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.