A Lost Cat

A lost cat found polaris.

[alostcat]

I saw a quote earlier today about Sundays and having coffee and pancakes with the love of your life. I remember romanticizing the shit out of that quote when I was 19, thinking, if I have that I will be happy. Sundays, late lunch, brewed coffee for me and instant coffee for him with the two cats the past seven years is not the rose-colored bliss everyone pictured but I am happy.

And it was enough to trigger me to open this space. Remember how this little corner of the internet served as our little void that we could scream into and strangers would click the little heart button? Oh how it controlled our lives. But it felt genuine, and you formed friendships but also enemies and people you're indifferent to. A decade later, I still follow some on Instagram, I get happy and sad when they are happy and sad on the stories they post from time to time. Some have left messages here and believe me, it perks me up the same way the 19-year old me used to be so happy when she talks to people here. I wish you all the best too.

I have underestimated what 10 years can do to a person. The person I used to swear I would fight wars for sent me a friend request a few weeks ago. I don't know why she thinks it's necessary to patch up. There are apologies that you don't need to hear to move on. If you burn the bridge, you stay on that side.

I just felt like reminiscing. This hidden corner still remains the void you can scream into, with no prying or judging eyes, thinking why you sound like a sappy teenager. Like a digital grave, she's forever 19 in this space.

[alostcat]

I've been working as a human rights advocate for almost a decade, and you cannot imagine how tiring it is to be branded as the evil one when the government leader thinks human rights are inhumane. When we stay in senate grounds until early morning, hearing nothing but incapacitated "lawmakers" blurting out tone deaf insights about your proposed bill. When we try to seek department secretaries to concretely support welfare programs but you hear "that's not really our priority". When you try to seek support from neighboring countries and you hear "but you have a joke for a president, why would we help you?" And now, on the brink of having a human rights violator family at the top of the country again, I don't think I can survive another 6 years. I'm tired of fighting for the human rights of people who won't fight for you. From my acquaintances to relatives, who mock your work because they don't believe in human rights – I think I just realized now, it's because they're not one. I won't even try to turn this post into an inspiring one. This is more of an expression of a frustrated advocate. I know things can still change, but today, I will have to keep my hope protected in a small box. I remember writing here as a teenager about how society might shut all hope off, how I promise to create opportunities instead of waiting for them. I did, I really did try. But today, I'm just so tired.

[alostcat]

Major changes happened this year, something I’ve been looking forward to happen when I was younger. This is how I explained my moving-out to my younger sister even when she already understands why I need to. Aside from the draining commuting and acquiring the sense of being independent, I told her that our family is something I could only love from afar. She was reminded of the times my stepfather and I clash on many things – from his sexist belief that only woman should clean the sink to not allowing my mother to work, from imposing his decisions on where I should work to forcing me to marry some guy he thinks he’d get money from. Not to mention, how he badmouths me with every relative he has whenever I disagree to lent them money. It’s toxic, it’s draining, it’s vilifying. My mother doesn’t support the clash, vocally. But when we’re alone together, in a far coffee shop, she smiles and say she wish she could do the same. She can outsmart and put him on his place, of course, but she refuses for the sake of their younger children. And with that, I understand her. But I wish we could do more about it.

My sister is learning faster that I thought, as well. She always asks me why our stepfather always discourages and invalidating every accomplishment she’s done. I told her that she knew well that he had always carried his issues against people around him. She said she almost lost her esteem, until she realized that maybe, our stepfather is talking about his younger self and not her. Since then, she learned not to take everything he says against her. That’s how I knew it’s okay to leave her for a while alone, while I try to rebuilt mine.

The past six months of living on my own still seem not how I imagined it to be. Movies and books really built a world in my head where things are always calm and quiet. But it’s not how it’s really is, apparently. At least, not literally. But I discovered new things. My mother and I talk more through chat or whenever I visit them. Before, there is always this huge air of silence between us, that we can’t hear each other even if we’re sitting together in the car, while watching TV, during service in church, across the dining table. My sister and I talk more, from family issues to Philippine politics, which I could say, I’m proud about. She also talks to our younger siblings more, now that she’s the oldest among them.

