a person who cares too much about this society, this country, this is too much for me to bear. I got drained yesterday. As one of my journo friends said, not all journalists are like me, who goes out of her way to feed the hungry, who works round the clock to fundraise for disaster victims, jumps to drive straight into the disaster zone to report and at the same time volunteer to distribute relief goods. She told me I should stop caring for a while. “You care too much, that’s the problem. That’s why you’re always stressed. You cannot save the world,” she scolded me. That was a couple of years ago. I’m still the same. She still keeps on scolding me.
So today was a basura day and I couldn’t work well again. Save for a bureau chief call today, I was in util again. I just kept on messaging people on LinkedIn, emailing for requests for interviews, reading news to pick up leads. I have several articles pending but I had zero brain cells for that.
Plus I am battling something at work. I thought I found the solution but it seems like there is no relief in sight, not in the near-term. I already gave some kind of warning. I no longer know what I should do. I gave it a shot.
Again, thank God for cats.
Kimchi watching birds outside. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
My little stress-reliever.
I have trouble sleeping again, my body clock is out of whack. I ordered online a new fragrance for my scented oil diffuser to help me fall asleep. Well, it does help, that’s why last night i fell asleep at around 10 pm. BUT then I woke up at 2 am and got back to sleep around quarter to 4 am. That’s so messed up. Brain activity was high, that’s why I have trouble going back to sleep.
Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I should stop caring about everything. I should stop caring about other people and focus on myself. Other people didn’t care about me anyway. *shrug*
