I'm writing this blog because I'm trying not to die

 I am not suicidal, don't worry. Right this moment, I am not happy but not miserable either. 

The last time I posted in this blog was October 2022, just a month after my mother passed away. Since then, there's not a day that I have not thought about her. I miss her everyday, and my father, and Blacky, my dog who has witnessed every tears that I have cried since mother was hospitalized in November 2021. 

Let me go over about what happened one more time:

November 2021: we took mother to the hospital when she was pale and weak, we later on found out it was cancer.

April 2022: I left my fifteen year job.

From then on to September 2022: trying to find a remote job in between hospitals and taking care of mother at home.

September 2022: mother passed away in the quiet of the night. Her last request was, oddly, coffee. Had I known, I bought her Starbucks.

From then on, trying to go back to the normal life by sending out job applications to every job posts I feel I can do.

Been rejected maybe two hundred times, horrible job interview experience, having discriminated and judged, broke, and lonely at the worst.

November, I thought I got the greatest opportunity of my career, turned out to be my boss was a monster in disguise. I don't want to judge her, but she was at that time.

Late 2022 to early 2023, I got a freelance job but this was not for me. July 2023 I was hired again, but decided to leave after two weeks. I went home feeling utterly miserable and told my husband I wanted to just die. 

I guess this was the place they call Rock Bottom. And hitting it again one more time has made me feel numb and lost my interest in almost everything in life.

August 2023, I reached out to my former manager at my old job, and I was glad I did not have to beg. She welcomed me back. I started a new challenging role in a newly formed team.

Is my life going back to what it used to be? No. It will never be.

Now that my life is divided in only two timelines: When my parents were still alive and now.

I have accepted that this is how my new life begins and I am starting to learn to be grateful because as my spiritual teacher (aka Youtube) said, being grateful is the beginning on how to heal ones self from the trauma that life has brought us.

We all have traumas. Maybe mine will take a long while to heal, but now I am facing the rough road of the beginning of this journey.

Let the healing begin.

16.Oct.22

 Ma, bukas 40 days na since mawala ka. Araw araw para akong 4 seasons of emotion. May time na masaya, which is saglit lang, may time na okay okay lang, may time na sobrang lungkot which is mahaba haba, tapos mas mahaba yung oras na nag woworry ako about bagay bagay, specially future.

Yung time ang tirik ng araw, tapos biglang uulan, Ganern. Malapit na din mag one year simula ng mag umpisa ang lahat, 3 araw tayo sa Lakeview, simula nun hindi kana gumaling. 

 Ang lungkot kasi alam kong hindi na babalik sa dati yung buhay ko.

Madalas feel ko na wala na akong pag asa. 

Pero feeling ko magiging proud ka sakin. Kayang kaya kong i handle emotion ko, kala ng mga tao wala lang. Konti nga lang yung nangangamusta sakin kung okay pa ba ako. isa o dalawa. At yung pang mga tao na hindi mo inaasahan na naiisip ka pala. Yung mga taong akala mo totoong kaibigan, ni hindi na ako naalala.

Pero okay lang yun, hindi naman ako nagtatanim ng sama ng loob sa kanila, busy din sila sa sarili nilang mga problema.

That Barracuda

 So this old "friend" whom I have not seen in a long time, in a supposed to be good event turned a little unfortunate because of the encounter with the barracuda.

I was hoping things have changed with her. She was still the insecure person she was back in college. She has not changed. 

What happened? Her little spawn, who I thought was a good kid, appear beside me and said "Bakit wala pa kayong anak, antagal naman." 

Really? A six year old girl, out of nowhere, would ask that to my face?

Wow, Barracuda girl, you have been training your spawn so well!

If you see this blog, you know this post if for you.

But I won't blame you. Hurt people hurt people. 

I know you're still hurt because you are still so insecure. 

Just want to let you know that no matter how much you try to put me down, it won't lift you up.

