The unbearable need to get money and buy all the things in my shopee cart is driving me insane. Also, my Amazon cart, but that's a whole 'nother monster, with shipping and all. It is 12:57AM and I have a lot of things in my to-do-list which I am not in the mood to do. Come to think of it, it is so unfair for me to suffer as if I were already a wife. I was barely even a girlfriend, not even a close friend, not even a friend you would romantically pursue. But I am suffering as if I were actually in an intimate relationship with him. Why did this have to happen to me? It's just so ridiculous. So I looked at the Seka Gonzales Monsanto videos I downloaded months ago. I think I discovered who she was, a B-list mestiza model, off a website called sexypinays or something like that. I think I was looking for pictures of pretty girls so I can catfish men and prove a point to myself, and also, so I can make a Tinder/Bumble account to search for the Man. I don't know why or how I was able to find him, but I did. It didn't really take a whole lot of time, maybe three days of swiping. I had to buy a subscription to have the passport feature so I could also be "from Mandaluyong" and increase my chances of stumbling upon his profile. I don't know how I knew in my gut to search him on Tinder. Maybe some part of me was trying to confirm a hypothesis, albeit a very unlikely one, but one that did prove to be right. I like being right, but some part of me did not want to be right, and although I was relieved that the anxiety of not knowing if he was on there was relieved by the affirmative answer, I was really saddened. I mean, he was already looking to date new people. He's trying to get over Prof. Audrey. And he's desperate enough to go on Tinder. I mean, I know it's hard to find people in this pandemic, and he'd probably be better off meeting people if there was no pandemic in UP, with his coworkers and fellow profs, but I feel like finding people off Tinder is such a worldly thing to do. He's willing to date non-Christians, for one. And he's probably lying about the "conversation only, not hook-ups," because it's bound to get hot and heavy considering the women on Tinder, and also because he's trying to appear different from all the other thirsty men on there. I was just really disappointed, and I hated myself so much because why did it not make a dent towards any recovery of this stupid obsession. Anyway, back to Seka, I feel like, once I'd watched her videos, her perfect body, tiny waist, big boobs, nice thighs and legs, nice face, feminine everything, etc., it all but confirmed a truth on this earth that I hate: that beauty is sometimes the only reason why people love each other. And that for some, it's enough of a reason to fall in love. To bestow your life upon a person because they're beautiful. Period. What a world. The person who made the videos is one huge fan like me, although I'm apt to think they're pathetic. Putting romantic songs over the modelling photos as if they know anything at all about Seka. And yet, I know almost everything about his dark side, his problematic views, his flaws, everything. Almost, short of actually interacting with him, which is, if I didn't unearth his embarrassing secrets for everyone to see, bound to have been pleasant, more polite, more gentleman-y or kinder than the ugly faces of him I have seen on the internet, his Tinder, Ty Severen, his Twitter, his writings, his erotica, his fascinations, his views on politics, his fears, his restrained anger radiating off him whenever I was around him in 2019 in the aftermath of sending ALL_GO. What difference would it make? If I had to date him in real life. Would I even like him regardless of that? Just because I am attracted to him sexually? I think this is a huge injustice. I could be falling in love with a much better person, someone who is high value. Someone who isn't unpleasantly erotically fixated on prostitutes, someone who doesn't want a pornified performer to dance for him and dangle her wares all over his body for him to paw at and grope and salivate and turn cross-eyed all over. I could be in love with a much better Christian, a mature person who takes the lead. Who loves God and tries to understand women's perspectives and has empathy for their undisclosed insecurities. I could be meeting emotionally intelligent men who are not him. But I can't get over him, simply because I am attached, rather, my brain is so addicted, so consumed by thoughts of him ravishing me with his perfectly formed body, his skin, his hands, the bones of his face covered with a wryly handsome mask that undoes me when the eyes it encases slowly trace the outlines of my body, my mouth, my thighs. I hate this