I lost my cat this month too. Gotham is my first pet. He died from sickness, and I always held it against me, believing I should have done better. Pets are not allowed in our new place, so I left him with my family. My mother, who had hated cats ever since, grew fond of him. She buys him fish, she bathes him, she allows him to sit on her lap when she’s on the computer. When he got sick, I have to choose which to prioritize, financially. My siblings just started school, and their house bills are piling up. When I got back from a work trip, I immediately sent money for my cat. When I visited them, that’s when I found out he was gone a few days earlier. I cried for him, and I cried for the future sacrifices that has to happen just because I can’t do enough.

My work also started to get heavier compared before. I get to decide for the program and how things should be done, but it also came with the responsibility of seeing how it would affect others, especially I’m working directly with children. Teaching and promoting children’s rights, with the current political climate in the country, is challenging but rewarding. The restless nights and heavy workload gets paid off when a child tells me she’s more eager to fight for their rights. Or when I see them grow older and work for the same field, or volunteer to reach other kids.

Through all these, my boyfriend has been the most supportive. He has seen me wrack my brain or cried myself to no end whenever I’m stressed or sick. He doesn’t tolerate my self-depreciation or when I feel bad for myself – he almost scolds me for it. It feels good to go home and see him, have a warm dinner after a long day at work, or a long week at field. Our dates became a day at the laundry shop or doing monthly groceries. I get to force him to come with me when I want to swim, but he’ll just sit on the side. We catch the last full show of movies and talk about it while walking back home. We already have a favorite ramen restaurant. Most of the time, it’s sleeping or looking out at the window and seeing different sunsets every afternoon, or seeing fire breaks from a nearby city, or looking at cloud formations. This is the calmest I have been.

[alostcat]

I never thought I’d lose friends this easy. Especially those I’ve treated like a sibling, and I know and I had felt, they did the same for me the past years. I remember a few years back, I wrote here about a friend who always know which library and which aisle to find me, who knew me too much and who always go out of her way to comfort me. A few years later, she slowly turned into someone I don’t know. The other is like a sister to me, and always saves a space in her home for me, and always put up with all of my weird ways. She also turned into someone I don’t understand anymore — where her hurt was coming from, what her indifference meant, I can’t find an answer. 

Both had let me down and disappointed me in the past recent years. I should have gone astray, cut them out, lived in peace. But I continued to reach out, to understand, to wait what comes next. But both left, in the same fashion, saying it’s me who had wronged them. I never felt so confused.

But it didn’t feel heavy, or there’s no yearning for me to earn them back. But it’s not necessarily a breather too. I never wished  — I never even thought  — that they’d be away. But they’re gone. Ended in bitter arguments, or just bitterness. The prominent feeling now is just disappointment. Not regret, not grudge, not anger. But pure disappointment. It’s too strong that I don’t even have the energy to talk, or to explain to them what  happened. It may or may not change their decision, because usually we’d want the final word, right? This time, I just feel like allowing them to go away, without giving them what I think they ought to know before they leave. Another friend told me that it’s maybe because I’m content on where I am now, that I’ve reached the point wherein when people leave, maybe I don’t care much, but surely I’m not desperate to stop them either. I told her I think it’s still because I got tired. 

I feel like I’m a little old for this lesson. Losing friends should or would been like a highschool problem. I shouldn’t be making a deal about this.  I should have learned a long time ago that this happens. But for someone who cling too much and care too much for a friend, I still get caught in surprise, good or bad, when a friend goes away. And specifically these two special people, they’re a part of me that no can take away. But I guess they can, and they did.

It’s different when someone wronged me then decides to leave. I hold a grudge I know I’d take for the many years to come, like keeping it in a safe drawer, tucked in, polished when the time comes that I’d need it. The other drawer keeps the disappointment, disbelief even, but also a little bit of relief, knowing that the people who don’t deserve to stay, leaves. 

[alostcat]

But maybe, not all the time. Please remember, Claire. It's not all good things all the time.

