My tire burst ahead of New Year fireworks. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
My tire burst while I was driving along a provincial road. Good thing it was along a populated area dotted with vulcanizing shops. And they were still open even if it’s Christmas Eve.
Good thing the vulcanizing shop is nearby or else I would have to change the heavy tires myself. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Good thing also that it didn’t happen while I was driving at 90 kmph along the expressway! God knows what would have happened to me.
Small tire shop still open. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
And when I reached my hometown, it was just pure luck that I chanced upon this small tire shop that was about to close for Christmas Eve. I bought two new 205s for the front and had the old front wheels transferred at the back. The lone old back wheel was demoted as a spare tire.
The last time I had a tire issue was last year when we went to Anilao in August. At that time I didn’t make it an issue that J left me to do all the work under the rain.
I was soaking wet.
Looking back I don’t know if he knows how to change tires or he just really didn’t care. I was hurt at that time but I didn’t want to dwell on it because I needed to function. I HAD NO MORE HEADSPACE for such things at that time.
Anyway, after my business with the tires today, I got home ate a very late lunch (at 3 pm) and slept. It was a tiring ordeal.
My mom’s Christmas decor. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Obviously they don’t have a cat.
Speaking of J, I had a strange dream him about him this morning before I woke up at 9:30 am. We were in my bed in my room here in my mom’s house. When my mom opened my door, she asked me in a plain curious way why J is still here. I couldn’t explain. I was searching for good excuses but I couldn’t come up with any.
When I woke up, I ruminated over it. It was probably my subconsciousness asking my rational self why is J still dwelling in me. And I couldn’t come up with any explanation other than the obvious. Then I calmly told my rational self that I will get over him in due time. I’m still fixing myself. This time last year I was a zombie who couldn’t sleep. Nowadays I sleep too much and I’m feeling so much better than 12 months ago. I was playing music tonight and sang for almost 3 hours. (Although my younger sister said I have so much pent up emotions to be able to sing for 3 hrs straight).
Am I still angry? I don’t know. I can’t hold on to anger and I don’t know who should I be angry at. Him? I have already accepted that he’s not a nice person. Am I angry with myself for ignoring that fact and that I have many flaws that’s why he was like that to me? I shouldn’t be hard on myself. It’s not my fault. ⬅️ I’m still coming to terms with this.
However, I do hope he’s having a nice Christmas, wherever he is.
My new shrink says I should process this trauma properly and she’s going to help me with that.
Yes, she called it trauma.
And I’ve been running away from the trauma by rushing through the process of recovery. She says I need to confront this trauma because it will be a cycle that will keep on bogging me down all the time. It’s the reason I couldn’t write and just stare at the ceiling when I get triggered. It’s like one step forward, two steps back. Just like when I discovered about him and thatgirl. I was back to zero.
She said alcohol is not the answer and medicating myself with alcohol to numb myself and make me fall asleep is dangerous because 1) it’s a depressant and 2) I have a history of alcoholism in the family.
Since August, when I hit rock-bottom, I’ve been under her care and gave me the right antidepressant and anti-anxiety meds. It has helped me so much because I’ve been in denial that I have trauma. Those months that I wasn’t sleeping… That I wake up every 30 mins. Then every hour. It was only when I had Covid that I felt I had really been sleeping, like I was making up for the months I hadn’t had any peaceful sleep.
I also get triggered by every little thing connected to him or that girl whom I started to hate. I have unfollowed her in all social media platforms even though we’re friends. You see, it’s just like a soldier with PTSD going nuts when he hears a loud bang, thinking it’s gunfire.
It doesn’t help that I carry the weight of the world as a single mom, during a global pandemic, and I’ve been carrying my entire team and all the stresses that came with it because of bad leadership. So I’ve been sweeping this trauma under the rug so I can juggle the stress at work and as a single parent. But all these three stressors compete all the time, hence, my bad stress management.
I just realized now that I am rushing my Covid recovery. Twin I and I biked from our apartment to UP this evening but we were just barely inside the campus when I got very dizzy and my vision became wavy. I thought I was going to collapse. I was hyperventilating. We stopped for a moment to steady myself and catch my breath and then we slowly made our way back home. I’m still weak.
Resting. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I am not yet fine. I’m still sick. I still have long Covid symptoms. Right after a hot shower, I went straight to bed. Twin A checked on me and found me hot to touch like I have a fever. I still have a headache as I type this on my phone.
Why am I rushing my recovery? Because I’ve regained the weight I lost when I was really sick with Covid. I feel ugly that I am back to being fat. And upon deeper analysis, it’s because I’ve always thought that my being fat has contributed to the many reasons why he used and left me. He exploited my insecurity. And that’s the reason why he went after a journalist who was stick-thin and very young.
