Kwak-Kwak

Its been 2 years since i wrote something here. This is a raw, unedited, probably full of grammar error, post and i dont care. This is a safe haven. A venue where no one should know me, or even care about my random musings.

So lets re-cap.

I finished my residency - despite the pandemic. I passed my diplomate exam, despite my limited knowledge, as i insist on. I also did a gap year, and worked in a rural hospital, where i found some really nasty knowledge about spite, politics, and drama. But i stayed because i needed the money to fund my travels.

Oh, and i travelled. Not as much as i want to. But as much as my sweldo allows. Despite my relatively big sweldo, kulang gihapon sya. DMD

Despite my defiance, I entered fellowship. Currently making myself alive during the program, and constantly questioning myself if i really can do it because i know in myself that i am stupid.

We finally broke up. After 10 years. Its hard moving on. No contact is the hardest for me because he's been a constant in my life, and has known me the longest.

That probably it for now.

I should let him go. This relationship has its ups and downs but at the end of the day, I am not sure I am ready to marry this guy. Up until a year ago, I was so sure I won’t marry. I am still 100% sure I wont have kids, but seeing my friends tie the knot and get serious with life, made me question my beliefs. I would love to get married one day - to a person I wont feel judged to, to someone I have confidence with, to someone I can talk for hours without anyone getting bored, to someone who gets me -- all my mood swings and shit. 

He gets me, but why do i have this feeling that he just tolerates me? He listens to me but does he understands me? He’s with me all the time, but is his mind with me?

I know this is all my fault. Somehow I just know it is. It usually is. 

And if I try to reach out to him and try to fix the problem, he’d shut up and ignore me. Wouldn’t even try to tell me what he feels.

It wasn’t always bad.

We had good memories too. Being together feel right, comfortable, peaceful and just fit. But I just dont see the future with him. 

Let me share my first disappointment as a child.

I was Grade 4, around 10-11 years old, when I transferred to a different school in the city. It was an hour drive from my house, and I started living with my aunt to save up for travel time. It was a different school, a more competitive one. It was were all the daughters and sons of the most prominent people - from the mayor, councillors, judge, doctors, even professors - go to to get a quality education. I went there, as a daughter of nobody. But I didn’t know that, I was a kid. I didn’t know about statuses back then. I only knew that I was being transferred because my old school wasn’t capable enough to teach me stuff.

I was actually doing okay. Considering the adjustments I had to make at such a young age, I was relatively okay. First grading, I ranked 4th among everyone. I used to rank 1st from my old school, so my parents saw this as a downgrade. They thought I wasn’t studying enough. But looking back, a lot of factors could have added to that small decrease.

I was a new girl. I was almost bullied. I was from nobody. My family wasn’t that prominent in that area. I was adjusting in my aunt’s place. They were slightly maltreating me. I had to gain new friends.

Also I was only 10. I had to be responsible for myself. I had to live with myself because I didn’t have a yaya back then.

So my parents gave me a motivation. They were to give me a brand new shoes if I placed 1st or 2nd. (Because let’s face it, our first placer was unbeatable) I gave it my all, studied hard, burned all the candles, and thank God, I got that 2nd place. I was really looking forward for that new shoes. I was really excited because at that time, children were mean and poor people are trash to them. And I wanted to impress them and be friends with them. I know, it was pathetic but that was my childhood.

Sadly, I didn’t get the shoes.

It happened over and over again. I work hard for something, they promise a reward, and no reward was given. I get disappointed. It was a vicious cycle which happened until my college years. After that, I didn’t care anymore.

Study Break

I’m in Manila for review season. But I also wanted to watch LANY. So I did. 🤫

Concerts really makes my heart giddy. It’s the ambience and energy of all the people and of course, hearing the artist live. It was surreal.

I started listening to LANY late last year, when I was still emotional and all. I could really relate to the sadness and hurt in the song and when I heard it live, the emotions just kept coming back. I couldn’t help but sing along and get emotional.

Board Season

This is my rate limiting step. A great hurdle I have to overcome in order for all the other steps to proceed. As I prepare for the penultimate exam (not really, but just for now), I hope for sustenance and support. I do hope I continue to persevere and never falter in my goal. Four years in medical school has somehow prepared me for this, but as I attend my review classes, the more I realise I know nothing.

I kept thinking, how did I even get here?

