The Performance of the Good Son

It is 11:50 PM. In ten minutes, April 10th will officially end, and with it, my mother’s birthday. I am back in my room in Quezon City, the smell of motorcycle engine oil still clinging to my skin and the familiar, rhythmic creak of the ceiling fan welcoming me back into the dark.

Yesterday was Araw ng Kagitingan—the Day of Valor. While the rest of the country is supposedly celebrating courage and heroism, I spent the day practicing my most convincing lie in the bathroom mirror of my apartment in Quezon City. And today, the real battle happened on the winding roads to Rizal.

The road to the NHA relocation site in Montalban is a long, dusty stretch of broken promises. I rode my motorcycle out there today, the engine sputtering with the same exhaustion that has lived in my bones since 2019. Back in my days as an IT Project Manager, I would have zipped through this traffic with the arrogance of a man who owned the sky. I was the "cool guy" from the public schools who finally made it out of the Quezon City slums. But today, as I climbed the hills toward my parents' small, government-issued house, I felt like a thief returning to the scene of a crime. My stomach was a hollow cavern, reminding me that I haven't had a proper meal in days, and the "haze" in my head—the one I haven't been able to medicate since 2020—was so thick I could barely see the road through the tears I refused to let fall.

I stopped at a bakery in San Mateo, the smell of sugar and yeast mocking the absolute zero in my bank account. I stood there for twenty minutes, staring at a simple chocolate dedication cake, frantically doing the math in my head. If I bought the cake for my mother’s birthday, I wouldn’t have enough gas to get back to my rented room in the slums. I wouldn't even have enough for a single egg to eat tomorrow. I stood there, a thirty-something man who used to manage million-dollar budgets, and I realized I couldn't even afford to buy my mother the sweetness she deserves. I walked back to my motorcycle empty-handed, my chest tight with a shame so acidic it felt like it was dissolving my ribs. I am the eldest son, the dropout who was supposed to be the hero, yet I arrived at her door with nothing but the dust of the road on my clothes.

The birthday lunch was a masterclass in slow-motion psychological torture. My mother, who still spends her weary days volunteering at the barangay hall, had cooked pancit for my "long life"—a bitter irony for someone who has been praying for the clock to stop since 2019.

My father, a retired security guard whose hands are permanently curved from years of gripping a shotgun he never owned, looked at me with a pride that felt like a physical weight. While my older sister sent photos of her life as a nurse in Florida and my younger brother bragged about his caregiver salary in Japan via the family group chat, I sat there and lied.

"How’s the office, anak?" my father asked, his eyes full of a pride I haven't earned. "The traffic in the Metro must be exhausting."

"It’s okay, 'Pa," I lied, the words feeling like shards of glass in my throat. "The new project is demanding, but the management is happy with my performance. Just a lot of overtime lately."

I invented meetings, I complained about "corporate deadlines," and I described an office environment I haven't stepped foot in since I was laid off in 2022. I wore the mask of the successful son so tightly that I could feel my soul suffocating underneath it, all while my stomach screamed in protest from not having a real meal in forty-eight hours.

I couldn't even buy her a gift. I told her it was "delayed in shipping," another lie to add to the pile. I felt like a ghost haunting my own family’s dinner table—a Kulaspiro acting foolishly to protect them from the truth of my depression.

Being unemployed is a shame that eats you quietly. But being a liar—pretending you are "okay" to protect the people who love you—is a weight that breaks your bones. I sat in my childhood bedroom for a few minutes after lunch, surrounded by old trophies and books from a time when my potential was still a promise. Now, I’m just a 30-something who can't even buy his mother a birthday cake.

I left as the sun started to dip, making excuses about a "busy morning tomorrow."

As I was leaving, my mom walked me to my motorcycle. She didn’t ask about the cake or the gift. She just handed me a plastic container of leftovers and tucked a small, folded piece of paper into my jacket pocket.

I opened it when I got back to QC, just a few minutes ago. It said: "Kahit anong mangyari, nandito lang kami. Magpahinga ka, anak. Mahal ka namin." (No matter what happens, we are just here. Rest, my son. We love you.)

I’m sitting here at 11:55 PM, and I wonder if she knows. I wonder if she sees the cracks in the mask, the paleness of the Kulaspiro, and the exhaustion of the lie. The haze is still here, and the bank account is still empty, but that little note is sitting on my desk next to my laptop.

I didn't give her a gift today. But maybe, just maybe, the fact that I showed up—that I fought the urge to disappear and instead chose to be there, even as a lie—is a small kind of valor.

The day is almost over. I’m still here. And for tonight, that’s the only truth that matters.