You are still the same barracuda that treated me like dirt twentyish years ago. 

If that makes you happy, using your kid to hurt my feelings, go ahead!

Well, see you around. I'm looking forward to see the next lessons that you taught your spawn next time.

I hope it makes you happy.

Childless, Motherless

 I have opened this blog and all I see are the blogs I follow about life being childless and I remembered it's world childless week. I have not been bothered about being childless for quite some time now. I was occupied with other things.

Now, my mother is gone. Both my parents are gone. Cancer took them both from us. I never imagine this more difficult. My mother is a big part of my life even though I lived miles away from her since I got married. No person ever believed in me like my mother did. Losing her feels like losing half of myself, my life. Without her, it seems like I'm a ship navigating the seas in the dark, without the sight of a lighthouse. She was my lighthouse. 

I miss her everyday, and I will miss her forever. I will miss all her goodness and stubbornness, her kind words even her nonsense and annoying side.

She is the most hardworking woman I have ever met. She would plant flowers and vegetables in every little vacant land near the house. She had made sure we ate well and full. She had given us everything she could ever give. She was just the mother any child would ever need.

Now, I don't know how to start with my life all over again. I'm only 42, I had wished she would live until she's 80 but fate took 8 years from that wish. I have no job to go back to, and there's so much about this new life that I need to get used to. And I have no idea how. How to live life from this moment on and make it better. 

I know I should be at peace because she's already in the most perfect place.

But now, I should just probably allow myself to be lonely, sad, scared and lost. 

Life Update August - Oh Ghost

 August is ghost month to those who believe. It's just another month for me. It's been four months since I left my job. I have not noticed how the past months went by. The daily routine since then has been fixing mother's milk, change her diaper, assist her eat, bath, house chores and trying to find a part job. Twenty four hours does not seem enough.  I must say that job search these days, compared to twenty years ago, is extra difficult. Soul-crushing said one of the people from LinkedIn. Been trying my luck to find some freelance gig since then, but still not lucky enough. Try again. And again.

There are days when my new routines feels like normal. But I don't like this as my normal. Caregiving to a sick parent is never easy. It is soul crushing. 

On Death

 For the past since months alone, my mother has been in and out of the hospital. About four times she was confined for at least three days, the longest was ten days. I have watched my father succumbed to cancer, my mother and siblings took care of him while I was living with my in laws that time. It was me whom the doctor talked to and said it was cancer. This time with my mother, it was me again.

I think I have said this to my husband before but I sometime again this year I said to him again that if I ever get cancer or get terribly sick, don't try to get me in some expensive and long term treatments. I told him to remarry if I die young. He just ignored it, or did no entertain the horrible idea. 

Having a family member getting cancer makes it like the whole family has cancer too. It's that horrible. Science have succeeded at making some form of cancer curable, especially when detected early, but some of these patients gets the cancer back after years. 

I have been watching people who have experienced with near death experience in Youtube and I was surprised there were a lot of them. Most of them are Americans, I have not found a lot of Asians and found one Filipino. Hearing their stories make me feel at peace about the people I know who have died. If these were real, then there's no reason to fear death.

I stopped going attending church, an organized religion many years ago. Some times I come with my husband as respect to his faith, which he has been to since he was born. I told him that I don't believe in that this church teaches anymore about God because the God I know and believed in my heart was not like what the pastors have been telling the people. I know he respects me and I respect him as well, and we just avoided talking about it but I won't and will ever ever argue with him about.

I believe that God is an ever loving God who does not judge people. I believe that when we die, our souls deserve a better place despite what church we attended while we were alive, even those who do not attended church or who never had religions. I don't believe that heaven is an exclusive place. I'd rather call it "home", we will all go back to where we came from, which is the perfect place, there was nothing but love and misery is unknown. That's what I believe. 

(If you know me and you accidentally stumbled upon this blog, please don't judge. I write here what I think in the moment because I have no one to share it with at the moment) Thanks.