I’ve been the kind of student who gives the bare minimum. I kept blaming it on my formative years where I was repeatedly told that we were all great, no need to prove it. I guess it got enculcated in my brain and my competitiveness shrunk to zero. I don’t really entirely blame myself either. I had fun during medical school. I had balance. But I sure did felt I could’ve done more.

Now that we are less than a month before the exams, my anxiety levels are slowly creeping in. I really hope and pray that God will sustain me through this journey. I don’t know what the other side looks like but I will persevere to reach it.

So, pray for me guys! I really need it.

Cheerio!

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Poems are hard

This is the end.

Happy Valentine’s Day from this side of the world. ❤️

I honestly didn’t expect to receive flowers today, much less a bouquet. You see, I’m in a type of relationship who doesn’t really celebrate these occasions. We usually just celebrate the big ones - anniversaries and birthdays. So I was in shock when the boyfriend arrived in my doorstep, bringing my favourite milktea, cupcakes, and this bouquet with a touching letter inside. It just made me giddy and sweet and blush and everything. I thought it’d be too much of a cliche but this is just a way to celebrate love. I do hope you guys had a wonderful day today, cause I know I did. No matter what your status is, celebrate love. It may not come in the grandest bouquets or the sweetest chocolates, but that’s not the only way to celebrate love. Celebrate it with friends, with family, or with that special someone. Celebrate it by spending time together, by remembering each other, and by simply rejoicing what love is.

Today, for the nth time, I have googled “how to love myself”. It’s that time of the month, I think, that I get depressive thoughts, suicidical really, but I still try to fight for myself and try to save me. Just a little background, when I was in high school, I had suicidal notes – plans to kill myself, notes of goodbyes to my parents. To this day, I still remember the look of hurt of my mother when she read it. She was hurt, betrayed and scared at the same time. Right there I realized that my problems wont go away along with me, it will stay with the people left behind. So at that moment, I promised whenever these thoughts visit, and they often do, that I will fight for myself. A bit ironic, isn’t it? Negating the thoughts of killing myself. But it really happens, you really cant control these thoughts. I have thought about getting professional help, but I think im not ready to scare my parents again. So im doing a “self-help”. So while I was researching, I came about a website by marc and angel and they list down a few tips on how to love yourself. So today, I will try to do that.

“because the greatest struggle in life is the struggle to accept, embrace, and love ourselves, with all of our imperfections”

it seem so easy. I mean, I love myself. But do I really KNOW myself for me to love it?

I was making plans with my best friend, telling him our plans of travelling together when this academic thing is over. I was telling him of not getting married early because I was scared of being alone. When his replied shocked me, he said, “Learn to love your company, be your own bestfriend”. GUYS. My own bestfriend, telling me to be my own bestfriend. Was he trying to break up with me? But it hit me hard. I SHOULD REALLY LOVE MYSELF. But how?

“We have to learn to be our own best friends beciase sometimes we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies. We love the idea of others loving us, and we forget to love ourselves.”

Start telling yourself what you love about yourself.

Well, this is hard. You know what’s easy? Telling myself what I hate about myself. But let’s try this exercise. I have watched a series wherein they also did this but they only listed 5 things, so I will try that.

I love my height

I love my cheerful and optimistic side (even though it is tiring sometimes)

I love how I can make people laugh

I love my kilay

I love my dimples

Be one with what is

It says in the website, “ giving up on being perfect and beginning the journey of becoming your true self”. Well, that’s easy. I am not perfect. I know that. Again, I can list all of my imperfections in 10 minutes unlike exercise 1 which took my 30 minutes to list 5 things. face palm

but being one with what is, it’s kind of difficult to understand. Being okay with yourself. Isn’t that settling? Isn’t that going below average? But maybe I am the average and being myself is okay. Well, we will update on this because I am also confused on the matter HAHA

Focus less on winning the approval of others

Okay, this is difficult. We live in a world where every aspect of your life is posted on social media. Every event in your daily, mundane life is recorded. How the hell do you stop trying to get approval of others? Whenever I post something, someone is always there to comment – be it bad or good. Maybe I should get a social media hiatus, right?

“Your time on this planet is precious:

“What you do today is important, because you are exchanging a day of your life for it”

“Don’t wait around for someone else to give you permission to live”

Sooooo, if I sleep all day, what does that make me? Still important. I think I shouldn’t be bothered by what people think about my itinerary. I will do whatever makes me happy. #sleepislife

Distance yourself from those who bring you down

Wait, what if I don’t know those people? Should I know them?

