Snow Concepcion Marin

Mental health in the elderly— In a little rundown stone house on the South of the hilly plains of Basco, Batanes lives Lola Alice.  Lola Alice laid on her wooden bed with her eyes shut as the brgy. health worker and the community doctor knocked on her door. Hearing the familiar voices, she sat up with her disheveled hair, not at all excited with the visit.  In truth, Lola Alice is blind, abandoned by her only son to fend for herself. Sometimes, the neighbors would bring her food which she accepted while most days preferring only to lie on her bed and starve. She lives day by day wishing she was dead.  “Bigyan ko po kayo ng gamot, Lola” (“I’ll give you some medicine, grandma”), Dr. Noel, the community doctor, said, to which Lola Alice responded, “Ayoko ng gamot; gusto ko lason.” (“I don’t want any medicine; I want some poision so I can kill myself”) While trying to convince Lola Alice that she’s going to live a long life, she barked back saying, “Bakit? Yung iba naman tatawa-tawa pa, bukas libing na.” (“Why? Anyone can be laughing now and be dead by tomorrow.”) Depression and dementia are the most common mental and neurological disorders in the elderly according to WHO. But the stigma surrounding these and people simply attributing the signs to “old age” make it hard for these people to seek help; their mental health issues merely brushed aside. With the current pandemic, one of the most vulnerable sectors of the community—the elderly—have been in isolation for over four months since the declaration of the nationwide lockdown.  Lourdes, 76, lives alone while her son and his family li Even after the lockdown was lifted, the elderly are still discouraged from going out. Visitors are not allowed in nursing homes and the elderly continue to isolate themselves while the rest of the world tries to get back on its feet. The government’s reponse to the current situation isn’t of much help—UP doctors and professors even go as far as considering it a ‘failure’. The unclear, misguided information and the tackling of issues seemingly unrelated to the main problem at hand seemed to have pushed the system further down the rabbit hole.  But as people struggle to keep up with their daily lives, and deal with their own psychological fallout, it is important to note that depression and anxiety is as common in the elderly as it is in any age group. Although, it may be harder to identify, as certain signs as being meek or lethargic can simply be linked to physical decline or frailty, it is all the more reason to be attentive. They may not want to be a bother to anyone but it is in their silent hopes that their existence at a time like this is recognized, albeit occasionally, rather than thrown into perpetual oblivion.  We won’t always get to keep love— I will never forget how you loved me, and how I loved you with the same intensity. I will never forget how my heart grew a million sizes at loving you and how it shattered when you left. I look back at a year when I lost you. I look at the first few months and how those months were a cycle of being drunk, being lost, being sober and finally being drunk again. I counted the days expecting you to come back but that day never came. I look back now, a year later, as I sit through a crowd of people, coffee in hand, and I realise, it was no one’s fault. It was something neither of us wanted, but it had to happen anyway. All the same, you were special. You were the one man I loved so dearly because you deserved nothing less. You were the one man who knew how toxic it was to be with me yet stayed. You were the one man who called me princess and treated me that way. I knew then that you were the one man I was going to marry. I started building my dreams with you, my life around you until I felt like I couldn’t stand on my own two feet if I didn’t have you by me. I started living in that bubble, exhausting it, until it couldn’t hold any more air. I’ve patterned myself into believing we were going to make it. Surely, it broke me when we didn’t. But we were young, we were in love and we were so absorbed in our little world of nightmares and fairy tale; all of which, I realized, were merely figments of the mind deviating from reality. I understand now, why things had to happen. Our parting was inevitable—predictable even. One way or the other, soon enough, one of us was going to break. You told me, “love isn’t enough.” And maybe, you were right, but I wish we tried. And maybe tried a little more. I will always hold on to the belief that love wins in the end. And maybe that’s where the conflict lies. But I look at where I am now, and I smile because I know this is why we had to part. I learned that it’s not always a significant other—a man, a woman, to complete you. Because little things can feel like love, too. Like drinking your coffee in the morning, or talking to a friend at night. The road to recovery isn’t paved smoothly, but it’s as colorful as you would want it to be. In the recesses of my heart, I will always find you, but for now, I am grateful. I am grateful for the love we had. I know somewhere in between the love we shared, the universe wanted us there. That’s how I know the universe will ultimately take me somewhere. Finding solace in Korean pop culture amidst pandemic For a number of people including myself, quarantine seems to have paved the way for South Korean pop culture to invade a portion, or more, of our daily lives. It’s shed a new light to a subject that has no doubt scaled up the benchmark for pop culture, and as a rather sustainable industry as opposed to being the temporary trendy craze.  Now, everyone has wondered how a small Asian country of less than 50 million people has managed to dominate the whole world, even transcending language and cultural barriers. An article from The Washington Post’s (2006) pointed out that their good marketing strategy is based on good looking young men and solid story-lines—plastic surgery turning these youngsters into full blown metamorphosed butterflies for greedy capitalistic schemes.  