Help Me Find My Way

I am quite ashamed of myself. I recently found a job that is, I think, fits well with my lifestyle. Being seriously sick for the past years, even in artificial coma for almost a month, it is difficult for me to travel to work nor to work fulltime. Hence, I accepted more freelancing projects over Upwork and German language tutorials… type of work that I can do in the comforts of our home. However, we came to a point when we need more financially, and I found a non-voice-work-from-home customer service/ technical support job. I accepted it despite the contra that it is a fulltime job (I am not really sure if I am really ready for a fulltime, actually). The job itself is fun, but I am reminded why I left the call center world 13 years ago: the company demands make me crazy, not the customers. I enjoy being of help to customers, but I am having difficulty adhering to what the company expects from agents, especially the stats. And now, here I am, torn between resigning and staying.

It is not only the pressure with the statistics that makes me uneasy the past few days. It is more the fact that, I am aging, yet I don’t know what I really want to achieve in life. I am 36 and yet, I achieved nothing. It is always the same: I get to find a job and realize after a few months that it is not for me, that I am unhappy, so I set off again to find a new job and everything repeats. I don’t feel confident to meet my high school and university mates because they all have achieved something, one way or another, while here I am, still asking the same question I was asked when I was 18: what do I want to be?

I am 36 and yet I don’t know what I really want to do for the rest of my life. I feel so lost and don’t know where nor how to start. My husband kept on saying that my triumph over my aortic aneurysm and aortic dissection (reasons why I was in artificial coma) is such a great achievement already for I have lost a few acquaintances back in the Philippines for exactly the same sickness: aneurysm. However, I still don’t know why I survived it and why am I given a second chance to life. I feel so lost and I don’t know what I really want to do in my life. How I wish life comes with a manual, or that at least the directions are clearly written up there in the clouds. So I will know how to start and where to go.

*random find from Pinterest*

I am in that mood again when I just want to be gone. Everything and everyone around me just nerves me the last time. I wanted to be in a place far, far away from my family. A place where no one knows me. I just need a place to work that would be enough for me to buy my food and my maintenance medication. But where can I go? Who can offer me a job with all my health issues? I am damned. I am stuck in this life for the rest of my life. I need to learn the art of "not giving a damn", of not caring at all, of just doing my personal routine and dismiss everyone else. I sometimes wonder why did I wake up from my coma? Why didn't I just die that day, when my daily life is just going to be this hell.

This is tiring. People say they understand me. But no, they are wrong. Nobody can really understand how I feel, how dark is it inside of me. This is not the life I wished to live.

Confused

trying to learn

the art of

speaking without words,

feeling without emotion,

to understand the world

without any explanation.

but i'm failing

and time is running.

soon i'm gone

and i still didn't find

the answer to my question

what life is.

Relationship Goal

Lately, I have read an anonymous letter in a forum of Filipinas married with another nationality and she has issues on infidelity of her husband. She's pregnant so she thought it is partly her fault why her husband is in search of another woman, because he has sexual needs that she can't satisfy. I felt sad and angry on how she argumented to "justify" her husband's infidelity, because she partly said she's okay with it, because she can't satisfy him as long as the baby is still in her.

I was in almost the same situation. Four years ago, I was diagnosed with thoracic aneurysm and aortic dissection, and it is due to a genetic disease I never knew I have. I was devastated, depressed, because I was a ticking bomb. I told my husband, if he meets somebody else, I would understand, at least I know he is taken cared of in case I pass away. I kept on telling him that for two long years until my biggest operation in 2017 to close the aneurysm. On the day before my operation, I told him, if I don't survive it, I want him to move on right away and find a woman who would take care of him for the rest of his life. I survived the operation, but I was in coma. Doctors asked his permission to shut down the machines because they don't see any hopes anymore. He begged them another week.... and I woke up.

