No Filter: A Filipina Girl's Bipolar Disorder Story (2)

Trigger Warnings: abuse, manipulation, love-bombing, narcissist, mental illness, cheating, trauma, suicidal ideation

I am not a saint. I'm human. Although I've tagged myself as "worse than an angel, better than the devil", I cannot escape the fact that I'm a human who is just as susceptible to bad decisions, regrets and karma. 

So, Karma is here and she's having the time of her life kicking my ass and making my life hell. 

What did I do to deserve her presence? You'd be surprised! God knows it would be enough to make even my closest friends and family member raise their eyebrows and bite their lip to prevent themselves from launching into a angry tirade mixed with regret, amusement and overwhelming pity for me. 

Confession time! I made a lot of bad decisions in the past. I believed that it was much better to be young, wild and stupid while you had the chance so you can tell your grandchildren about it. 

Unfortunately, I did the crazy things that you must never EVER tell anyone. It must never see the light of day! It must be buried in the past and it should stay there! I wish it would stay dead. But it's a zombie and it kept getting up no matter how many times I've kicked it in the balls or buried it in the backyard. 

My mother was fond of saying that secrets had a way of coming out. She was right. I had a lot of secrets. They didn't stay secret for a long time.

Why? It's because I had a bad habit of not filtering my thoughts. So whatever I was thinking or remembering came out in whatever I was saying, writing or doing. 

It spilled out of me. If I didn't tell my closest friends, I would write about it. I would even bring it up in a conversation with coworkers or tell complete strangers about it just to break the ice. I even used them to coax a couple of laughs. 

I was not discreet about it. I did not even know about being discreet. I thought it was harmless and fun to tell little stories about yourself because you didn't have a filter. I was being true to my authentic self. 

I didn't think that they would come back and bite me in the butt. I didn't think that it would affect my current relationship. I didn't think that it would almost ruin my life. 

Let's travel back to a time when I still wore my college uniform and naively maintained an optimistic outlook in life. 

I was just 17-years-old when I made the decision that would irrevocably change the course my whole life. I lost my virginity, okay? Let's get it out in the open. It's natural and it's not embarrassing. 

I was a child with the privileges of an adult. I wanted so desperately to become independent and to grow up already. I wanted to run away and find out what kind of person I would be. 

As Britney Spears crooned, "I'm not a girl, not yet a woman." 

I was hopelessly lost and confused on my journey to become a woman. I did not know how to protect myself from the beauty standard and the dangerous Madonna-Whore standard that society expected from me. 

I was confused on how I can become sexy without being sexual. I was lost on how to win the approval of my parents and peers. Not to mention that I had to attract the attention  opposite sex too. So I did the first thing that my parents disapproved of... I lost my virginity, duh.

There was a lack of guidance from my parents during this rebellious phase. To be fair, they tried their best to discipline me but they did not try hard enough. 

I guess they had more important things to do like raise a pet brother and worry about our growing debts. My mother tried her best to keep warning me but history had the tendency to repeat itself.

Since I was a bad girl who did not listen to her parents, I did not realize that this would have devastating consequences on my decision-making skills as well as the potential to ruin my entire life. 

I thought that I can chalk it up to experience. I naively thought that I could even use it for writing. 

I was in denial. I really thought that I would never have to pay the piper. I thought that my first boyfriend and I were madly in love. I thought that it was a good investment for my future with him because I would marry him.

Reality kicked in. He turned out to be a slimy creep that everyone desperately warned me about. I mean, he cheated on me on our second year with a girl he actually introduced to me as his new "best friend". 

That was so painful that I actually thought that all men are just like him: mean, manipulative and completely insensitive to my feelings. 

You must remember I was so young. I thought that I was invincible. I thought that nothing could hurt me. Most of the time, I thought that I had nothing to lose. I lost my virginity already. I was damaged goods, right? No decent guy would ever want me.

It was a turbulent time because I had problems at school and home. 

My family was imploding due to money problems. My parents were going through a rocky phase in their marriage that would last for a decade. I was taking care of my youngest brother like I was his mother because our own mother was too busy to do it herself. I was not ready for that kind of responsibility either. 

I was failing in school because I was bullied by my classmates. To make matters worse, I didn't have a lot of friends who would have stopped me from plunging into sin. I did not even write. 

Sadly, I began to think that God had abandoned me. I started to drift further and further away from Him in spite of my part in a religious Catholic youth organization as a catechist and warrior of Christ.

Things got worse. 

I was painfully thrust into the adult world of work and office politics at the tender age of 18. 

This was old news, I know. Everyone knew that I started working because my father retired from his military job and I was running away from the bullies at school. Going to work was the perfect solution!

As it turned out, I was young, impressionable and full of eagerness to discover a world of privileges that I should not even have access to.

My first job was in a call center in our province. Marital infidelity, hooking up and drinking sessions was the norm. I was exposed to people who smoked, drank on a daily basis and boasted of their sexual conquests brazenly. Morality did not exist. Anything could happen.

I did not think about God. The dark side tempted me to partake of these previously forbidden pleasures and I got drunk in it. I was drawn into it because it was in our call center culture. 

Yes, I rationalized that since everybody did it, it must be okay. 

My dark times had begun. As a child on the cusp of young womanhood, I was not exposed to the right influences during my young adulthood. I did not have any guidance from my father or pastor. 

For a time, I thought that I had lost God. 

You know what happened next: I drank like a fish and I hung out with the wrong people on a regular basis. I became selfish, manipulative and over-the-top because I was desperately trying to hide the fact that I was still an insecure teenager masquerading as an adult. I was over compensating.