Another study attributes this success to several factors including the theme and plot to which the story lines revolve in ie., true, lasting and unconditional love. More importantly, their government’s support is vital in it’s role of subsidizing the cost of film-making and reediting movies for international market (Chua and Iwabuchi 2008). To name a few more interesting things, Korean consumers are in reality, so aggressive that mass movements are made online to air out specific opinions, subsequently pressuring producers into shifting the story-line of a long running series to fit the masses demands thus, dubbing Korean consumers to be “prosumers” (producer-consumers).  They're also very detail specific to notice, ie., the same plate number on a taxi used on several films over and over again that this attention to detail has led filmmakers to minimize errors, resulting to improved products with as little flaws as possible. Personally, one of the factors attributing to its spread is the multiple platforms to which the dramaverse is discussed and introduced, consistently and intensely so. You only have to plunge yourself enough to be sucked into a vortex that automatically catapults you to ten different realms in one go.  More often than not, it reminds you of that one true love, that once strong emotion that existed at some point in your own world. The whole difference being, that one true love stays intact in the dramaverse. And that's one of its many charms: the alternate reality that true love, no matter how insanely difficult it gets, can exist and endure at the same time. It's nostalgic and poignant to the point that it produces an irrational desire to jump into the next virtual emotion-filled experience. Lastly, something that particularly keeps you attached is the inherent humor that  Korean dramas never lose. Although, it's evolve from toilet to mostly slapstick, the exaggerated portrayal can be exponentially amusing when delivered at regular intervals, as it sort of rubs off on you. The substantial character development of the leads, the sweet fluffy bromance, the roller coaster of emotions and the adorable color scheming—that's sweet and subtle but quite powerful if you start to pay attention to details—are things that make all of it seem real and unreal at the same time.  It doesn't have the most sophisticated humor, and sometimes, it has the most absurd plots, but it's mostly light and easy and hits the right spots; you easily find yourself in fits of laughter at wee hours in the morning by the over exaggerated-ness of it all. It's entertainment at its best, and times right now, we definitely deserve to treat ourselves with the easy and the breezy of a well deserved alternate reality. Facility or prison—my quarantine musings I got into a spacious room on the third floor of a building in one of the city colleges with two other female passengers who were previously aboard the same flight as me.  The room used to be filled with students eagerly waiting for their classes and the corridors noisy with kids on recess.  This time around, the rooms were filled with LSIs (Locally Stranded Individuals) who came in from NCR and Cebu.  We were greeted with dusty floors and wide windows where men quarantined on the building across ours watched and surveyed the newcomers from afar, their stares burning through the transparent windows. A green cloth hung in the middle as a divider to separate the room into two. I stayed on one end where the electrical outlet was and started organizing while we waited for our [folding] beds to arrive. They gave us a complete set of toiletries and a small blanket and a pillow. You’d think, “Well, this seems adequate enough.” On food and basic needs Following the first few nights, operations started to falter. Food became scarce, and arrived late. On some days, food was too early and left outside until we can eat our dinner cold. Drinking water was just as sparingly provided, and there were days when we had to wait almost 24 hours for drinking water to be delivered. During the orientation, the head doctor clearly said, “If you have any problems, you can approach us directly. It’s better than resorting to social media.”  But the lack of personnel around made it hard for the LSIs to approach anyone. Nurses are overworked; not only did they have to climb through three buildings and numerous floors, they also had to deal with people airing their concerns over the lack of coffee in the morning or the lack of water in the ‘bathrooms.’ Dirty common toilets were shared among men and women on every floor. It seems like it isn’t a problem a doctor or a nurse alone can solve when the problem stems from a rather larger system that’s supposed to be supporting them. The lack of nurses, overworked doctors and health personnels are things that are apparent in today’s fight against COVID.  Even the cook who worked behind the scenes was said to have taken a few days off, explaining why there were days when food looked like it was bought from the nearest karinderya (packed in small plastics and placed in the usual syrofoam packaging). On soldiers patrolling One night, the army men knocked on our door to check on us because one of the LSIs escaped.  Giving so much priority to soldiers and armed forces who couldn’t do that ‘one’ job.  On the environment On our 10th day, I peaked through one of the windows and saw styrofoam containers  scattered, almost covering a fifth of the field. The amount of trash and plastic collected over the previous weeks was innumerable.  What of the next batches of LSIs? Will the whole field be covered by the time the pandemic ends? Or will the field be too small a space to fit all of the discarded trash?  I guess we’ll have to wait and see and hope things start looking up before it’s too late.