Up to this time, I have moments of anxiety attacks, but he is still there. I asked him once, why is he not letting go. My husband said, the day he asked for my hand, he told himself, "this girl will be my partner for better or worse, in sickness and in health, her pains will be my pains and her happiness will be mine. No matter what happen, I will never let go of her until my last breath. Because I love her and she completes me". He said, even if we are both busy with our computer games at night and exchanges only a few words, the fact that he knows and feels I am in the same room with him and I am physically well make him complete and happy.

You see, if a guy really loves you, no matter how hard you push them away, they will not leave you just like that. They will not give in to temptation just because you can't satisfy him. Fights are part of every relationship, even ours, we do fight, but we always choose to compromise. We look for solution to close our arguments, we don't throw hurtful words to each other, we keep distance and then when we are both ready, we talk and solve the problem together. Divorce was brought up once, but we both agreed in the end that it is not a solution, rather just an escape goat to face what is really trying to tear us apart. So we put our ego down and compromised. Staying in love is a lifetime decision. Not because the other person is lacking, the other will look for another person just to fill in. If that is the case, sadly but I don't think both parties have found their true love with each other. In this case, then letting go from both sides is the best to save themselves from hurting each other.

I'm Back!

Hi everyone! I am back! Well, might not be for long, but I just missed this blog. I started backreading my old posts and it feels like I have traveled through time. A lot of things happened in five years that I am away from here. I have posted some on my Wordpress blogs (Pinays in Germany and Träume und Realität). However, there are still missing events in those blogs. It has been a roller coaster ride the past years and when I say roller coaster, it is the scariest roller coaster I rode. Honestly, I am not sure if I am really already off from this roller coaster or I am just at the part that is preparing me for another scary loop. And I am afraid. I don't know if I can survive the next loops.

I honestly miss writing, but I just can't find the right words to blog more often just like the old days. I wish this will be the start...

It's been a while since I was here. From now on, I will try to get this blog active once again. I just hope, I get the inspiration and motivation in the coming days.

Thank you for being patient and staying there despite the inactivity on this site.

Gloom

Words are gone,
Feelings I'm not sure.
World's all grey,
Sand full of snow.

Goodbye, Beautiful Dream

There was never really an us,
There was only you and me.
What we thought we once had,
Was just but a sweet dream.

I was never really meant for you,
Nor you were destined for me,
The love was just a thought,
Just in our fantasy.

My Personal Choice of Must-Read Books

Everyone has her favorite books of all time, books that made a great impact to one's life... Mine are these and the list might still get longer as time goes by.

(Please excuse if the title links are in German, I am now living in Germany and I read more in this language nowadays in order for me to develop my German skills.)

FICTION

• Myths of Classical Antiquity


• Victor Hugo's Les Miserables


• The Picture of Dorian Gray


• 1984


• Alice in Wonderland


• Cecelia Ahern's P.S. I Love You


• Cecelia Ahern's The Year I Met You


• Sterntagebücher


• Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy


• To Kill A Mockingjay


• Go, Set A Watchman


• Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper


• Dean Koontz's The Door to December


• Sophie's World


• The Old Man and the Sea


• One Hundred Years of Solitude

 

NON-FICTION

• Ich bin dann mal weg: Meine Reise auf dem Jakobsweg

"Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it."

Lyra’s Oxford

Friends

I've been living for quite a long time now here in Germany. I've met different kinds of people, separated in a not-so-good ways with some of them. But despite all the bad experiences, there are a few who stayed and I am really thankful of them, for being there for me through my ups and downs. They may be only few, I can even count them with my fingers, but they are more than enough. They are the kind of people I am most comfortable to be with. I don't need to pretend just to be accepted. I can tell them everything that I think and feel and still rest assured that I am understood and accepted.

With them, it is fine to be crazy and they would just laugh and say "typical Anne".

