Cautiously Optimistic

It is really difficult to write a year-ender simply because I can't make sense of the year that has passed. There are some events that happened this year that I could've sworn happened the year before. It's as if my mind has already distanced itself from several things and now I am puzzled by its proximity to my Now.

I think something happened that definitely made me change the course of my current trajectory.

Oh, look at me, calling it "something" when I actually know what it is. But it is what it is, and it shall not be named (at least not publicly) and I got through it, didn't I?

If this year is to be known for anything, then, let it be known for how my family and friends have kept me alive and well. The support has been incredible and extremely grace-filled. I am hardly worthy, and yet the love just keeps coming and coming for me and my Lucia.

Which is why, despite all my complaints about my reality, I don't want to be anywhere else. This is where the Lord wants me. It is one of the few things that 2015 has made abundantly clear to me.

It's been a struggle doing the whole single parent thing. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing it okay enough or if I'm scarring Lucia for life. But she remains smart and kind and healthy and beautiful despite her mother; my cup runneth over.

And so, with a puzzled look to 2015, I enter 2016, cautiously optimistic. There are still so many things I haven't figured out yet, but on with the upswing, I say! Let's go!

Thank You

Here's the thing, though.

I'm actually...not happy. But thank you for wishing me a happy birthday. I'm not sad. Not really. I'm not sure. I'm in some fatigue-induced melancholy. I've been in an intellectual, non-violent (thank God) manic state these past few weeks (months?) and it's been exhilarating. But I feel like I'm at the tail-end of it and now—as with all post-manic episodes—I'm tired. And I feel a crippling sadness settling in. I feel like so many things in my life are up in the air and I just want things to settle.the.eff.down. Just. Stop. Stop spinning. Stop.

//

I spent the day in a seminar that I willed to happen and I was filled with anxiety leading up to it. What if the others didn't find value in it? What if they didn't enjoy? What if I was living in a pipe dream and nobody else wanted to get the pipe from me?

When one of my co-workers texted to thank me for making the seminar happen, I cried. I actually cried. And I realized, it wasn't because the seminar was a success.

It was because somebody thanked me.

//

I can never really think of my birthday now without thinking of how I "celebrated" it five years ago. In labor, scared and worried, but also extremely excited. I received the only thing I've ever really truly wanted with all my heart and soul and mind.

I thank you, Lord, for Lucia. For all my days, I will thank you. Thank you, thank you.

//

Lucia turns five tomorrow. She is everything I've ever wanted, everything I never even knew I wanted. Sometimes I look at her and tremble. How could I have been this fortunate?

I worry all the time. What if I break her? What if she isn't happy? What if she is my hopes and dreams, but she isn't hers?

And then she thanks me for coming home early (I came home late), and I cry.

//

In all things, I give thanks. Lord, you are wonderful to me.

//

So many people died today. Such horrors.

And now my unnamed, inexplicable sadness has gained a foothold on something real and concrete.

And I cry.

Checking In

I haven't written in so long because so much and nothing at all has been happening. Does that make sesnse? Probably not.

In any case, I'm okay. Mostly.

Just a little over a month till our birthdays and just a few more weeks till the year's over. I sorta feel like I want to end this year already. It's not necessarily a good nor a bad thing, I just want to get into more solid ground, and I think that's not going to happen this year.

Tralala, ladida.

You Are Enough

Oh, the immeasurable joy of having your child reach out for you in mid-sleep, in mid-nightmare; having her hold you and smell you and seeing her calm down. In that eternity of a moment, all self-doubt washes away. In that eternity, you are enough.

(But she, she is more than enough. She is everything.)

And in the infinity between then and the not-yet-now, you believe that it is true, and that it is the only truth that matters.

3rd

I started the day by finally submitting a story for publication. It was a story about a day that I had inside my head a few weeks after getting out of the basement. And then I did a cursory search of some files I had in my G-Drive and found a letter. It was the note I wrote right before I...did what I did.

I hadn't realized I saved a copy of it, to be honest. When I started reading the first sentence, I instantly remembered what it was. I know, I know. I shouldn't have read it, but I couldn't stop. The only reason I didn't read it till the end was that my eyes had gone all blurry with tears. I rushed to the restroom and locked myself in the stall and promptly wept. I would've stayed cocooned in my melancholy had it not been for a friend who said, just a few minutes after crying, "Happy Other Birthday."

