Mental health break

HEART & MIND   Paulynn P. Sicam

Has it happened to you that your better nature is so overpowered by anger and frustration, so that, contrary to Michelle Obama’s sage advice, when detractors go low, you are tempted to go even lower? I’ve been there a lot in this ugly political season. 

It was when I realized that I was routinely fighting insult with insult that I decided it had to stop. It is easy enough to type “idiot” in reaction to something I disapprove of online. It is no skin off my nose to throw a sarcastic response to someone’s ignorant or totally false assertion.  It is a great temptation to counter-bash a blogger for peddling wrong data, outright lies, and bad grammar on the Internet. But why add to the vile verbiage on Facebook or Twitter?

It sometimes takes superhuman effort to control myself from answering back with a cutting or witty repartee that will elicit approval from like-minded netizens. But that quickly gets old, especially when I realize how much it takes out of me to keep doing it.  Lately, I have taken to patiently reporting offensive commentary and language, as well as fake Facebook accounts that spew venom, hoping Facebook takes notice and bars those who use them from further polluting the Internet.  At the very least, they should get a warning note telling them that someone was offended enough to report them to management.

I have also found myself furiously typing in an initial knee-jerk response, but quickly deleting it even before posting.  It is only after having spent some minutes composing a calm and rational response that I decide to upload my two-cents’ worth.

Yes, I am stressed, and I’m not the only one. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals must be in great demand these days. If we haven’t still, perhaps more of us should take Agot Isidro’s advice to the President to consult with one.  I am stressed from waking up every morning to news that is worse than what I awakened to the day before. The growing body count, the endless expletives, the mindless  foreign policy statements, the misogynist bullying, the deteriorating peso, and the trolls who spoil the Facebook experience so early in the morning, make for an unpleasant start of a new day.

I have difficulty understanding how people, especially some who I grew up with, can have such a different appreciation of our situation and why they are not alarmed by our daily diet of blood and gore, the government’s cavalier attitude towards basic human rights and the mounting criticism from the international community, among our other daily realities. 

And there is no escaping discussion of the situation.  What I expect to be a pleasant lunch with the girls quickly deteriorates into political talk, peppered with unfunny jokes and salacious gossip about the new dispensation and its enemies.  The cursing in high places, which seems to drive the government’s emerging foreign policy, has now become part of the national vocabulary, so much so that people only half-jokingly refer to the Philippines as the Republic of PI.

I am alarmed that the killings are no longer Page One material, but are buried in the inside pages of newspapers along with minor news reports. They have become so commonplace that many are now desensitized, indifferent to the ordinariness of it all.  Like traffic, and the beggars and squatters who litter our cities, murder in the streets has become the new normal. 

So focused is the executive on getting rid of drugs, its users and pushers, and cursing its critics through foreign policy pronouncements on the fly, that we have hardly heard him say anything about the economy.  But not to worry.  What could go wrong when so many people believe in him?

I don’t know about you but I need a break from this madness. I’m leaving for a while, for a place where I will awaken to new surroundings, with no aggravating news about the Philippines on TV and the newspapers.  I am escaping from this new reality where we are advised to use our “creative imagination” to make sense of the president’s careless expletive-laden official pronouncements and his disrespect for everything I hold dear.  I am retreating to recharge my soul and give my heart and mind time and space to heal.

Someone asked if I am deserting my country. I am not. I am leaving for a while to become strong enough to fight another day.