On August 4th, midday between traffic hours, Joan headed to see her doctor for her weekly checkup. Living in Rizal, a developing province in the Philippines, she’s far from all the glamorous city lights but no stranger to blasting beeps and heinous drivers on the road. Her car, an 8-year-old Sedan given to her from her father as a gift for graduating high school, is now badly maintained with a pungent mix of aromas coming from spilled whiskey and greasy fast-food leftovers. With a sickness that eats away what nutrients she had left in her body; Joan was left to be relatively underweight. Not to the point of skin and bones but just enough for a passerby to assume that she was “just on a strict diet.” Her choice of clothes for today was of bohemian style. With a flowy lace white blouse, brown palazzo pants, and a cream tote bag with a peace sign on its cover, they made her feel as if freedom was more than just her purpose, but an advocacy she wanted to share with the world. Although, even with the latter part being her so-called purpose, her diagnosis was more of an imprisonment than something she can consider her motivation to keep living.
Writing used to be a release for her, but now a bottle of Jack Daniels is her best friend. A symbol of making it through each wretched day, as she would put it. Her psychiatrist whom she is seeing today, Dr. Dale, advised that she avoid alcohol all together because it’s a mood destabilizer that prohibits her entirety to properly heal. You would think that maybe she forgets about what her doctor tells her, but no. She does remember. The fact is that she has given up on living a long time ago, and she doesn’t see any return from it. It was a normal thing anyway, Joan thought, in her first year of high school, that life was just full of bad news. Sure, there occasionally would be good news that would come about but the whole “brighter side of things” was never and has never been enough for Joan to crack a grin at life. People left and right disappointed her. They were all the same. One moment they’d act as if you’re their best friend, but would up and leave the moment things Joan got into a rough patch. But after everything she’s been through there are only two people in her life that never disappointed her, well, roughly never.
Her parents, Joanie and Amy. Never leaving her side since the day she was born; Joanie and Amy are the pinnacle of a couple in tandem. Joanie is a 55-year-old businesswoman who graduated with a bachelor’s of science in business making it an opportunity for her to teach Joan lessons and values coming from experience in the office. Being a production supervisor wasn’t an easy task for Joanie but it soon turned out that it was her forte. During a shortage in staff in the company, Joanie was among the chosen ones to lead several teams from the marketing department to make up for the loss they were facing. After nights and nights of overtime, Joanie was then promoted to become the manager of the production area.
One of the significant lessons from that experience was the “4 Quadrants”. It helped Joan back when she was in high school by a long shot. Every time Joan would come home from school, she would run to her white board in her bedroom to list down all she needed to do in 4 different boxes, including her time to talk to friends (in the 4th quadrant) and to catch up with her parents about her day (in the 3rd quadrant). Amy, on the other hand, got straight to work as soon as she graduated high school.
The way she would divide her time was the root cause of her first diagnosis when she sought a psychiatrist, which is GAD. Also known as Generalized Anxiety Disorder. A disorder that separates one’s anxiety from the “normal” anxiety that a human being would feel. She thought she knew when this started, but what came to light was something she never realized… until just a few moments later when she pulled up to the parking lot of her doctors building.
[pum_scroll_trigger popup=”721″]