I wanted the men at work to notice me. I wanted my peers and coworkers- mostly bitchy women- to accept me. I drank because they drank. I also did it because of curiosity, peer pressure and foolish youth. I figured that I was experimenting so I did it. For the record, drugs have never touched my lips. I've smoked cigarettes in the past, yes, but never drugs. 

I wanted to get ahead at work but I was held back by my lack of a college degree. I still lived at home but I earned my own money so my parents couldn't control me. 

They started to depend on me financially so they allowed me to do whatever I wanted. It was around this time that I also started to support my younger sister and to give my share to the household expenses. They always said that I was an adult so I could take of myself. 

As the oldest child, I should also take care of my younger siblings and even my parents. But a question nagged at the back of my mind: who will take care of me?

I admit that I was angry at God. I thought that I should not have these kinds of burdens at such a young age. I walked away from Him because He did not make my life any better. So I made it worse.

I grew up too fast. My moral compass broke. I viewed marital infidelity, backstabbing and sleeping around as normal occurrences. It never occurred to me that it was wrong and I should avoid it as much as I can. Then I made friends with Jean who had about as much moral fiber as my dog. 

She was someone I wanted to be: fun, flirty and adventurous. She looked like she knew what she was doing. Not to mention that she was really fun to be with. We used to be inseparable. She was the pretty friend and I idolized her for it. She could have any man she wanted. She made me believe that it was okay to be adventurous in terms of dating and sex. 

At that time, I was foolish enough to believe that sex equated love thanks to the warping influence of my first boyfriend.

Sex was easy and convenient, she told me. You can have it if you want it. Like love. 

Thanks to her influence, I became an even worse bad girl. 

I naively believed her. During this time, I was a girl that I was not proud of. I was insecure, lonely, depressed and full of negative energy. 

I wanted so badly to be accepted and loved that I did everything to win it from the people around me. I desperately wanted to please so many people: my parents, family, siblings, bosses, coworkers, classmates, teachers, friends and strangers in the street. 

I didn't think that I should be thinking of pleasing God. I thought that if they liked, approved or even tolerated me, I would earn their love. I didn't think that God loves me and I don't have to work so hard for His love. 

My bad decisions started to pile up. I did some of those things because I wanted to. I did most of it while I was drunk, I was under peer pressure and/or I was depressed. I did it because I thought I had nothing to lose. I did it because I wanted attention. I did it because I desperately wanted to be loved.

Then my classmate from high school died at such a tender age that it accelerated my reckless lifestyle. I'd had a brush with Death once. I didn't want to die without doing everything that I wanted to do in this life. (I did not think about the eternal life after this. I'm kind of short-sighted when it came to long-term goals at this time.)

At the same time, my problems in all areas of life became a mountainous heap. To cope, I lived for the moment. I was so reckless, so foolish! I thought that I could escape all of this if I had a relationship with a guy. Wrong again! It blew up on my face. It got so bad that it very nearly destroyed me through the depression that followed.

Yes, it was around that time that I chose promiscuity as my vice. I had to cope! I had to do something so I could keep going. 

I talked to everyone and their dog but it never soothed my troubled heart. That method didn't work. 

I wanted to know that I can be loved for myself. I wanted to know that my parents, especially my father, loved and cared for me. No matter what I did, it was never enough to catch their attention. It was not enough to tell them that I had to be stopped.

So I followed my desires. 

I did not think about the future anymore. I lived in the moment although I was very careful not to get pregnant or sick. In the arms of countless guys, I felt comforted even for just a fleeting moment. I always felt empty afterwards. But I told myself that there was always more, more, more! 

It was never enough. It was a vicious cycle that kept hurting me again and again. I never loved any of them. 

That was my mistake. I turned my back on God again. I didn't stop when I could have stopped. 

I seriously thought that my life can't get any worse. It did because I was not discreet. It came back to haunt me so many years later. 

Karma is digital. People cannot be trusted because they talked about me all the time. Some of them were only too happy to see me sink into this quagmire. 

As you can see, I did not believe that I could rise above all of this. I did not foresee that I would finish my college education, see my sister graduate and pass her board exams, get good jobs and have a loving and fulfilling relationship. 

I did not believe that I would become a woman who was confident and sure of her place in the world. I did not believe that people would still love and care about me in spite of my flaws and mistakes. 

I did not believe that God was going to have His way in the end. 

My friends, Ivy and Rhena, never stopped believing that I would change my ways. They both told me that God loved me. They told me that I did not have to repent for my sins because Jesus did that for me by letting Himself get nailed to the cross. God might be disappointed but He loved me because I was His child. 

I did not have to earn His love or ask for His forgiveness. As long as I've quit and repented sincerely for my sins, I will be okay. I'm not a saint. I'm a human being who deserves love, respect and forgiveness. 

I've changed a lot throughout the years. I've accepted the fact that I'm not as grown-up as I'd like to believe. I'm not Supergirl. 

For your info, I'm done with my previous lifestyle. I'm a different person now. I'm a woman who believes in second chances. I'm a woman who is secure in the knowledge that even if the world hated me, there is an Almighty God who will love me.

Not to mention that God is so good to give Duckie to me. God knew exactly what kind of man I'll need in my life. Years of prayers have paid off. Duckie is also everything that I've ever wanted in a man: kind, gentle, responsible and faithful. 

Why did I write this painful memoir? I'm tired of pretending. I'm not going to be afraid. 

I will not have any ghosts of my past hovering behind me. I will not engage in boxing matches with shadows. I can bring my skeletons out of the closet and use their bones to defend myself. 

I'm going to continue writing without filtering my thoughts. I'm going to be true to myself because I'm still a girl who wants to be loved for who she is and what she can do.

"Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you." ~ Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones