It was in the summer of 1997  when I began experiencing a series of strange afflictions. First were the severe stomach cramps, which happened at least three times in a period of six months, and which sent my sister Aida and her son Beep, rushing me to some nearby clinic.

Then there were those times – twice, thrice? - when I had to scuttle to my sister’s upstairs’ bedroom, feeling nauseous and out of sorts : in the throes of a fainting spell. It’s funny how my resolve to stay lucid and alive always goaded me to reach out for help, to make sure that there was at least an ‘eyewitness’ if I passed out or took my last breath. Survival instinct, I guess. A glass of warm water and some sisterly chats were enough to set me back on my steady feet again.

And then one evening, while watching a TV movie  alone in my sister’s family room, I suddenly had this strangest of feelings. All at once, I lost track of the movie I was watching. I was losing control of my thoughts! I remember involuntarily asking questions in my mind, repeatedly, and not getting answers. I felt desperate as this went on for two or three minutes. “ Calm down, you’re not losing your mind,” I muttered to myself as I strode to my bedroom a few steps away. Not locking the door in case I needed to shout for help, I grabbed the rosary beads on my side table, sat on the bed, leaned against the wall, and prayed. The meditative pose, coupled with my determination not to lose grip of my mind, evidently helped. This episode was repeated a few weeks later, but this time, it was milder and I was more prepared to deal with it. Happily for me, there has been no recurrence of this strange malaise since the last one. I just figured out that an overdose of dried peanuts was the culprit.

Finally came the bouts of depression  that began a month after I moved to the studio-type condo unit in mid 1998. “ I think this is just what I need – my own little place,” I assured my concerned sister when the idea of transferring to my own place came up. Among six sisters, I was the one who seemed to have the flair for decorating a house. Having my own place would offer me the chance to indulge in one of my passions – turning an empty room into an esthetic, comfy, and welcoming home, just like the home I used to have on Mangolane in Tacloban City, Philippines.

Some two and a half years before that, I arrived in Bangkok full of hopes and high spirits. I was embarking on a new milestone in my life : a job far from home. I had left behind a warm and loving family and a full life. My coming to Thailand on my sister’s invitation was a last recourse I decided to take as a way of coping with the financial setbacks my husband and I were trying to surmount those last three years after his fishing business hit a snag and floundered.

“ You can easily land a teaching job with a good pay here,” Aida enticed me. Not that I couldn’t get a teaching job in my own country. In fact, two weeks before I enplaned for Bangkok, my application for a teaching job at a college in my home city had been approved. But the salary was the deciding factor. I was going to get a monthly basic pay of 5,000 pesos, which was commensurate to my scant teaching experience; whereas a Filipino English teacher in Thailand – with or without a teaching experience – could easily get not less than 15,000 baht a month, plus the opportunity of overtime work with pay and a part-time job if one needed to augment his income.

In the 18 years that I held an office job in Tacloban City, I was a media researcher and news reporter for the Dept. of Public Information, a Member Services director, and later, chief of the Administrative Office of the Leyte Electric Cooperative, Inc. In 1990, I voluntarily availed of the early retirement plan offered by the office. My only teaching experience – which happened to be my first job – was my one-semester stint as a part-time instructor in Humanities and Basic Acting at Holy Infant College in 1972.

And now, here I was in a new place, in not-so-familiar surroundings, eager to get back in the mainstream once again after six years of ‘interiorization.’ : six long years, ensconced in our 4-bedroom bungalow that sat on a 730 square meter lot of fruit trees, shrubs, foliages, and flowers that I had planted and nurtured myself, attending to my family’s needs, housekeeping chores, and my art crafts.

The ado of furnishing and adorning my place  would have progressed blithely had I not grown weaker by the day. The commute to and from work on two long stressful bus rides fagged me out. The cutting and connecting trips, the indeterminate waiting under the scorching Bangkok sun, and all kinds of air and sonic pollution took their toll on my inherently fragile constitution. Feeling more and more isolated, and wishing I were home with my family, I was now skipping meals; caught in the vicious cycle : weak because I was not eating; not eating because I was too weak to even get myself something that I really liked to eat. In no time, I was feeling generally unwell, febrile, and miserable every single day that I went about my daily life and work. I was constantly aware that I had become skeletal. My reflection in the mirror was a sad, weary, parched face. It was becoming increasingly hard to smile when I tried to be perky in the office and in the classrooms.

And this was when the depression must have set in. My world gradually darkened. When I looked up to the sky, all I could see were dark clouds, no matter what time of the day it was. I began dreading the onset of evening; cried without reason and wherever I felt like crying – in my workplace, at the bus stop, on the street. I did not have a cell phone; I was yet, at that time, cell phone-shy. Neither was there a land phone in my room, so I wasn’t communicating much with my family in the Philippines when I should have. Aida did not know what depression was; she thought I was just feeling homesick, or that I was merely tired, so she could not respond to me properly at a time when I needed a support system. I was alone and falling into the dark pit of depression!                          

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