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life Lessons

Today I feel grateful for the teachings my family and my school taught me. They shaped me to a person I am right now. My mom had always told me as a kid, that not because we have more food on the table and that I go to a private school, means we are rich. Surely, we are blessed, but what matters the most is my character as a person. So she taught me to choose friends who will accept me for who I am and not for what I have. As a kid, she let me play outside with our neighbors' kids and my cousins. We would run around, roll down the hill, play hide and seek, get mud on our faces. This way, my family taught us that we are equal. That none in our village is richer nor poorer. We are all rich because the whole place belongs to us. The vast field is not my uncle's field, but our field where we sit under the mango tree to eat its fruits, and fly our kites or play tag. (We just need to make sure his cows remain within the fences.) I was taught that money is not everything. That happiness does not depend on how much we have but how many friends we have. I was also taught that money does not grow on trees, one needs to work hard for it. So on schooldays I need to learn a lot and aim for high grades so I would be rewarded a wish. On school breaks, I learned to sell ice candies (flavored ice water), offer summer tutorials or babysitting so that I have few coins to buy something from the Sunday flea market. This way, I grew up being contented on what I have. Sure there are wants, especially during teenager days, but I learned since a kid that one can also be happy without these stuff.

At school we always have outreach programs where we spend a day with less-fortunate kids in our city. Through this program, I became sensitive to the needs of others. I learned not to want more, because I became aware that poverty is real. I learned to always thank the One Above for the blessings He bestow my family. It may not be much, but more than enough for us to survive each day and to cover our basic needs. My mind was opened to the fact though that we may be blessed by now but we are not sure of the future, hence it is important to learn how to save as well. Because of that, I learned to say no on wants and justify the immediate needs.

All these made me into a person I am now. My family taught me equality. They taught me to never judge other people's past nor their present because each person has his own daily battle. It is important to show respect so we would also be respected in return. My school taught me to always be grateful. I may only have few friends, but I am sure they are those who accepted me for who I am, for what I have and from what family I came from and I do not need more. They are enough and I am grateful to have found them in this lifetime.

Spring Feels

It feels so good to be surprised with these beautiful flowers. It makes me feel more thankful that I am able to experience another spring and eventually another summer.

Thankful for my husband who did not give up on me. Because of him, I am able to live more years and experience more seasons!

Unfinished Business

My fight against Marfan Syndrome continues. I had my open surgery last May, wherein my aorta in the tummy region was fixed with prosthetics to remove the aneurysm. The prosthetics run from my lower rib till just above my thigh. It left me a really big scar which would forever remind me of the battle I had been. But it was not just the scar that made this memorable. The operation was really complicated and I had hemmorrhage during the operation. It was comparable to slight stroke and if it was not bad enough, I also had pneumonia and some other internal organ problems. I was in coma for almost a month. My family and friends already readied themselves for the worst. It was difficult and based on their stories, they slowly lose their hope the longer I sleep. But I survived. I woke up after around 3 weeks and 4 days but without any memory. I saw my husband beside me crying but I did not reognize him, I was just staring at him and wondering who he is and why he's crying. After a week, he brought photos of us and put it on top of my table and the memories started to come back. I recognized him from our photo and I gave him a smile. He held my hand and began to cry once again. There were lots of questions after my memory was back. Why does the date says 7th of June? My operation was on 10th of May, what happened in between? I thought they were playing a joke with me. It was two weeks after when they, the nurses and my husband, got the courage to tell me what happened during the operation. I was shocked to learn the story myself and at the same time grateful that I have survived it all. My husband thanked me almost everyday that I did not give up, that I came back. And I reassure him everyday that I did that for him, that the reason I am still here is because I still want to create new memories with him. That there are dreams and plans we have talked in the past that I want to reach with him. And what happened just made our love for each other to grow bigger and we start to appreciate each other more. (Oh, how lucky am I to be his wife!)

But I guess there is a bigger thing that God wants me to accomplish. It is still unknown for now, but I am sure there is a bigger project for me in this lifetime. And I guess that mission has started because the hospital called and asked if they can use my case in one of the medicine lectures in the university, they will use the information on my symptoms as a Marfan patient, how to detect one, and what are the medical procedures I had to go through. That is definitely my first mission, to help the Marfan Syndrome research group and the future doctors and surgeons and to save further lives in the future.