I need to be kinder to myself. It seems like I haven’t accepted the fact that I’ve been used; that every cell in my body is rejecting that thought but it is what it is. I have to accept that and I shouldn’t blame myself for what happened. There’s some kind of disconnect between what I’ve been trying to tell myself and what I am really feeling deep down. I have to work on that.
I need to work on my PTSD, if indeed this is PTSD.
(My old shrink–literally old–just diagnosed that I’m co-dependent that’s why I got stuck in an abusive marriage with someone with a narcissistic personality disorder but she refused to work on my annulment case. Now the Supreme Court ruled that psychological incapacity in annulment cases need not be medically certified by a psychiatrist and that term is just limited to the legal definition. So I dropped that old psych, good riddance. This new psych is for my therapy because I want to heal. And heal soon.)
According to the American Psychiatric Association, the symptoms of PTSD fall into four categories. Specific symptoms can vary in severity.
Intrusion: Intrusive thoughts such as repeated, involuntary memories; distressing dreams; or flashbacks of the traumatic event. Flashbacks may be so vivid that people feel they are re-living the traumatic experience or seeing it before their eyes.
Avoidance: Avoiding reminders of the traumatic event may include avoiding people, places, activities, objects and situations that may trigger distressing memories. People may try to avoid remembering or thinking about the traumatic event. They may resist talking about what happened or how they feel about it.
Alterations in cognition and mood: Inability to remember important aspects of the traumatic event, negative thoughts and feelings leading to ongoing and distorted beliefs about oneself or others (e.g., “I am bad,” “No one can be trusted”); distorted thoughts about the cause or consequences of the event leading to wrongly blaming self or other; ongoing fear, horror, anger, guilt or shame; much less interest in activities previously enjoyed; feeling detached or estranged from others; or being unable to exprience positive emotions (a void of happiness or satisfation).
Alterations in arousal and reactivity: Arousal and reactive symptoms may include being irritable and having angry outbursts; behaving recklessly or in a self-destructive way; being overly watchful of one’s surroundings in a suspecting way; being easily startled; or having problems concentrating or sleeping.
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.
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.
The only rice meal for today. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Sauteed veggies with Spam wrapped with dried seaweed for breakfast. This was my only rice meal for today. It’s unintentional but I eat less these days as I forget to have lunch and will remember to eat by 3 pm. Then I will be too lazy or tired to eat dinner.
Clean desk. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I started the day with a neat desk but it didn’t help with productivity. I only edited 3 stories and I had zero story to write as all my interviews remain pending. 😫
It was about to rain. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I rode my bike and then had my walk. Spent two hours outdoors and smelled the oncoming rain. Only that it didn’t rain. 😑
Milk tea! Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I know I will regret this later tonight when I have trouble sleeping but I treated myself with milk tea on the way home. It has been quite a while since I had been inside Moonleaf.
While I was having my walk along University Avenue, I was thinking why I always thought I was an extrovert while I was growing up when all the while I exhibited introverted behaviors.
Yes, I was loud and was a chatterbox even until college. I was always surrounded by friends and was pretty sociable. But I really craved time alone and was quite happy wandering around by myself, taking walks around the campus, walking into the woods up the mountain, poking my head into book shops, writing and reading, being introspective. I would tag along with my mom to her trips but would be happy just being in the car looking outside the window, dreaming, creating stories in my head.
When I was transitioning to highschool and every summer vacation thereafter, I would just be content creating my routine around the house if I was not spending time in my grandparents’ house with my cousins. Doing chores, reading tons of books, watering the garden, using the ham radio, watching movies… It was boring but I didn’t give myself a chance to be bored. I made myself busy just pottering around the house.
So yes, I was an ambivert; I thrive when I was with people but I am also quite happy alone. However, I realized that the older I get, the more introverted I become. I can spend two weeks inside the house without going out. But that’s already a stretch.
It works for me as well because a journalist must genuinely like people to be interested in what they say because that’s where the stories come from. A journalist must love talking to people. However, a journalist must also be able to work alone because writing is a solo effort. I can spend the entire day being just inside my head as I draft my articles, especially if they’re long form articles.
I was thinking all of these because it struck me now that I am beginning to enjoy the NOW, this moment–this solo life. That I don’t need to consider somebody else in my decision-making. Yes I do miss the companionship and the conversations with a partner but I am now starting to appreciate the aloneness. It would be difficult now to give up this stability that I’m starting to feel. I think I am getting a little bit grounded.
It has been exactly five months and two days since he left. It’s still there.
But I am getting the hang of this. I am getting better. And growing more introverted is helping me a lot.
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.
Relief goods for a friend. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
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.
My muslin curtain. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
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.
Handstitches. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
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.
