Hello. So...
C and I talked last night (technically yesterday morning) about us, what happened, life in general. We were completely honest to each other. The gist is, we're okay for now.
Now I'm the one having problems with myself.
I've been watching too much Homeland. I've finished already finished Season 2, which on my normal working phase, an episode wouldn't even have a chance getting into my schedule. But since I feel like shit, I allowed myself to make that lapse.
This is my pattern. When something big and unexpected happens, I get lost. One friend used to liken me to an ant. That when you put something in an ant's way, it wouldn't know what to do. It doesn't realize that it can just work its way around it and then it will be able to continue its original path. I'm not saying that I am like that. I wouldn't like to think so. I prefer to think that I have a choice. I wasn't wired to be that way and that a pattern can be broken. I'm not an ant.
My pattern:
Something bad or big or emotional happens.
I get all worked up.
I get a momentary feeling of panic but
I work, I do something, whether I fix it or I do other things so long as it allows me to move.
After that I crash.
I get tired,
depressed.
I think about what happened. About my faults, weaknesses, limitations. I feel helpless.
At this stage, I know that I'm screwed.
After something that's happened in college many years ago, I applied for work and focused on that. Did nothing but work, made friends in the office, and stayed with my boyfriend the rest of the time. After a month, come enrollment time, I didn't enroll. It was only then that I had a time to stop and think about what happened and decided that I wasn't ready to face it.
When C and I broke up, I went haywire. I was always intoxicated or partying or just being a bitch or an asshole. But after that intense phase, it all went downhill again.
Happened also when I quit from that last film I worked on. That's my pattern.
And I am at that last stage right now. It has been a week. I spent the whole of last week working. Now I can't work. I can't do anything. I just want to sulk. I feel guilty that we--I have hurt another human being in a way I never thought I could. Never. In any lifetime. I hate patriarchy and everything that comes with it, so naturally, I am not a violent person. I never thought it possible for me to become even close to harassing someone. But I did. I shouted at the taxi driver. Because I thought he was wrong. That was all. I thought I was wrong and he hurt my friends. I'm sure I said a lot of mean things I couldn't remember after. That is what's scary, I don't remember a lot of what I said. I just remember myself wanting him to suffer, because he was a bad person in my mind.
I know that it was the alcohol. But I've never been like that even in my most intoxicated state. So that's what's eating me up. What have I turned into? Am I now like them? Am I now like C and his friends? His friends who in a lot of ways have become my friends too, I hang out with them, but I have always promised myself not to be like them. So now I am consciously telling myself, I don't want to be like that. I need to take a second look and check the culture I'm living in, with, and by. I was a good person and I intend to be that way. I am questioning my own character and I don't want to. I want to believe that I am good. But am I? I know that I was. But am I still?
I want a break. But I can't have it. I need myself not to have it. There is not going to be a break this time. I have to get out of that pattern and stop making excuses about being human and being a subjective being. That excuse is for those who can afford it. For those who can afford getting checked just because they're having a "pattern" and can afford to buy meds to get out of their shit. I believe that I can will this.
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Extra rant.
Carrie Mathison has a bipolar disorder, which somehow makes me relate to her a bit. I am not bipolar. But I can imagine being in her shoes, how difficult it might be for someone with the same disorder. I understand that we're talking about a fictional character here but we all have our avenues of release, right? And mine just happened to be Homeland at this very moment. So we relate ourselves to whatever we're watching or listening to at a particular emotional, economical, personal, whatever-else phase. I'm feel lucky that I don't have what Carrie has. But still, she has the means to live with a sickness like that.
Imagine a farmer or a factory worker, in the Philippines, getting the same sickness. What I'm saying is, these sicknesses are of the bourgeois. Meaning,fine, let's just say a farmer is born with clinical depression (though I have never met one), they are able to live with it. Because they don't have a choice. They don't have room for depression. They have bigger things to take care of. And this is exactly how I felt when I was still a student activist. It was a difficult role to have but I really didn't give a shit about my emotions. I would talk about them to comrades and it was very easy, because I was very comfortable with them, and they understood. We were on the same wavelength, same culture, hence same language.
I went my back to my old pattern when that college incident happened. After that, never again did I have long, straight months of unperturbed, focused, and stable well-being. And I came back worse. I was terrible. My boyfriend then had to suffer for it. I think he handled it very well up to the point that he want me to be happy so badly that I had too much freedom.
Anyway. I need to find my balance. I need to be productive but not bury myself with work. I'm trying to find a will to do that. I don't know how.
