Betrayal

Betrayal
By Mariel Liza Matias-Raymundo

I said
Trust me
Trust me
Trust me.

I will come.
Trust me.

I will be there
Trust me.

I will fight
Heaven and hell
to be there
I will
be there
Trust me.

I swore.
Trust me.

I am coming.
Trust me.

I will be late
but
I am
almost
there.
Trust me.

I will do this perfectly
Trust me.

I told you
I will be there
At your back
Trust me.

I will catch you
If you fall
Trust me.

I said
Trust me
Trust me
Trust me.

You did?
Trust me?

I swore.
I came.
Trust me, you did?

I came in late.
I thought I was almost there.
You really did, trust me?

I did it.
Almost as perfectly as you wanted it
Trust me, you surely did?

Did I come?
Was I there?
Did you wait?
Trust me, you did?

The World through the Eyes of my Patient An Entry in Response to Vitales Signa’s Essay Writing Challenge

Osmeña’s Eyes

I don’t know what the hell it is that is in my patient’s eye that makes me want to freak out. I don’t know what the hell it is in my own eye that makes me want to freak out even more. But then, it occurs to me, perhaps it really has nothing to do with both our eyes staring at each other with differing opinions but is connected by a fifty-peso bill grasped by her hand as she insisted on pushing it for me to accept. At a glimpse to the piece of paper I was pushing back to her, I am suddenly dragged to the thought of what the hell it is that is in Osmeña’s eyes that makes me want to freak out even more than more.

Suddenly there is an uprising in my head: a constant battle of good and evil, a continuation of the endless quest in search for the truth. Should I let my service or practice be purchased by my patient for a fifty-peso bill? I mean, is my dignity equal only to this red paper with Sergio Osmeña’s face on it that can be traded for less than a dollar?

Early that morning, even before the sun tripped its way out of the east coast, right after I rose to face one of the most challenging days of my life as I finally get the chance to work in an MS ward. I made an oath that that day will be a day I will never forget in the whole of my RLE life. We started the day off with the endorsement until I finally meet my patient for that shift. Just when I was about to breathe the first word to introduce myself, she smiled at me and said something I cannot recognize. When she opened her mouth again to say another word that is when I realize that she is actually speaking in Chinese. I started to freak out just slightly because the only words I know, or I think I know, in Chinese are siopao and siomai and I’m not really very sure about that.

Of course, I never let my patients know just how unsure I can be in front of them. It’s a look patient get in their eyes that makes me want to freak out even at the beginning. I rendered the morning care, changed her linens and was definitely in endless thought of how in the world will I ask her just how many times she peed and pooped by the end of my shift.

After I decided that I will just get on with it by demonstrating the questions to her, she asked me a favor to gently massage her neck. So, I did as I was told. I let my hand communicate with her pained neck and after a while, just when I was beginning to be proud of myself, she dismissed me and handed me a fifty peso-bill. I don’t know at that time whether to run off away from it or run off with it.

The hardest part is that, after the battle has been fought and the truth has been told, I ran off with it. I took the bill and up until now I cannot remember what I did with it or how I spent it. I don’t know what went on in that lonely room that she convinced me to have it. It was like, for once, I lived with the fact that the reason I chose this profession is to really gain all the monetary advances I can get. That event became the manifestation of what life I really have in my mind or at least I think I have in my mind. That event constantly reminded me of the first insult I get. Not from my patient but from myself.

At that time, there is something that is in my patient’s eye that freaked me out. Maybe it is the look that she knows that not all of us, nursing students, are really there to care but to be spared of all the poverty we wanted so much to get away from. The look I have in my own eye that is adding up to the freaking is another thing. I am as guilty as I can be. I looked at Sergio Osmeña’s eyes and it really is tempting and insulting and testing.

I failed the first test. I took the temptation. I swallowed the insult.

I learned something from the experience. That is, the caring and the people are far more valuable than that stare I got from the money.

I am, and my profession should be, worth more than that.

Vitales Signa: December 2006 issue. MLMRAYMUNDO

Sex, Confusion and “The Act”

It’s undeniable.

Adolescence really is the time to get sexually active. If all the biological wanting will never be enough to finally get you to consummate, then all the pressure in the environment will really get into you. When all the thought about “everybody is doing it” finally went up your confused head, you will definitely end up doing “The Act” just for the sake of doing it and having someone do-you (as they say).

