Lately I get into one of my foulest moods when it's mealtime or when I'm shopping for food. They're harsh reminders of how limited my choices are. No pork. No wheat.

I can eat pork in the strict sense of the word. I don't have hypertension or allergic reactions to it. But I grew up not eating pork because of religious practice I have grown accustomed to. I will never eat pork unless the situation comes when it's my only chance of survival.

Now wheat is a different story. I can't eat anything that contains wheat. Can't because I have anaphylactic reactions to it. Since my last two horrible, and I mean horrible, allergy attacks last August, I've avoided wheat products like the plague.

That leaves me quite a limited range when I'm buying food. You will understand once you visit Cebu, where everything has pork in it. Sometimes when I'm grocery shopping, I scream profanities in my head.

"Putang ina! Wala bang walang harina?"

Has there ever been a time in your life wherein you wanted to squeeze the airways of a person shut for being so stupid? A person who would always kick himself (yes, I  use masculine pronouns when referring to people in general, it doesn't threaten my femininity in any way) in the rear, both cheeks, for having done something so obviously stupid that he shouldn't even be mulling over doing it in the first place because doing that stupid thing is even unthinkable? And what's even more baffling, even more incomprehensible than someone in Wowowee declaring that Willie Revillame is an inspiration, is that that person just keeps doing the same mistakes over and over, as though he has amnesia concerning only this area in his life, as though he is not a living creature that naturally learns what is nurturing and what is a threat to its existence.

There's always that person. Once or twice, maybe even three times, you come across someone like that. That person could even be one of your closest friends. And yes, sometimes, that could even be you.

The first paragraph is a rhetorical question. I am a klutz and one way or another end up hurting myself (physically). I have a problem estimating space and I bump into things all the time. As I write I have a bruise in my butt (talk about kicking oneself in the rear) for having miscalculated and sitting on the edge of the bed—the wooden part, not the cushion part—the other night. I do learn; I have learned from this experience to look before I sit. But I will bruise myself again in the very near future. Over another object.

I cut my hair. Trimmed it is the more precise term. "Like it makes a difference," I imagine the voices of people who hate my hair answer. I did it to take out the split ends; the last time I trimmed it was June, and I've seen unhappy tips since last month.

Just once and for all. I will not "fix" my hair, okay? I will not have it treated, I will not cut it to a less ridiculous and less impractical length. So to whom it may concern, stop it. I am not growing it and keeping it curly so I can deliberately get on people's nerves. There is no one who influences me to that extent. I do no not keep it wildly curly just so I can be "weird" or different.

Here it is: I find treatments too much trouble, my vanity does not encompass my hair, and I am have no problems with it whatsoever. If it offends you, then I can't help you. I can't apologize for being curly-haired, just as Pokwang can't apologize for her face (I have nothing personal against her) or Sharon Cuneta won't apologize for being fat. Look at them, they're happy as clams. I certainly won't go to the trouble of "fixing" it just to get the nod from dear old mister public. My hair doesn't hinder any aspect of my life, so it stays unless I grow tired of the current style and would like to change my look. End of story.

My UP Cebu barkada Yarry texted to go see the European film fest in Ayala but I  declined. Instead I watched three rom-coms and three Queen concerts on DVDs this weekend. Twawang. I declined because getting up is too much trouble.

My body is in pain today. I blame Haruki Murakami.

I just finished reading his memoir on running. Haruki Murakami, by the way, is a writer whose essays and nonfiction I find more entertaining than his novels and short stories. Each one to his own is all I can say.

For the past weeks, with this week being the climax, I have felt the strong tug of an inner desire to do any physical activity. I guess it's bound to happen to someone who sits in front of a PC and edits manuscripts for at least eight hours daily, especially to someone who used to do martial arts, go biking, and jog maybe three kilometers; to someone who likes hiking and walking and climbing hills and just move the body.

I bring a book to work always, and the most recent one I finished is What I Talk about When I Talk about Running by Haruki Murakami. So in this book he talks about suddenly taking up running and then joining marathons.

And presto, last Friday I felt a stronger tug from my body. I just had to do something that increased my heart rate.

So after work I went to Timezone and shot hoops. By myself. Pathetic, I know.

And yesterday I convinced my roommate, Faith, easily by the way, to go to the nearby sports complex and jog.

I let loose like an animal and just took off.

Of course, I gave my body quite a shock. I overdid it (jogged maybe about two and a half kilometers plus calisthenics) with the last time I did this maybe being a year ago or more.

My muscles hurt with lactic acid today. And thus the rom-coms and being strapped to the bed. That was fun though. I might do it again next weekend.

There are some things that are maybe better off not realizing. Without meaning to (and without wanting to) I have come to the awareness that I am twenty-three years old, that my parents are nearing sixty, and that a number of people I have genuinely interacted with in the past and are connected to me in some way have left the state of being.