Have you ever had to hide your struggles just to keep the people you love smiling? How do you handle the silence when the celebration is over?

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The Long Ride to Nowhere

 I left my room in Quezon City at 5:00 AM, before the Metro could fully wake up and start demanding things from me. I thought that if I put enough distance between myself and that creaky ceiling fan, maybe the "haze" would stay behind in the city smog. I took the bike, gassed up with the last few hundred pesos I should have probably saved for groceries, and rode toward the mountains of Tanay.

I ended up here, at Moolk Creamery Farm.

They tell you that nature is a healer. They say the fresh air of Rizal is the antidote to the suffocating heat of the city. But as I sit here on a cold stone bench, looking out at the dried grass and the unlit string lights, I realize that changing your zip code doesn't change your brain. I’m just a depressed, unemployed man in a different setting. Instead of feeling small in a crowd of office workers, I now feel small against the vast, indifferent silence of the hills.

The sky is a mocking, perfect blue. In the distance, the wind turbines of Pililla are spinning—slow, rhythmic, and tireless. They have a purpose. They are generating power for a world that’s moving forward. And here I am, sitting in a field of yellowing grass, feeling like a broken machine that no amount of mountain air can jumpstart.

The string lights above me are cold. They’re meant for laughter, for groups of friends sharing milkshakes and taking photos for their feeds. In the lens of a happy person, this place is a sanctuary. In mine, it looks like an abandoned stage after the show has already ended. I came here hoping the "change of scenery" would lift the veil I wrote about on Easter, but the veil is still there. It’s just dustier now from the ride.

I feel like a fool—a true Kulaspiro. A pasaway who thought he could outrun his own shadow on a 150cc motorcycle. The ride back to QC feels longer than the ride here.

But as I was about to head back to the parking lot, a small breeze kicked up. It wasn't much, but it was cool, and for a split second, it carried the scent of something green and living, surviving despite the dry season. It didn't "cure" me, but it was a reminder that even in the parched heat, things are still holding on.

I made the trip. I didn't stay in bed. I saw the turbines turn. Maybe that’s the "success" for today—not that I felt better, but that I actually went somewhere else to feel the same. I’m still a footnote, but today, I’m a footnote written on a different page.

I’m about to start the engine for the long ride back to the haze.

Have you ever traveled far just to realize you brought the weight with you? How are you holding up under your own sky today?

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Lifting the Veil

 I woke up twenty minutes ago, my shirt sticking to my back in the 25°C stillness of the room. There was no nightmare, just a sudden, sharp realization that the world was about to start celebrating a resurrection while I was still very much buried. The humidity in the Metro at this hour feels like a physical weight, a premonition of the 33°C heat that’s going to bake the city by noon.

I pulled my laptop into my lap, the blue light stinging my eyes, and for some reason, the only thing I can smell is Sampaguita and melted wax.

When I was seven, 3:20 AM meant something entirely different. It meant my mother gently shaking me awake in our house in QC, the scratchy feeling of a new Barong Tagalog against my neck, and the excitement of driving through the empty, cool streets toward Sto. Domingo Church. Back then, the Metro didn't feel like a meat grinder; it felt like a cathedral.

I remember standing in the dark crowd at the Galilea—that high platform where the "angels" waited. I remember my father’s hand, calloused and warm, holding mine so I wouldn't get lost in the sea of devotees. We’d wait for the moment of the Salubong, that beautiful, staged encounter between the Risen Christ and the Mourning Mother. When that little girl dressed as an angel would be lowered on a rope to lift the black veil from Mary’s head, the crowd would erupt.

As a kid, I truly believed that when that veil came off, the sadness of the world ended. I thought that was the secret—that someone, somewhere, would eventually lift the darkness for all of us, and we’d all just go home to a breakfast of pandesal and hot chocolate, and everything would be new.

Now, I’m thirty-something, sitting in the dark of a rented room, staring at a resume that feels like a list of ghosts. There is no angel on a rope coming to lift the fog from my brain. There is no crowd cheering for my return to the living. The "veil" I’m wearing isn't made of lace; it’s made of missed opportunities and the chemical imbalance that makes me feel like I’m permanently stuck in the silence of Good Friday.

I wonder if my parents knew, back then, that they were raising a son who would eventually find it hard to even walk out the door. I wonder if they saw the haze starting to settle in my eyes even while I was singing "Alleluia."

But as I sit here, watching the clock tick toward 4:00 AM, I realize that even though I can't feel the "Glory" today, I’m still here to witness the dawn. I woke up. I opened the screen. I’m typing these words into the void. Maybe the resurrection isn't a grand event with trumpets and angels. Maybe for people like us, the resurrection is just the act of choosing to stay awake for one more morning.