[alostcat]

I always feel on the edge of something, either it breaks or frees me. I always have to be sure, or else, it would break or free me. Pat me, and I cry a million tears. Hug me and I break in a million ways. Hold me, and the million tears evaporates. Look in my eyes, and I’m complete once more. Anxiety knocks my head and knots my heart in ways I never understand. This year has been a concrete reminder to me to learn to hold myself when the world cannot. To learn to breathe even if the world feels submerged under water. But this year, it was easier. I hold myself and he holds my hand. I try to breathe and he calms my heart.

Many nights, I wake up, oblivious to time, and I hear the passing buses and trucks from the highway. Most of the time, I wonder if one of them loses control, and the driver tries to steer away from the approaching cars, then its 10 wheels’ screech towards the house, hitting the walls til our room breaks and we never wake up in our dreams. I hate it whenever that happens. When that thought sneaks into my mind, in the eerie hour of the night. It happens fast, and its happens vividly that I start to lose catch of my breathing. Before, my mother had to slap me awake just to get me back to my senses. When I’m sleeping alone, I cry out of frustration until I fall back to sleep. But now, most nights, I search for his hand. Hold it. Hold it close to my face. I’d feel he holds me closer. Then I’m okay again. He never hears of it the next morning. I never tell him those instances.

But he’s always there in every instances that I lose myself. He’d weather the traffic, lack of sleep, lack of money, the distance, the short of time, the bad seasons. I always thought to myself, I want to make sure I’d be there for him in every instances he would need me, unknowingly or not. He always tells me I saved him, but he never knew that he had saved me countless of times already. And I want it to be a continuous process of saving each other and being there, even if the worlds tells us you’re the only one who can save yourself. I’d rather be sure, be double sure, that we do.

[alostcat]

Sometimes, anxiety gets a hold of you in ways you don’t understand. But a while later, you get a grip of it and you would want just to question yourself why you let it happen. 

I’ve been having a hard time being stable ever since I want back to my college campus. First week of November. There was a work event, you see. And I was excited. To take the 10-minute ride from home compared to the 2-hour commute to work. I was excited. To walk along the acad oval, see the trees, see people jogging, see the ice cream carts. The next day, I was excited. To eat in the cheap korean restaurant. To look at school supplies in shopping center. To read the witty remarks on the waiting shade bulletin. The third day, I find myself crying while walking. I find myself anxious around the kiosk stalls. I find myself feeling at lost while waiting for a jeep. What was happening? I didn’t know.

The next few days, I cry in my sleep. Nightmares, mostly. Or I don’t get to sleep at all. Just 1-2 hours, if I’m lucky. The next week, I breakdown and I plead my boyfriend to call me even when he’s preparing for work. Something I won’t even have to plead for but it felt like that. Like, I”m trying to get a hold of something just to feel I’m here, I’m okay. I hear the news that a man from our networks hang himself on the hotel bathroom. I could imagine the blood running on the tiles, the sound of how the drain gulps its the last remaining drop of his life. I wouldn’t want to be left alone. 

A few more days and I feel feverish. I cry at the slightest problem. I run like a drama queen around the crowded halls of shopping malls. And I wanted to blame everything on myself at the same time, wanting so desperately to get away from this, this shell, this body, this mind, this life. 

Then I get a grip of it, and now I wonder, what the hell happened the past month. 

I attended a children’s conference first day of December. It talked about how to handle children in trauma, warfare, mental illnesses, toxic environment. I listed myself on one of the sessions on how to raise and handle children and teenagers, to help them cope up and understand life. My co-worker asked me why. I don’t have kids, she said. I’m too young to even consider. I just said it’s interesting.

Of course it’s interesting. I wanted to understand what happened to me while growing up. Not to correct things, not to find who’s to blame. But to accept that this is what I have, and here’s how to do it. 