And I remembered that I made a promise to myself to celebrate the fact that I lived. Three years since that horrible, horrible day.

The next day, on August 14, I got my 14th. To celebrate my 3rd Other Birthday.

Why a semicolon? http://www.projectsemicolon.com/

And today, I stay in bed.

My weekends are usually like this now. I try very hard to be functioning during the week, to make sure I am as normal as I possibly can. So weekends, I am rendered wary of humanity and all the rest of the world. Exhausted. Sad. Hopeful. Lonely. But alive.

L'chaim. On with the story. 

A Scar and a Bruise

Sometimes, I close my eyes. And imagine myself away.

I start from the top. I imagine that my eyebrows are fuller, that my eyes are not as dark. I imagine I have longer lashes and eyes that can see without glasses. I imagine having a more elegant nose. I imagine myself without allergies, my face is clear and smooth. Sometimes I imagine that I have dimples, but I actually like the dents of my mouth. I actually like my mouth. I like my teeth.

I imagine I have a long, smooth neck that meets my face with a jawline that could slice mangoes. I imagine having thinner arms and more ladylike fingers. I imagine I have shoulders that were poised for battle. But I like my small breasts. I breastfed for 22 months. I would've breastfed longer if my medicines had not poisoned my milk. I like that they are small and can be ignored. I like that I can get away with not wearing a bra.

I imagine I have a smaller tummy. Not flat, just smaller. I imagine having smaller thighs, but I like my butt (on most days), so I worry about how my thinner thighs would be able to support a butt like mine. And then I tell myself that physics and biology have no place in daydreams, and so I go back to imagining I have smaller thighs.

Some things I can't imagine away either because I actually like them, am at peace with them, or can't identify myself without them.

For example: I cannot imagine myself taller. I can't imagine my helicopter-like birthmark away. I can't imagine my chin away. And my eyes—I actually love my eyes. (If only I could see better with them.)

I can't imagine my scar away. When I feel another panic attack coming (which has been often, of late), I find myself holding my scar to feel calm. I think about how my guts were removed from inside of me, placed on a cold slab of metal, in order to safely take my child out. And I think about how the doctor was able to put every last inch of them back in and made me work again. For some reason, this idea of being disemboweled then put back together again makes me feel rather magical. Superior, at times.

There is a portion of my belly, however, that has not regained sensation. The doctor said it was because my nerves were severed and some of them will never grow the same way again. And so there is a part of my body that feels nothing, and I touch it whenever I feel too much. And I am calm.

I have a bruise—a series of bruises, maybe—that have been growing in size. The doctor said the medicines have made my blood thin, my veins weak. For some reason, the veins on my right thigh have been especially affected. I bruised myself (I've forgotten how) late October, maybe. The veins bled, just underneath my skin, and so now I have patches of bruises along my thigh that stem from that same bruise. The doctor said it will go away, eventually. It will just really take some time. For now, I look like I've been hazed. But just on my right thigh.

I tried imagining those bruises away, but I'm too fascinated by them. I think about the bruise that started it all, how it bled, how the blood coursed its way below my skin, above my veins (not through them). I suppose if I had to count them, I'd say I have about ten little bruises now, maybe 15. Or are they all just one bruise? When will the marks go away? When will my blood flow naturally again?

It will just take time. Eventually, it will go away.

I will feel nothing forever, but I hold it when I feel too much.

//

Sometimes, I wish I were beautiful.

When the World Was Pink

I have been told countless times that my daughter is almost exactly like me. We have the same expressions, the same interests, the same speech patterns. We have the same hair, the same laugh, the same chin, the same nose. We have the same love language (touch), the same temper (intense). She has my OCD and the same obsession with pink. We can both talk nonstop.

I see parts of her that aren't me, though. She is fearless. She is sure on her feet. She takes to swimming and running and all other physical activities like a natural.

My whole life is about her.

--

It is almost impossible to think of myself apart from being a mother; and yet it is this aspect—this non-mother-ness—that weighs heavily on me. As the annulment process reaches the next stage, reading all sorts of summaries of reports and testimonies, I realize that before that, I couldn't think of myself apart from being a wife.

For what am I—now—if you strip away my being a mother, a wife?

I am lonely. I am afraid. I am tired. I am confused.

I would like to have someone take care of me, ask me about my day, massage my head, my shoulders. I would like someone to tell me that my laughter lifts his/her spirits. That my laughter matters.

