Our neighbor’s fireworks on the street. Photo by CallMeCreation.comMy girls’ sparklers’ dying out. Photo by CallMeCreation.comFireworks in our village. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Here’s to a healthier 2022. More camping trips. Hopefully we would have roadtrips and diving trips.
Less stress from work. Better working conditions for us.
No more Covid please!
Please no Bong Bong Marcos presidency!!!
More personal growth for me and the kids. More love for family and friends.
I hope I hurt less. I hope I no longer hurt. Period. I hope I become more numb so I can finally move on.
But I should be kinder to myself because it’s not easy to emerge from that kind of heartbreak when you have given your love unconditionally like that. This is not a race. I should give myself time to heal better. As my shrink said, I should heal in a proper way so I won’t have another relapse and get into a cruel cycle.
2020 is horrible in every possible way. 2021 is like walking through fire barefoot. I hope for 2022 I come out stronger than steel forged by fire of the past 2 years.
A friend just sent me this via FB Messenger a few minutes ago. She and I are both trying to heal from bad breakups. She even flew to Maryland from here to be with the guy but he just took her for granted. She went to NY and stayed with her brother to heal. She says she will be coming back home here if things don’t pan out there.
I told her, the reason I’m going back to my past is to rediscover some things I lost.
I may be wrong, but this is how I am coping with this trauma. This is how I pick myself up when I sink into my episodes. Because when you have trauma, the triggers will surely be pulled and the bullet will go straight into your head. Healing from trauma is managing how to get the bullet out of your head. Later I would learn how to dodge the bullet when the triggers are pulled.
In the meantime, I am sewing these masks so that my co-hosts and I would have uniform masks on Saturday for our high school alumni homecoming. Our class shirt is light blue so these teal masks are unisex and would go with our shirts. Sewing these keeps me busy and helps me remove the bullet from my head. Especially now that my first death anniversary is coming up on the 17th-18th–that is already next week!
Just had a session with my doctor this evening and i feel like my brain was drilled open and the things that I had been burying were hauled out. The things I keep suppressing burst out like a geyser.
It’s not your fault, she said. Stop whipping yourself. Give your self some credit. Be kind to yourself. He was just the wrong person. It’s not your fault; it’s just you had a lot of love to give–that’s all. You have to love yourself more, she said.
“Did he apologize to you?”
“No, not really. It’s a ‘sorry’ that went along the lines of ‘Sorry, it’s just that.’ But not really apology for hurting me. For using me. For his treatment of me towards the end that sent me over the edge,” I told my doctor. “But I have to reconcile with myself that I will never get that so I deal with it. I have to accept that I won’t get answers. You don’t get closure from someone else; you get your closure from within yourself.”
“What are you doing to get out of your episodes?”
“During lockdowns I couldn’t do anything much. Not even go biking to clear my head. Then I got Covid that further trapped me indoors and in my brain. Now that I can drive, I can see friends from way back. Those who knew me before shit had hit the fan. That’s why I’m going back to my roots; to what I was–to who I really am. To the things that made me like myself. It’s my way of loving myself,” I said.
“Good that you are able to pick yourself up now,” she said.
She then lowered my dosage of the anti-anxiety med, which may have been causing me to get sleepy more than necessary. She asked me if I could already sleep on nights I’m off it (because I now take it once every two nights). I said yes, I think so I can now.
I no longer wake up every hour, I said. Covid was bad; I was asleep 75% of the time but it was good that I made up for the months I haven’t been sleeping. It felt good,” I remarked.
Nap time. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Just like today, I was joined by my cats during my after lunch sleep. I always get sleepy by midday. Because of this I will just take my anti-anxiety med once every three days.
But my anti-depressant will still be there during my entire 12-month therapy. Hopefully I won’t have triggers by then. I wish the things that hurt me and had killed me over and over will just be a bad dream.
Waiting for my food at 3F Lasema. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Since it’s Bonifacio Day today = no school, the girls asked me if we can go to Lasema. I was thinking of having a massage so, why not?
The staff recognized the girls and were happy to see that they have grown up, pimples and all. They also said I lost weight; I replied Covid is a good weight loss program.
We spent more than four hours there. The girls went back and forth the hot tubs and the dining area three times while I had my massage after spending an hour in the hot tubs. Then I went back again just to remove the oil in my body. It was an expensive Bonifacio Day outing so that’s why we made sure we got our money’s worth. If only the girls didn’t have to wake up early tomorrow, we could have napped there and gone back to the hot tubs for a final soak before calling it a night.
My back aches didn’t go away but at least my muscles have relaxed.
Meanwhile, my cats have gone crazy.
Laser!!! Photos by CallMeCreation.com
Been driving my cats bonkers with our new laser pointer. They have been chasing up and down that little red dot. It’s a good physical exercise for them, especially chunky Kimchi.
The trip to the onsen is now making me sleepy. G’night.
This was our livestream set-up last night. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
So we had our livestream last night that lasted 2.5 hrs. People were telling us this was our most enjoyable episode to date, with jamming sessions in between questions during our in-person and Zoom interviews. One of the interviewees was live from Texas. I had an amazing guitarist, while one of the co-hosts played the keyboard and I was singing and manning the Zoom meeting that was livestreamed as well. Other co-hosts also provided backing vocals or main vocals as needed. I played the tambourine-like percussion instrument in one song. Everything was spontaneous–and that was the most fun part.
The “studio”, which was a porch/wood workshop of one of our high school classmates/co-hosts, was messy but it didn’t show much in the livestream, but we gotta do something about it soon.
We had so much fun that I left the studio at 12:30 am and got home in Qc at around 1:45 am. I had black brewed coffee to keep me alert on the road and maintained my speed at 80kmph, except when overtaking.
Before the livestream, I visited my mom and brought her purple flowers, drilled some stuff in the upstairs bathroom of the main house and added a new shower head. Then visited one of high school friends who was back in the country and gave her more of my hand-made masks and some for her kids.
One of things that I needed to do during this visit was to get my old watercolors/pencil/charcoal drawings to hang in my room.
I resisted the urge to fill this gallery wall because I need some white space to let the room breathe. Photo by CallMeCreation.com“Mommy, your drawing is nice but King Charles II is ugly,” Twin A said. Photo by CallMeCreation.comMy hand-sewn curtains provided a nice contrast to the modern black framesof the pictures. Photo by CallMeCreation.comThis watercolor painting is a reminder. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
As I wrote on an Instagram post:
I used to paint and draw in high school. I found these in my room in xxx (hometown) and framed them to grace my room here in QC to remind me of who I was before I lost myself in ugliness and sadness. I have found that girl again, even though she’s xx heavier now, she’s still the same old creative person, richer in experiences. (By the pond, watercolor, CallMeCreation 1994).
I was 18 years old here against the ruins of the Old Chemistry building that was gutted by fire when I was in elementary school. I always lugged my film SLR camera around campus during this time after I took photography for one semester. I processed and printed this b&w photo in our college’s darkroom. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I found this girl. The girl who balanced football, theater, school, her Greek-letter organization, and social life. She is her own person. Her heart was yet to be broken and become jaded in this photo.
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.