“Being in a relationship is better than being in a wrong one” – OH SNAP, that hit me. I have been with this guy for a long time now (hello 7 years), and I still don’t see any progress with our relationship. Should I see progress? But I still don’t have the guts to let him go. I still love him. But in most times, we just aren’t in sync. I don’t know what to do with it, though.

“Know your worth” – still trying, I am so sorry.

“Quality over quantity” – ah, this I have done right. I think. But sometimes, I still feel like I was choosen last. You know those scenes in the movie, where the captain chooses their team mate? I always feel like I was the last one choosen. Maybe because they have been together longest? Or maybe because I don’t speak the language? Or maybe because of who I am as a person. But I don’t really blame them, I guess it’s my fault.

Forgive your past self.

I’m not so sure about this. I don’t really have a past to forgive on. Or do i?

(I just realized how long this list is, so I will try to be more concise)

Start making the changes you know you need to make

WHAT CHANGES?

“Just because something made you happy in the past doesn’t mean you have to keep it forever” – this is him again. I think. But but but, he still makes me happy. Sometimes. Yea, im stupid that way.

Embrace the mistakes you haven’t even made yet

This looks fun. “Don’t let the fear of making the wrong decision prevent you from making any decision at all”

Well, the thing is, I keep making the wrong decisions.

Show gratitude for who you are and what you have right now.

I am very grateful with what I have right now. I know there are a lot of people less fortunate that I am, and I am very much grateful for what I have. But sometimes, I really can’t control my jealous type. They have like this, they go to this, and whatever. But I keep telling myself that what I have now is more than enough and I shouldn’t feel bad about it. It’s an everyday struggle, but I know what I have.

I have always thought that I could get anything I want as long as I put my mind to it. But there are things that I really can’t have. That makes me angry and want to throw a tantrum but I realize that I am too old for that sht. I have to learn to accept these things, however hard it seems.

“There are lots of people who will never have what you have right now. So use pain, frustration and inconvenience to motivate you rather than annoy you. You are in conttol of the way you look at life.”

I will accept these things.

No matter how hard it is.

It’s a hard pill to swallow, so man up, self!

Do something every day that makes you happy

What if nothing makes me happy anymore?

“Life is short”

“Invest in the activities you deeply care about”

“You have to experience life on your terms before you can be life-giving to others”

I really need to get a hobby. Any suggestions?

Give yourself a fair chance to explore new ideas and opportunites

But how?

Hobbies. Interests. What.

Listen to your intuition and be honest with yourself about everything

Now, this is what this blog is all about. Being honest with myself. You see, I haven’t been honest with a lot of people in my life. I told lies to be interesting. I had to keep up with it. But then I realized, I don’t really have to do that. Fuck what people say, this is me. If you don’t love me, then leave. (I hope I am this confident in real life).

“Confidence comes from knowing that what youre doing is right, and that what you’re doing is right for YOU”

Believe in your abilities.

Focus in writing your story, instead of reading, watching, and hearing about everyone else’s

I feel like I have been doing this at some point of my life. I guess, my life was so boring I had to make it a bit interesting by watching others. But I realized again, that this was wrong.

Pay close attention to your life as you’re living it

This is what I am also practicing. Being in the present. Maybe because of my work that I have missed a lot of stuff happening in my loved one’s lives, but now I will try to be there. To be present. I used to ask myself whenever someone invites me, “what will I do there”. Today, I will answer myself with “Just be there, be present.”

Loosen up and be a little less serious about it all

I guess what’s good about me is that I don’t take it all seriously. Most of my friends can attest that. But I guess there are certain aspect in life that you should take seriously. Differentiating them is the lesson life gives you.

“people with good sense of humor have a better sense of life” REALLY NOW

Lastly, (thank God), Go out of your way to be loving and kind to others too

Heh, this is hard. I have been known to be maldita and judgemental. How do I stop?

“people who love themselves come across as very caring, generous, and kind to others too”

so today, I will try to be loving and caring. It is hard. But I will really try to go out of my way to do this. I hope everyone does, to make this life a better place.

Parting thoughts: Start looking at yourself more. Notice yourself more. Eventually, you’ll realize you love yourself more. You have nothing else, but yourself, so you really don’t have a choice. I know I will do the same. This will be my self-help blog for loving myself. I will keep you posted on my “progress”, if there’s any.

