Wina Puangco-Mutuc

Hello, blog and people–it’s been a while. 🙂 Things have been really weird with me these past few weeks. I feel like life keeps yo-yoing me up and down and while I guess that’s how life is in general, the loop-de-loops have been far steeper as of late. I’m not sure where it began–that was the upside of keeping a journal for most of my life, I guess–but the past two weeks just haven’t been very kind to me.

A lot of the things that I was looking forward to got cancelled or indefinitely deferred (which may as well be the same thing, I guess) and a lot of the things that pushed through have lead to less than great circumstances. For instance, our great Baguio trip culminated in all of us getting food poisoning/amoebaiasis. This has been especially rough on me because our office’s policy for sick leaves is very specific–no diarrhea, no menstrual pain. So. Fuck. Office life was almost unbearable this week, to be honest. So I am very proud for tripling the word quota. I did an average of 8,000-9,000 words this week. Not bad, given the fact that I was being stomach-raped from the inside. I guess the upside is that I know I can write given pretty much any circumstances.

We were also able to wrap-up the prototype copies of EM4, but unfortunately we weren’t able to go to the event (UP LB Komikon) that we were going to launch at. On one hand, this made very sad because we rushed and really tried to push to get the issue out–on the other hand, maybe this is an opportunity to have some fun and “think outside the box” or ya know, help our baby grow or whatever.

Yesterday was one of the only days ever that I thought I was actually going to die: after being refused the right to go to ministop and buy female things during an emergency at work and being attacked by entamoeba hystolitica and then being caught in traffic for an hour and a half and then being ignored by an ignoramus doctor and then being attacked by hunger pains because I hadn’t eaten since lunch (this was around 9PM) and then going home to find that the food was pretty much gone despite the fact that it was supposedly me and my mom’s Valentine’s Day dinner, I was kind of just sitting on my bed, crying while hugging my pillow that’s shaped like a piece of bread (it’s the softest, cutest stuffed thang ever).

And I was left with nothing to do but message people that I wouldn’t be making it to Elbikon today. I really hate letting people down, mostly because I know how it feels to be let down–and let me tell ya, it fucking sucks. In this case, it was especially traumatic because I’d made the big push for Elbikon: with my art friends who were consigning work with me, with EM (we spent the night before up late talking about layout–and our friends labored over the actual layout-ing), with people who buy my stuff (I’d promised something out by the 15th but I failed to complete it).

Que horror.

Adddddnd then people were nice to me and I started crying, for real. Sometimes I really do wonder whether or not I’m crazy. I feel like I can find the smallest things extremely touching and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or if it exposes just how evil I expect the world to be. Maybe both? It’s like I always expect people to be hateful or dismissive of the things I have to say. Not to say that my expectations aren’t grounded on any reality (they are) but whenever those things don’t happen, I am always genuinely surprised.

This person I know from sort of weird (or not really? I dunno) circumstances messaged me yesterday, to wish me well re: my health and also to say Happy Valentine’s. I realized then that hey, this was the first time that anyone had actively been nice to me that day. And I started bawling like a baby even if really, all I was being offered was medical advice and small talk. A little kindness goes a long way, I guess. After that, my close friends got online and I was able to chat with them too–and suddenly, it felt like maybe the next day was going to be a better one. As much as I am quite introverted and really don’t mind being alone most of the time, I guess we all really do need other people to get by. If any of you are reading this, thank you.