When I think about my parents—and it’s not rare for me to think about them; they are among the people that I know I truly love because of the room for pain I have in my heart for them—I wonder if they are truly happy. One if the saddest thoughts I have is of them reaching sixty and feeling an ache for something they could have done but couldn’t. I know that that’s their business, but I’m an unhealthy person that way.

Someone made me realize that I’m at my prime. So now I’m worried that I’m not doing anything about it, and before long I’m a senile and incapacitated bag of wrinkled skin who didn’t do anything when she could. And I actually allow my days to pass this way, wondering, purely unrealized theories and vague wishes of not wanting it to be this way but not knowing how I want it to be either. This is the best way I can put it: I’m in the best shape I’ll probably ever be in all aspects of my existence, and I do not want to wake up one day and realize that I haven’t put that to any use. I’d rather die. So now that I’ve written it down, I’ve figured out what I basically need to do: figure out what it is exactly that I want to do (which I should be capable of fulfilling, of course) and try my hand at things.

And yes, I am unhealthy this way. Aren’t you?

Ever since I took literature classes in college, I have disliked vagueness in any written work. But there you go, a vague post. I can’t put a finger on it yet myself. When I can, I’ll be more specific.

I really hate MS word right now. It makes my brain vomit. It’s what I look at eight hours a day for five to six days a week. But I feel sorry for this blog, my blogs.

A lot of things have happened since I got a job. Of course, right? Duh, it’s been—July, August, September­—almost three months. But trust me when I say a lot.

I’ve been to Bohol how many times? I’ve lost count. And it’s not for the beaches. Since July four relatives have died. That’s four deaths in around two months. It’s been horrible. The latest one was last week. I know how, being Pinoy, we can make light of any morbid situation, but my relatives have got to stop making those “Who’s next?” jokes. At first they dispelled some of the gloom when two relatives died one after the other, but when a third and fourth death came, it just became sick.

Everybody dies, I know, but concurrent with that reality and our eventual (and inevitable) acknowledgement of it is also the other reality that we are humans and we feel. I threw my phone on the bed and yelled expletives last Saturday when my brother messaged me of my aunt having died. A week earlier from then, I was eating puto maya with her and the rest of the clan, my uncle’s funeral being the reason we all got together again.

They’re not unbearably painful, these deaths. We (me and my relatives) all function perfectly well (that’s just one of those things that I stopped berating myself for—it’s all right to laugh at Family Guy even when a relative has only very recently died because the fact remains that Family Guy is still funny, and my relative is and will be dead forever, and my sense of humor didn’t die along with the person). But it’s gotten me to think about my mom’s feelings about her siblings dying and how I’ll feel when that would happen to me. One thought leads to another, and I’m up at three in the morning thinking about death.

So I have a job that requires me to suck my brain dry daily, a job where your stress level is relative to the client’s IQ (there are a lot of jobs that have that description, I know, but I’m not blogging so I can talk about other people’s jobs). It’s a job I like, but I’ve had a difficult week. I’m gulping caffeine in all forms, a substance I refused to have myself identified with in the past because anything that deprived me of sleep was an enemy.

Also, my wheat allergy has reached its peak. I cannot eat anything with wheat. When you really think about it, that’s a lot of food I can’t eat. I itch all over, bloat, and pass out.

I’m actually about to leave for the hospital in a few minutes as I write this. One of my aunts is there for an operation.

It isn’t so hard to figure out that I’m pissed while writing this, isn’t it? Yeah, fuck you, universe. You and the sense of obligation you do not have for all beings.

Then an inner voice answers in reflex, “Thank your stars you didn’t die during your last anaphylaxis, bitch. You’re alive and you’re happy and you fucking know it.”

I hear you.

Although the main objective of this summer vacation was to actually do nothing, I’m still quite ashamed of myself for accomplishing just that. All those movies and books I’ve complained on not having gotten to read when I was so busy being a busy senior year student have been left ignored by yours truly. I spend everyday guzzling ice cold caffeine in all forms, watching TV shows which are all reruns and wasting my time on the internet. This blog is a disgrace.

I am trying to learn guitar again though, and this time I’m not too finicky on getting calloused fingertips. Who the hell will say to me someday “Oh my, you’re a great person but I just don’t like your freaky fingertips” anyway (though I’m the type of person who’s a bit vain about my hands and feet for the self-conscious reason that I might get comments like that).

Friends I keep in touch with know or have at least sensed my recent, present dark moment. It’s something I don’t talk about... for my world is forbidden as it is fragile. LOL. Hi Lip.

But the worst I can always go is to sink into a hopeless depression and probably go crazy. If there’s anything I do running on auto-pilot it is self-preservation. I take my iron pills everyday even (if I don’t forget to). I don’t, can’t do the hurt-myself-to-get-even bit. And I’m too much of a coward to just go end my misery myself when I’m in horrible emotional pain. I’m too afraid of the idea of missing out on a lot of things, and we all know there are a lot of things going on on this planet.

So I am okay, dear friends. Hardened, bitter, but okay. Choking on my own tears and snot every night, but alive. And I will learn more songs, I only know how to play five, and they’re not what you would call the most popular.