Quarter-Life Crisis

If you happened to read my previous post about The Secret, it has something to do with me undergoing "quarter-life crisis" pala. I just learned about it when I was reading an article and came across with the word. It summarized everything that I was feeling, I was going through a phase pala that I didn't recognize. What I knew was that I felt a lot of resentment about everything. It happened right after I was deployed in Maguindanao for my DTTB stint and eventually got married. Everything seemed to happen swiftly that I lost track to cope. I thought everything was perfect for me--- I had my license as a physician and earned respect from society, I have a fulfilling job, I married the kind of person I was praying for--- but I was feeling doomed. I dealt with a lot of emotional pains caused by too many factors and here, let me count the ways: 

1.) The hassles of being a Doctor to The Barrio
   
      Being pulled out from one province to another due to a rift with the local chief executive, going to the mountainous terrains, walking under the sun to reach barangays located in what seems to be the endmost part of the world, dealing with hard-headed and delinquent staff, seeing the miserable condition of the people in a municipality forgotten by civilization; and at the same time, witnessing the fabulous and glamorous lifestyle of the handful of people who are supposed to make life easy for those in the far-flung mountains. I was witnessing the irony in my own society. I was disillusioned. I cannot believe how money and power can rip off some people's conscience, rendering oppression to those in the lower strata and how the latter can all be purely innocent of the injustice lashed at them. For two years during my whole DTTB stint, I was in complete desolation. Yes, I have survived DTTB, I am in a good state now, but the people in the municipality I had left are still eating out from one powerful man's hand, struggling through their daily survival, waiting for a miracle to happen.

   For two years, I have witnessed how corruption from the lowermost level occurs and how the people from the grassroots suffer the consequence and worse, how they tolerate the powerful ones as if stealing the money rightfully owned by the mass is a normal thing to do. And the worst feeling is knowing that you are not, by any means, capable of doing something about it. I came to a point of wishing DTTB would end soon so I can get out of the loop to stop witnessing everything. 

2.) Long distance relationship

      Before my husband and I got married, he already talked me out of the DTTB stint and offered to pay back my scholarship so I can join him in his post in Nigeria. I vehemently refused because I was really looking forward to DTTB and I know I will regret it if I wouldn't join the program. I have already accepted our LDR set-up thinking that I have never been emotionally dependent to one person so it wouldn't be a problem. One month after we got married, he left for Africa and we were both back to our pre-marriage routine. Much to my huge surprise, I had a severe separation anxiety that I had occasional outbursts of crying!! Adjusting with the contrasts in our personality with a seven-hour time difference, it was one hell of a crazy LDR. Thanks to technology, but it wasn't enough to make up for the physical absence. Facetime or viber cannot detect the real mood or environment we were in so there were plenty of times when I would burst into outrage and he had no idea why, and then later on he would find himself profusely apologizing for something he did not understand. I was just PMS-ing lang pala. Hahaha! Thank God, he was/is very patient with me. Oh well, he now has a broad understanding of women and he had my mood swings to thank for. Haha!

3.) Pressure from attending to social obligations

      I was never a social butterfly as opposed to my own mother. Being labeled as "the physician daughter of *insert my mother's name here*" and immensely after I got married, I forced myself to pretend to be the social butterfly that I am expected to be and forced my brain to memorize family genealogy. It is quite difficult to be in the Meranao society, I tell you. You are forced to be who you are NOT because of  certain expectations coming from certain labels, and if you fail to live to that expectation then expect murmurs about you behind your back. Guess I will have to live with those murmurs and just shrug my shoulders as I live my life because honestly, I cannot live to pretend. 

4.) Pressure from the masteral classes

       The biggest perk (the ONLY perk actually) of being in the Doctors to the Barrios Program is being enrolled for free in a masteral classes in the prestigious Development Academy of the Philippines. The classes, which we call the Continuing Medical Education or CME, are conducted every six months for two whole weeks in the DAP Convention Center in Tagaytay City. CMEs are always being looked forward to as a breather and a refresher, it is what every DTTB loves. Upon returning to area, we were bombarded with assignments and action plan and projects (APPs) that needed beating a deadline. With the fluctuating internet connection in our place and with the impending works in the rural health unit, it was hard juggling my role as a student, head of unit and subordinate all at the same time. 

5.) The chaotic world

        Everywhere I looked at was chaotic--the core of the society I live in, my country, the whole world is in the verge of war. Natural catastrophes ground us to rubble because of man's own doings. My eyes opened up to the real world and how miserable it is. Negativity started to sunk into my being, it was eating me from within and my whole perspective about this world started to change. I was letting the happy girl in me slip into a hopeless being. Everything, including my own room, was in chaos.


It never occurred to me that the transition from my extended adolescence to adulthood would be a formidable one. I realized that I actually underwent a life-changing phase when I already emerged out of it. Haha! Yeah, it was quite late but I'm just glad that I managed to get through everything unscathed. I am grateful I'm surrounded by the positively-energized people who peppered me with relevant advice and it also helped that I read self-help books. I read all the three books of Rhonda Byrne: The Secret, The Power and The Magic, I read the entire Qur'an (the English translation) for the first time and tried to understand it by consulting some verses with my father who has better understanding of the Holy Book and of Islam and I listened to lectures of Islamic scholars particularly Mufti Menk and Yasmin Mogahed. Perhaps when you're conscious that something is going wrong in your life, it is a reflex that you try to bind yourself together by looking within you the purpose of your very existence. I clung to my faith and by counting my blessings, all the chaos and negativities hovering above me gradually disappeared. The greatest thing that happened to me while I was in crisis was accepting that what is happening in our lives is way beyond our control, that we can only do so much, and recognizing the power of The One Above who is The Best Planner, The Most Gracious and The Most Merciful. I believe I understood more things now about my faith than I do before, and there are still a good measure that I am yet to learn and understand.

I am grateful to three people who got my back while I was in crisis, the three people who made me see how blessed I am and who returned my positive outlook in life, they are the ones who I constantly talk to about my problems, who had awkwardly seen me crying, and despite my tantrums and everything, they still loved me unconditionally: my father, my husband and my brother J. I love you three!!