I have been racking my brain for a few weeks now on what to write on my blog. I created this blog to express/rant about anything or everything but I realised I have Twitter for that. So it made me wonder what else was I going to write here? One of my friend told me that blogs should have stories, or maybe a theme about it. So I thought maybe because I’m on the medical field, maybe I should write about medical stuff. *boring* I was really stressing about it (slight lang) until I realised, just write about anything. So for my first post, I’m going to reminisce about the last 2 months of my life. I was going for the “Month Favourites” but who am i kidding? I don’t have that much thing going on, I’m not an artista or a blogger. I am just an ordinary “mandirigma” in the medical field just trying to make it one duty at a time.

Enough talk, here are my June-July highlights. Enjoy.

1. End of Internship

It was the end of “12 months a slave”. When we actually ended, on June 1, I actually felt nothing. I was like “meh”. But when I finally finished my gazillion clearance and extensions, it was like a big burden was lifted off. A big, gigantic, humongous  burden. From “Inteeeeeern do this” to “Tarunga retract enterrrrn” to “nganu wala ka kahibaw ani enterrrrrn”. It was finally over. I remember when I was just about to enter Medicine, my Doctor relatives would often warn me about this so-called “Internship”, I was so confident before but when I finally faced it, it was like a dragon ready to swallow me whole. And it did swallow me whole but fortunately I had thick skin and it didn’t digest me fully. HAHA. BUT it wasn’t all “kasaba” and “kakapoy” there we’re also fun times and moments I will always cherish forever. CHAR

2. Double Pull-outs

Okay, you might think, whaaaaat, why is this a highlight? Lemme tell you a story about our school. WE. NEVER. HAVE. PULLOUTS. So when other schools get free time, intramurals time, tree-lighting time out of their duties, we get left behind to do all the (dirty) work. It wasn’t really on June, but it was on our last month when we had a double pull-out. Why am I including it here? Because I can. hahahah! It was just a highlight of my internship that I had to. Our first pull-out was during our Grand CSC (it’s a CIM thing) and the next was our Recollection. It was just cool to see the batch getting together and working together, just being together. (cheessssy i know) But this is the batch that was with me since we started learning about cadavers, sneaking out bones just to have more study time with anatomy, calculating calories, planning out events, and finally going through internship together. We might not be as united as the previous batches, or as close as others, but I am still so proud of this batch. (Viva Vertex!)

3. Travel

I am always thankful for the opportunity to travel. Always. You see, we’re not the richest family nor the most privileged one. I’m just a poor boy from a poor family (WHAT). But enough nonsense, travel will always be a highlight. This month, we discovered Thailand. It was such a memorable trip because we didn’t have much preparations and none of us have been to this country before. It was also nerve wracking since there was a 70% chance I wasn’t gonna make the trip. I had to decide 10 hours before our flight, that’s 10 hours of packing, preparing, and finding Baht which was, to my surprise, so rare to find in Cebu. But all is well that ends well. We planned out day’s activity every morning and we somehow enjoyed it. Thailand really surprised us. (maybe I’ll do a travel blog about this also, maybe)

4. G-R-A-D-U-A-T-I-O-N

This is my nth time to graduate but this is the most memorable. I AM NOW A FKCNG DOCTOR!!!! (Gaga, may PLE pa!) But OMG. Those sleepless nights, those breakdowns, those missed opportunities because #MedisLife, was finally worth it because of this moment. Graduating was not meant for the graduates though, it was meant for the people who worked as hard as you to get you to that moment. To my parents, who had been working hard as hell just to pay for my tuitions and other expenses, thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to study medicine. I know a lot of people wants to be a doctor but can’t, so I am very much grateful.

5. PGI-ship

When one hardship closes, another one opens. This is the MD cycle. So, just 4 days of break and I go through another year of internship but hopefully a little less stressful. I had a hard time choosing as to where to do my internship. I asked friends, family, weighed the pros and cons, and all that but I finally came into a decision. or did I? I know I have issues with decisions. Why does it have to be so hard? It had a lot of responsibility that I’m scared to jump into it. But I decided to stay close to home (even though until now I’m still convincing myself that I chose correctly). Hopefully, one day, I’ll make terms with my decisions.

So there you have it, my highlights for the bimonthly. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep this up. I will have to say sorry about my grammar and sesh. If you have problems with it, please help me edit my blog then. I made this entry in one sitting, so I have no time for revision or proofreading. (Nah, I’m just lazy btaw)