I Survived 2021

Even if I never thought I would

Today, my cards told me to take a victory lap around Miracle Mile.

Cards. Yes, rectangular pieces of textured paper product with purposefully drawn images. Not playing cards, but tarot and oracle cards specifically. More infamously known to tell one’s fortune or misfortune, these cards helped me get through the second half of 2021 and most likely the rest of my life.

I’ve always wanted to get my fortunes read, but never had the courage to go against inculcated Catholic upbringing, strict to trust God has your back always. But the situation was dire. I was a control freak who’s life was spinning out of control and needed to hang on to something. Anything. I was drowning, one action short of imminent spiritual death, more inclined to make decisions not aligned with who I am.

Clearly, I wasn’t myself. Or was I really?

In November 2020, I was diagnosed with clinical depression and general anxiety disorder. It stemmed from the pandemic uncertainty, self-imposed pressures of fulfilling obligations, duties and lofty personal standards and non-stop working in a job that wasn’t quite for me, despite doing it very, very well.

There I said it on the searchable Internet space for the world to . I will say it again, I am a depressive with a general anxiety disorder.

It was the vacuum that sucked the life and soul out of me, reducing me to a shell. The pandemic driving it on overdrive; I was shaken to my core. Literally, shaking as if I had Parkinson’s, but didn’t. I’ve never been here before, unsure of the mess inside my head, the emptiness inside my heart. Or have I seen this before - where the signs are visible yet illegible, fuzzy because of the weight of my foot on the accelerator on life? Or a foreign place where there was a semblance of perceived reality yet the rules of life are different?

An IRL friend, one of the select few who lovingly held my hand across the miles through chatting, introduced me to tarot.  I booked a reading to untangle a semblance of a step forward, then another one. And I found myself buying a deck (er, more like a number of them!), so I could read on my own.

Card by card, day by day.

While the shaking stopped the very day I didn’t have to report to work, in my mind, I was bouncing off as fast as a Jai Alai rubber ball even as I was seated on the couch, staring into the blank space. Zoom, thwack, zoom, thwack, zoom, thwack! No rhyme, nor reason, nor direction.

Then a bird pooped on me.

It was my third time in New York City to be with my people, the ones who’ve been with me in Manila, ones with whom I’ve walked the odd roads in the Middle East, ones who I connected with mind, heart and soul.  Standing under the forest green steel maze that held up the 69th St 7 train station, waiting for the crosslight to turn green, fulfilled the hankering craving for tapsilog en route to another rendezvous, I heard a plop and felt wetness on the back of my head.

In the middle of that chilly autumn day, I shrugged thinking it was simply aircon exhaust. But my hand still instinctively reached for my hair, wiped down to reveal that it was not. Green goo on my hand, unidentified particulate stuck in between the grooves of ny fingers.

“They say that it is goodluck.” said friends whom I’ve updated about the incident. Another friend said that in her thirteen years of living in the city, she’s never experienced this. Imagine that. A new low or a new high?

In an earlier train ride on the N Train to Astoria, liquid started flowing down the center aisle of the train car. “That man just peed on himself!” a passenger screamed even before the pungent ammonia could permeate the air. There was a mad dash to the sliding doors. So I stood up from my seat, walked towards the panicked huddle, scrambled out to the Broadway station platform and skipped into the next car.

Shit (and pee!) happens, so we move forward.

I hopped back on the 7 Train, transferred to the N back into Astoria, washed the bird poop off - knees on the cold, hard bathroom tile floors, bent over, body towards the faucet, watching the water from my hair turn clear from murky green. Quick blow dry then was back out on the next train into Manhattan.

I focused on finding myself through things that I never, or rarely, gave myself permission to do. With I, me, and myself, I wrote a list and ticked each box.

• Broadway in actual Broadway musical: check!

• First ballet show ever: check!

• Tattoos (Yes, not just one, but two. One of which I designed): check!

• Days in art museums: check!

• Decaf beverage and people watching in neighborhood, non-chain cafe: check!

• Spanish vermut and tapas: check!

• Meals, drinks and IRL conversations with MY people: check!

• Taking public transportation and non-stop walking: check!

Day by day, step by step, joy by joy.

In September, I turned forty. 4-0! In what my twenty year old self considered old, old. Not yet ancient, but slowly approaching. Where has all the time gone? Forty trips around the sun. Have I truly lived my life on my own terms? Time has past, but I still have time.

I connected with my people - friends, food people who lived and loved everything food, writers and other creatives. I signed up for writing workshops by Ligaya Mishan, Molly Wizenberg, Cinelle Barnes. With each step in my favorite US city, I plugged into the energy - the madness, the bustle, the diversity, the scorn, the anger, the cognizance of life as it was, as it is. I peeled off the mask, the lens of forced, pernicious saccharine dogma that I thought was “right” and embraced the duality in existence, experiences.

With madness, there is magic. With light, there is darkness. Joy by joy, word by word.

I scribbled furiously on my journal, on my travel notebook. I just said, ‘eff it and pitched stories to our local weekly. Then I got published here, here and here. I allowed the spotlight to shine on me, agreeing to an interview here. And I am writing right here. I hope to continue to do so.

Thank you for joining me on my victory lap. I would not done it without you.

Didi

What I’ve read/been reading right now:

• Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg. I’ve read all of Molly’s books - from her dealing with the death of her beloved father in between a budding long distance romance, to being married to her husband and his pizzeria to the now dissolved heterosexual marriage and her exploration of gender and identity. I felt it was a difficult write for a rightfully difficult exploration, acceptance and transition. But Molly continues to write from the heart, which I’ve always been drawn to.

• Becoming by Michelle Obama. Well, she is the reason I have sacks of potting mix, mulch and a packet of tomato seeds. Keep you posted whether or not I get any tomatoes this summer. I truly admire this woman for sharing her OWN story and being her OWN person.

• Memorial by Bryan Washington. I LOVE BRYAN WASHINGTON’S WRITING. He is insightful, observant in everyday real life interactions, writing so simply, which makes his stories so powerful.

What I’ve watched/is watching:

• The Grand Tour presents Carnage A Trois, while this is not a personal choice (despite my recent past of working on a Japanese car brand), but my petrol head husband’s, I was happy to learn about the Citroen 2CV’s suspension system. The engineer’s ultimate goal was to drive over cobblestone roads without any breakage in the basket of fresh eggs. They demonstrated this feature bombastically as they do. Would you believe that they diffused a bomb while driving this car? Or at least, that was what I saw they did. Magic of television editing?  Why won’t other car companies adopt such technology?

• Emily in Paris. I love to hate watch extremely annoying, disrespectful American faux pas in other countries. A contradictory experience from mine, who is ever mindful of threading foreign territories. Is this a brown immigrant experience? Often, I wished I had that devil-may-care, white girl energy though.