The sky over Sto. Domingo will be turning that pale, bruised grey soon. The bells will ring. And even if I’m still under the stone, at least I’m not alone in the dark.

Did you ever have a moment as a kid where you felt like the world was finally "fixed"? Are you still waiting for someone to lift the veil today?

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The Weight of the Stone

 It is late on the night of Black Saturday. Outside, the Metro is holding its breath.

The last two days have felt like a blur of extremes. On Maundy Thursday, the streets were bleeding with people. From my window, I watched the crowds doing their Visita Iglesia, walking miles in the suffocating heat, moving from church to church to ask for forgiveness or beg for a miracle. I watched them dragging their tired feet, driven by a desperate, beautiful kind of faith. I watched them, and then I went back to bed, paralyzed by the fact that I couldn't even find the energy or the "faith" to walk to my own kitchen.

Then came Good Friday. The Metro became a ghost town. The malls were shuttered, the usually congested EDSA was an empty strip of concrete, and the local channels on TV were either pure static or broadcasting the Siete Palabras. The old folks have a saying for Good Friday: "Patay ang Diyos" (God is dead). They tell you not to make noise, not to travel, and to be careful not to get wounded, because without God, wounds don't heal. Yesterday, that superstition didn’t feel like a myth. It felt like a diagnosis. The whole world had finally stopped to match the absolute emptiness inside my chest.

And then there was today. Sabado de Gloria. A day of limbo.

There were no dramatic processions today, no loud passions, just the heavy, uncomfortable silence of a tomb waiting for a resurrection. I spent the entire day doing exactly what I do every other day: waking up at noon, staring at the ceiling fan, and feeling the exact same void. Because the truth is, unemployment in your thirties is a perpetual Black Saturday. You are constantly trapped in the waiting room of your own life, sitting in the dark, wondering if your personal "Easter" is ever going to come, or if you're just going to be stuck under the stone forever.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. The bells will ring, people will put on their best clothes, and the world will celebrate "new life." But I don't feel ready to resurrect. I don't have a job to go back to on Monday. I just have the same haze, the same quiet room, and the same blinking cursor on a resume I can't bring myself to send.

I almost didn't open my laptop tonight. It felt almost sacrilegious to break the silence of the tomb. But the silence in my head was getting too loud.

If you are sitting in a dark room tonight, listening to the distant hum of the city slowly winding back up, feeling like your own wounds are never going to heal... I know the feeling. The world expects us to rise tomorrow, but maybe we don't need to force our resurrection just because the calendar says so.

Maybe it’s okay to just sit in the quiet of Black Saturday for as long as we need to. The stone is heavy, and the air is thin, but we are still breathing underneath it.

How did you survive the silence today?

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The Longest Joke

 It’s April 1st. In the Metro, the heat has officially turned from a nuisance into a weight. It’s the kind of day where the air feels like it’s been breathed by a million other people before it gets to your lungs.

Everyone is playing their little games today. Corporate brands are posting fake products, and people are playing harmless pranks on their friends. I woke up at 2:00 PM and realized the cruelest April Fools’ joke is the one my own brain plays on me every morning—the one where it whispers that today might be the day I finally feel "normal," only to laugh when I can’t even find the energy to wash a single plate in the sink.

In your thirties, unemployment makes you feel like the punchline of a joke you didn’t sign up for. "What do you do for a living?" is a question that feels like a trap.

I almost skipped today. I had the tab open for three hours, staring at the blinking cursor, feeling that familiar, sickening urge to just delete the whole site and disappear again. I’ve "failed" at being a blogger about as many times as I’ve failed at being a "functional member of society." But I figured if I didn't post today, the silence would just be another thing I’d have to apologize for later.

Tonight, they say there’s a Pink Moon rising.

I went out onto the small, rusted balcony of my apartment to see it. In the magazines, the Pink Moon looks like a miracle—a glowing, ethereal orb of hope and rebirth. But here in the Metro, through the thick haze of smog and the orange glare of the streetlights, it just looks like a pale, sickly bruise in the sky.

It’s beautiful in a way that hurts. It’s a reminder that there is something celestial and grand happening above us, but we’re too stuck in the dirt and the traffic and the "nothingness" of our lives to truly feel it.

If you’re sitting in the dark tonight, feeling like a fool for still hoping things will change, or if you’re just tired of wearing the mask that everyone expects you to wear, you’re not alone. We’re all just fools under a bruised moon, trying to figure out if tomorrow is going to be another prank or a real start.

The moon is up there, even if the smog makes it hard to see. And I’m still here, even if I’m just barely hanging on.

How are you navigating the "haze" tonight? Did the moon find you, too?

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