I, on the other hand, have always held high standards and expectations regarding the sexual act. I have always thought of it as highly soulful rituals shared by two people to build trust with love by letting the other know how much of who and what you are he entirely owns. It is in a way guided by God while all the arousal ought nothing more than to produce an individual that you both know will complement your overflowing desire to completely own each other by enveloping yourselves inside the cell unit of a family.

“Sex before marriage encourages disrespect,” a book I read entitled I Love You written by Gordon O. Martinborough stated and continued: “She may be enjoyed but is scarcely respected, and is sometimes bypassed when he gets serious about marriage. And if the partners do proceed to a wedding, they may discover that premarital sex was robbery, for they robbed themselves of the precious mystery of each other causing the honeymoon to lose much of its meaning.”

Sex if done not out of love is nothing more than a perversion. And control of our perversion is the major difference we have over animals, but then even animals also choose their mates according to certain standards we cannot seem to understand. So, who are we to defy that gift of choice?

I will not claim that I am innocent on knowing things about intercourse (Oh, I know quite a lot—from books and films I will not dare name). I will not also deny that once a month just prior to ovulation at a time when my body is eventually preparing itself for possible fertilization and implantation, I feel a certain urge to engage in sex. I don’t know if it has of psychological roots or it just has something to do with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs tickling my biological clock.

I really don’t know, but what I know for sure is that I don’t self-stimulate just to get past that desire. I make use of the control I can have over perversion, I am very proud to say that I have used that gift of choice and I will always try to.

But then, the curiosity about the feeling of stimulation that will bring you to simultaneous ecstasy has always been there and will remain to be there until the fine thread line of your innocence was finally invaded by the giant mounting information that will undoubtedly fill you up, until all that’s left for you is to do it to satisfy all those Serotonin firing up in your nerve fibers bringing about an incredible compulsion of doing it. Surely, all the talking from peers who had done it trying to convince you so hard that “everybody is doing it” and that “it doesn’t matter to anyone anymore” will get you more to want to have the experience because you know in reality they are right. You standing against the world, against your own biological woes and the social status quo will definitely be a fierce battle because accepting the reality and fighting with your principle is an extremely difficult task. It’ll both shed you to pieces and destroy you entirely; or totally overcome your nature in which the grounds for the fight is already unfair.
So really, up to when can one hold her ground to stay clean?

I want to hold my horses until the right time comes so that my love story will have its denouement on the night of my honeymoon when I will tell my man that I waited long enough for him to come and have me, all of me; that I managed to stay clean waiting for him even though I never had the assurance that he—whoever he may be—might or might not come; that I had put everything about him and me on faith and nothing less than that.

I had a friend who texted me a message which I had always held close to my heart, it said: “Don’t rush into falling in love, God is just busy writing the best love story meant only for you.” I have always believed this. I have always put faith in this.

But then, what will be the odds for me to find the right man to grow old with? That he’ll accept me for who I am and who I may be? Will the chance really be astronomical for me to find the right man, to settle down with, to raise a family with him, to stay together with each other against all odds?

Well, then I guess I would just put all that in faith and hope real hard that through it I will make the right decision to take the course of what was planned for me.

Some mighty-mean- people-who-thinks-they-know-so-much-of-the-world-and-thinks-that-their-ego-fits-much-better-to-exist-with-reality-because-the-whole-world-has-a-problem-and-failed-to-look-inside-themselves may think that I’m so conservative with all these worthless self-preservation attempt and may actually put on some money on how long I can hold it. I don’t care what they think. What I think about myself is much more important. Losing dignity because I broke the promise I made to myself is far worst than living without a glimmer of humanity. Their opinions will matter to no one but themselves in their own trivial pursuits.

So, screw Grey’s Anatomy!

Screw all of House’s attempt of sexual advances to Cuddy!

Screw Thong Feminism and whatever it really was.

I don’t judge the people who had actually done it, maybe in a way I even envy them. I will not deny that after hearing a few stories from a certain friend who is a really close buddy to me, I was for a few days curious about it and ended up buying a psychological book “Mars and Venus in the Bedroom” from the same doctor who wrote “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” I adore their freedom and experience. I desire what they had undergone. But then it just turned out, I needed someone far more than an ‘activity-partner’. My principle weighs so much heavier than my body’s desire to do “The Act.”

I will someday do it, I know.

Heck, I know we will all do it. But I also like knowing that in the future, it’s worth the wait.