I would like someone to notice how my laughter has been hollow of late. How my eyes are sad. How he/she listens to me weep at night and stays up late to tell the ghosts to go away. To leave me alone.

I want to hear, "I love that you take care of me. But here, let me take care of you."

Just don't tell me you love me. I disbelieve it now if it doesn't come from my family and best friends.

--

I'm just tired. And in a few days, it will have been a year since.

And in that year, I will have been alone by choice. Too afraid and disgusted and walled-in.

--

Sometimes, my condition makes me doubt my own memories of happiness. I doubt if those happiness-es were real or just a by-product of my mania.

I do remember one moment when I was neither wife nor mother.

I was driving home from one of my classes in the dead of winter. The roads were miraculously clear and the snow was still. It was moments after dusk and the world around me was pink. The sky, the snow, the air—everything was pink. And the world was quiet and still. I opened my windows and drove home in silence. I didn't notice my tears and how they had all but frozen on my cheeks. I don't even remember why I cried. All I knew was that, at that moment, I was happy.

--

I go back to bed and nurse the abdominal pain that—contrary to what everyone said—didn't go away after I gave birth. (This PMS, unlike most of my relationships, though, is constant, reliable.) I close my eyes as this inchoate migraine has turned me photosensitive again. And my child love languages me calm. For now, I am only mother, for it is the one thing that makes sense to me. She whispers, "I love you," and for a moment, I forget how long it has been since I last heard that as a form of a lie.

Punch-Drunk Gratitude

You know what?

The past few weeks have been exhausting. And soul-crushing. (I will never marry again. I will never marry again. I will never marry again. Well, maybe I will. If I find a Unicorn.) I try not to make this blog a platform of bitterness (I'm looking at you, Katinka of 2009, for shame), so I won't tell you why exactly.

But, my goodness. My goodness.

But I'm not here to talk about that. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 7, 8, 9, 10...woosah.) I'm here to talk about incredible grace.

If you ask me about single motherhood I will tell you about:

• How parents always come charging when asked. How they come silently, gently, when not. How they always come. They always, always come.
• How brothers grow up to be the sort of men that you are in awe of. Such talent, such intelligence, such humility, such magnificent sense of Others.
• How family prays for you. And roots for you. And reminds you that you are made of sterner stuff. That dignity runs in the family. That miracles happen.
• How friends just give. And give. And give. And tell you, to stop being mothering them, to let them mother you.
• (But also, thank you for letting me mother you all.)

And.

• How your child reminds you that you have to stop and listen. Kiss like the Maoris do. Smell armpits. Make laway bubbles. Reminds you that your biggest mistake will cause you a lot of things (good riddance), but the ones that are important, will remain the same (thank God).

If you ask me about single motherhood, I will tell you that it is the biggest grace I've ever received.

And in all things—even if that "all" isn't much—I give thanks.

But why?

"Mommy, do you love my Daddy?"

I started my day with vomit. Lucia nudged me awake and said, "Mommy, I'm going to be sick." And then she puked all over my shirt. After, we were lying down on the bed—new sheets, new clothes, both of us smelling of soap—whispering odd nothings and then she fell back asleep.

I looked at her face and remembered a time when I would panic at the slightest sneeze, a weird sounding cough, a rash. Now, when something like this happens, I am suddenly the epitome of expertise and nonchalance:

1. Oh, she puked liquid-y phlegm, not food. The vomit doesn't even smell sour. She's fine. I should teach her how to expectorate.
2. I should teach her the word "expectorate".
3. Oh, I think Gaston (from Beauty and the Beast) already did that.
4. She's sleeping again. I should try to sleep again, too.
5. Do we have enough food in the freezer to last till Saturday?

She woke up a few hours later to puke again. We stayed in bed after, again, but stayed awake. And that's when she asked the question.

I was suddenly the epitome of panic and fear and...righteous anger, I'm gonna say?

Mommy, do you love my Daddy?

... (...)* ((...))** (((...)))*** No.

But why?

...Because I love myself now.

Can I still love Daddy?

Of course.

I love you.

I love you.

*Will I tell her the truth? CAN SHE HANDLE THE TRUTH?!?!?!

**I should probably just use the whole "in a different way" template. All single parents do, right?

***Damnit, I'm just going to tell her the truth.

She let the futility of my answer pass, but I expect more probing questions in the future. 

I'm just doing the best I can, you know? 

For now, my darling, know that there is a wealth of meaning behind that brevity. And a whole lot of love. 