My fight is not yet finished, I am still undergoing neurologic rehabilitation in order to be able to move around without any help again. I have been through a lot and I will keep on fighting despite the pain and even if it will take longer time, I will never give up no matter what. I will triumph over this rare disease. I will create beautiful memories with my husband, my family and friends. I will continue touching lives of strangers through Pinays in Germany blog and Facebook page and groups I am in so that when my time comes, a lot of people will remember me as "Anne, the selfless one."

The Day I Loved Once Again

It was in year 2009 when I decided to take the risk again and begin to love again. It was February in 2009 when my husband and I decided to try it, to know if we are meant for each other. Others did not believe we will make it. Some thinks it was just a fleeting moment, a spark that will die just as fast how it came. But we proved them wrong. We are now on the way to our 6th wedding anniversary, and we are already on our 8 years of relationship. And Darmstadt is sort of our first real date as a couple, but together with some friends. Sharing you some random photos taken in 2009 around Darmstadt.

[gallery ids="180,178,176,175,179,182,201,202,184,183,186,203,204" type="slideshow"]

They say it's no use to look back in the past, but I see it differently. When I look back on these old photos of the past, it makes me realize how beautiful my life is and how blessed I am to have experienced them and meet those people from the past.

Marfanoid Chronicle

It's almost a year since my last post about my battle. Since my last post, I had been into series of check ups and around three or four hospitalization. It was found out that I have a "deadly" allergy to CT-scan contrasts. I was hospitalized thrice because of it, the first one was not severe, but the second and the last one was really deadly. It was then advised not to undergo the scans again. Which made it more challenging for my doctors to monitor my stents. For a year now, I honestly feel much better. There are pains once in a while, but a rest is enough and I am back on my feet. I just noticed though that severe weather temperature is not my friend. Winter this year was a bit colder than the past winter I experienced and going out was a real struggle for me. Ten minutes out in the cold and it feels like I am fainting anytime. Hence, almost whole winter I was just home. I may feel quite well recently, but inside of me, something's waiting to be repaired/ healed. That's the reason why last December, we had a meeting with the head of the Vascular Medicine of University of Aachen Clinic, where one of the Marfan Center in Europe is also located. Prof.Dr. Jacobs is a very nice and competitive doctor. We are planning a new operation this year. I am just waiting for his advice, I already had my heart and lung function tests done. I will, of course, keep you updated on what's done on me. I am quite nervous, but I trust my new doctor completely and I know God has a better plan for me for the future.

The Memorable Past, The Beautiful Present and The Unknown Future

As mentioned few months back, this is already my nth blog. But it feels too empty. So I decided to challenge myself. In the next days, I will be posting photos of the past, photos that I posted in my old blog, which I deleted during my breakdown moments around two years ago. It will be a form of reminiscing how my life has been after all these years. What had changed and what stayed. Because life is not just about living up to the present, but also about reminiscing the past and looking forward to the future.

What I learned from Hape Kerkeling

"Ich bin dann mal weg" is for me one of the best books in this modern times. Honestly, I haven't read the book yet but I have seen the film. And it made me look forward to reading the book. But I just need to post it as soon as possible about how it affected me. It moved me in thousand ways. As you may have known, I am sick and each second of my life feels like my last. Unlike other terminal illness wherein you know how much time you still have here on earth, I don't know mine. This is aneurysm, and it is eating up my rational thinking. It pulls me down to the darkness of depression... but that film pulled me up! I now try to live up to the philosophy that was mentioned in the film: we all have our own Camino de Santiago. From the film, I have learned that we are all pilgrims of different art. The Way of St. James is not just one, we all tread our own pilgrim's path and it is called LIFE. It is up to us how to make this pilgrimage a memorable one, for me and for the people I meet along the way and share the journey with.