[alostcat]

Over dinner, I told my mother what causes my panic on my work these days. You see, we have three upcoming events in the next two months. Since our office if short of people, I’m doing a job meant for three people of three different positions. Our line of work focuses on different advocacies. In my case, I should be focusing on child rights, but instead, I’m working more on government affairs — which is, let alone, a stressful field —  and since we still don’t have an office manager, I also help  on the administrative work. These events are equally important and require a lot of substantive and logistic preparations. It has been racking my brain, to be honest. Looking at every detail and predicting where lies the potential problems. Remembering and catching deadlines. And literally, time and energy-consuming tasks. Since my  boss in this project has very high expectations and is very meticulous about details, I’ve been trying to meet every requirement she asked. And this is where my mother enters.

She told me that I’m back on my habit again, of doing everything possible, just like how she has always scolded and advised me since highschool. She told me to learn to say I can’t do some certain tasks, also to prevent compromising a lot others. Problem is, I’m not good at speaking up. And I know to myself I could do every task anyway. It’s just that, my brain under too much anxiety and obsession over every detail kind of send me into my dissociated mode. This ends me leaving some tasks unfinished, and so I punish  myself for it. 

At a different light, my boss tells me that this is a good training on handling and managing different tasks at hand. She used to work for government, and been in a high position which required her to meet such high expectations. I appreciate the training she give me. I enjoy it, actually. It’s just that, again, it racks my brain. It makes me grumpy. It makes me panic over little things. 

A friend of mine said to learn to relax by focusing.  Put the work problems in one circle. The personal matters on another. And learn to do the “switch”. It seemed and sounded vague to me, really. How do you stop thinking of the other on top of another? Unreal for me.

And I can’t find any resolution for it.

[alostcat]

I can’t believe this is happening all over again.

[alostcat]

They make me really uncomfortable and they never did good things and I still can’t wrap my mind over the fact that they have to stay.

[alostcat]

Ahhhhhh Kuya Perry!!! Sa Kalay na siya last time nabalitaan ko?

Di pa ako nadadaan ng school ulit. Pero hanapin ko siya dun! haha

[alostcat]

I saw this as I was browsing through my drafts and I thought this 3-year old anecdote is timely for me to be reminded of:

Kuya Perry, the guard in Katag, is a friendly man. We used to have lunch together with my friends. He’d cook us snack in the afternoon. Last semester, after my 7 am class, I always had my breakfast with him and we’d talk about topics from “how to spot on snatchers in public” to personal problems. He always have a supply of medicine, like paracetamol and other painkillers. Being the sickly me, he’d give me some like the rest of the days whenever I ask for one when my supplies run out. 

One time, a midst the stressful semester, I just ranted out to him almost everything that makes me feel so shitty. He told me this: “Hindi halata na mukha kang may problem. Lagi kang all smile, all joke. Hindi ka mukhang stressed. Pero sabagay, tahimik ka eh. Pero ganito lang ‘yan, ano man yang pinagdadaanan mo, tatatawan mo rin 'yan. Sa tagal ko nang guard dito, yung mga tulad mong estudyante noon na iiyak dito rin sa lamesa na 'to, babalik after ilang years. Mangangamusta. Uupo sila dyan sa labas, maglalaro ng cards, magyaya ng inom, magkukuwentuhan lang. May problems pa rin, pero, nasusurvive. Chill lang."

I remember  thinking back then, I’d pay him  a visit after I graduate. I did. But he was in a different post already since the building where Katag was was burned. He made a “Sabi ko sa’yo e” remark after talking a bit. It’s true. I still have problems. It gets worse. It gets better. Then worse again. But the mentality to survive always remains. And I think, that’s what’s important. 

[alostcat]

Putangina with many feelings

[alostcat]

Ikaw naalala ko dito: srsfunny. net/post/162360238578/omg-images-lost-cat

what

it is me.

did you know, anon, i have a pet cat already after so many years. and if he gets lost, i'd be really like the one on the post. 

[alostcat]

You just like being surrounded with people. And no. You never loved me.

[alostcat]

People who keep coming back when you had a good reason or two for cutting them off before, would always be fucking annoying. On the other hand, good friends from the past who tries to reconnect again for a good reason or two, would always be something that makes the heart feel alighted. But really, yung iba sadyang epal lang e.

[alostcat]

Ew.