escape the rat race
you lose your creativity and become a sell-out. you are reduced to corporation property. price tags — pay slips that you get every month — determine your worth as an individual.
lately, at work, it feels like there's nothing else to give. as if i can't design yet another business card. like an empty lemon that's been squeezed over and over.
i'm at the edge of my seat and i'm about to fall, and crack into a hundred pieces on the floor.
it rained tonight. the heavens poured while i was on my way to work. my heart sank as i stepped into flood waters of piss, shit, garbage, and whatnot. if metro manila wasn't steaming in heat thanks to smoke belching vehicles, it's dirty-wet. absolutely disgusting wasteland.
i wasn't upper middle class. i didn't live in a condo. i didn't go to work in a car. but maybe i'm just dirty cheap — after all, i'm earning about four times the minimum wage.
though i'm still a poor rat.
Photo by Andrew Haimerl from Pexels
down the line, you lose your creativity and become a sell-out. you are reduced to corporation property. price tags — pay slips that you get every month — determine your worth as an individual. also, the brand of your shirts, shoes, and whatever fancy stuff you shove down your mouth.
i have about just one more year before i call it quits. the plan is to save about a couple hundred thousand then move somewhere near the beach. surf. be a freelance writer. online whatever. sell stuff, i don't know, i'll figure it out.
escape the rat race. free myself from consumerism and materialism — the pillars of the metro.
i admit, i came here at 20 years old – five years ago – because i wanted to smoke and get drunk. i did a little bit of that, partied here and there, hooked up a bunch, lived with a boyfriend for a little while.
what i really ended up knowing are the things i didn't want to do in life. who are the people i didn't want to be with. what activities i didn't want to do.
having escaped for the first time, i discovered that my heart belonged to the big blue, in salty air and peeling waves, open spaces, quiet moments, bright stars. the provincial life. the same one i was raised in, except for this time, i'll be surfing.
so now i'm just waiting. just a year. i might get pregnant down the road since i have stopped birth control, and i've been getting this baby fever, but hopefully we survive.
for the meantime, i gotta figure out where to move next. i have a problem with my current apartment. somebody's been tapping my electric line.
i hope it doesn't rain again tonight. i hope i got more to give. i want to be alone, though i have my boyfriend beside me, and he's all i ever really want to be with. we have about a week more to spend together, then it's going to be months of long distance relationship again. i'm prepared for the loneliness, sheer desperation, sadness.
and then i have to fucking move to a new apartment and carry what i could with me.
i'm starting to lose my appetite. i foresee days of getting nothing but sleep.