There is nothing but love, actually. For me. For you. Always for you. 

And then I vomit.

Children

She wanted me to sit by the stairs as she played with the other kids all by herself. I could hear her talk to the other kids and most of them ignored her. They were mostly 7 and 8 and 9, and they spoke Tagalog fluently. ("Ba't may baby dito?" "Ayoko dyan, English!")

I stayed away, dear reader. I stayed away.

There were three who knew Lucia, though, and I could hear them talking to her (in English). She would peek from around the corner, to make sure I was still there. Still far away. But still there. She waved and smiled. "I'm okay, Mama!"

One of the meaner kids said, "May mumu dyan!" (I STAYED AWAY!) One of the boys (Arvi—the one who knows Darth Vader, remember him?) pulled Lucia aside and said, "There's no such thing. Don't believe him."

Another boy, Axl (also a regular playmate) said, "Come on, Lucia, Arvi and will play with you in your house."

Lucia said, "Okay. How about the other children? Do they want to play, too?" (She called them "children"—the same way an adult would.)

And I—the adult—said, "I don't like them. They can all go away." (And they did.)

God bless my darling's kind heart, but this mother will only take so much. Besides, I was good, I stayed away (for as long as I could).

The boys have left, leaving behind a mess. "Sorry for the mess," she said. And kissed me on the nose.

Compassion and Empathy

Just a few hours ago, I had lunch with the yaya who took care of me and my siblings for about 6 years or so. This was during most of the 90s, so she had front row seats to the show that was my teenage angst. Wew. While we were talking about this and that, she said, "Parang bumait ka, a."

For some reason, I've been getting that a lot lately. And no, it isn't because I'm fantastically nice now. It's because I was THAT messed up before. Recently, I explained to some fairly new friends that I wasn't always like this. Things were very, very different before.

Another friend asked why and how I've mellowed so much. I told her that I had been through hell and back and that I literally almost died. Basically, I've been living my second life since 2012, and I am much more appreciative of what I have now. There are times when I feel like reverting to states of mind and being that nearly destroyed me, but the tug passes. Not without much effort, but it passes.

I am in that weird space right now, remembering that year (as well as the year that just passed), and I'm in a muddy mix of emotions. Mostly because I saw this video shared on my newsfeed:



My emotions are weird because, I can intellectually remember being sad and alone and ashamed. But I don't emotionally remember them anymore. At least not as much as I can feel how much happier I am right now. Don't get me wrong, I still remember the shame all too vividly. But I don't really feel the shame as intensely now.

Interestingly, when I think about that year, I don't remember the sadness or the fear or any of that. I remember the things that got me through.

So much of what Monica Lewinsky said resonated with me, but of all the things she said, this was my favorite: "Shame cannot survive empathy".

And, like she said, this empathy can come from anywhere.

Aside from love from my family and friends (my goodness, my family and friends, THANK YOU), what buoyed me were the many private messages that near-strangers sent to me. I mean, I received messages of hope and encouragement and prayer and outright love from people I wasn't even close to. From people who didn't even know the whole story. I had people telling me about how other people were praying for me. It was amazing.

Meanwhile, some people whom I thought were really good friends—and I mean, REALLY good friends—kept away. Remained silent. Waited for me to reach out. They wanted to remain neutral, they said. Nailang daw sila. (Sorry that my misfortune made you ilang. Hay.)

They are no longer my friends. I cut all ties with them. And that's okay, I wish them well. I have already been blessed by so many with so much.

I've been pretty okay, actually. In fact, I dare say: I'm pretty happy. (Eek!) Ugh, someone actually had the audacity to ask if I was dating again because I looked so happy. (Like it isn't possible to be happy on my own. Like it isn't possible to actually want to be alone. Oy.) It's scary sometimes, this happiness. Since I'm more in the manic portion of the spectrum, I have to keep checking if I'm being overly hyper again, if this happiness is mania.

(Like, I've been overly productive at work lately and because of what happened in the past, there was a moment where I was scared I was being manic again. I wasn't. I just really love what I do, haha!)

But everything's been steady. I take my meds like clockwork. I get lots of sleep. I laugh—genuinely—a lot. So I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. (I'm okay!)

I just want to say thank to everyone who has been kind to me. Thank you for your compassion. Your kindness and compassion make me want to be kind and compassionate, too. Maybe that's why I'm kinda more mabait now.