sensual cocktail. Why did God create so much beauty and give it as if he were throwing darts with a blindfold? People who are ugly inside should not look like him. I'm kind of jealous of 2018 me, who wrote ALL_GO. I no longer have that imagination nor "funny." I'm just sad and bitter these days. I mean, I was sad and bitter back then, too. But I was somehow able to write those things because I was less traumatized. Now, all I can write are realist stories like "A Map of Pain," which I realize is a spiritual sequel to ALL_GO. "Mapstopasscodes/passwords.pdf" or something like it. And I couldn't even bring myself to finish it yet. At least I'm getting more disciplined these days with the help of my new gadgets. I'm so ungrateful sometimes and I don't often appreciate that not everyone can have iPads and Apple watches and Bose Quietcomfort 35 noise-cancelling headphones (something that I really wanted in the past and wrote extensively about) to help them get their life together. Without these gadgets I'm nothing. Well, I'd be far less able. But all I do these days is gush and bleed emotional damage and heartache. I'm just fascinated that I've currently written 6,000 words in a single journal entry for the first half of Jan 2022. I wonder what this page will look like in December. Probably it'll sit at 100,000. That's another slice of life. A year. So much could happen to me. I'll probably die inside a lot in the months to come. As I'm wont to do. But I really hope and pray that I'll do that "Two steps forward one step back" so I'll still keep improving. Growth mindset and positive thinking. I'm not sure if I've ever acknowledged it here before. I think what really happened on "their" end (the DEPT. of DECL vs. the Man) is that he reported his side before Prof. Manalo wrote those poems. The "sizzling lang sa simula" being a reference to how I dressed. I mean, I progressively became more modest as the midyear class of Eng 21 went on, because maybe unconsciously I was conscious of him staring at my body. I don't know if I disliked it. I liked that he was staring, but I couldn't tell whether or not he was staring because he thought it was freaky that I had huge thighs (well, he did copy and do your habit of putting his hand in between your thighs as he said something like, "this is what you do when you're cold" or something, which means he is noticing me and my thighs, and why would you even bring that up/mention it?). I also noticed him staring at my boobs (or lack thereof) when (I think) he noticed that it was no longer as big as the first day of class, when I wore a bigger bra. I also noticed him staring at my mouth, possibly to gauge my reaction to what he said, or some other motive I can't possibly know but my deluded self back then wanted to be something in the province of romance/attraction. My other theory is that individual students from that Eng 21 class were contacted and asked to report what they thought of me and my interactions with him. Explains why Iñigo was in Eng 143 (I noticed the "brrrr" gesture he made when we bumped into each other on the AS steps going up to the second floor). I was not really feeling cold in Eng 21, but I "covered up" and sat beside him, where Joanna Mangalino usually sat (though I wasn't expecting her to move to the back, I only thought she would take my seat instead), and I made it look extra conspicuous that I was avoiding being at the center of the room (making him, the Man, maybe paranoid that I was noticing him staring) or that I was actually cold. Maybe that uncertainty that I was giving off was uncomfortable. On the one hand, maybe he thought and rationalized that I really had a coldblooded problem or some condition that makes me feel cold in really humid weather (the aircon was not even set to a cool temperature). But then if he was perceptive he would've also acknowledged that I didn't want to be stared at (explains why he turned away from looking at me when we crossed paths again on that "superstimulus" day when I saw him before and after his class when he was carrying a projector; he'd turned away from me just as I looked up from looking at my hand as I walked, and he looked like he was guilty or caught doing something he shouldn't, looking down on the ground; the second time later as he headed out of the class still carrying the projector back after he'd borrowed it, he'd smiled down at the ground as he walked by in front of me). Is this what Prof. Audrey was referring to when she'd said that "Baptists like us" have a host of psychological problems i.e. "Catholic guilt" over sexual things like appearing sexually attractive or attracting attention? Maybe. Some feelingera part of me wants to think that "Anna" in Eng 143 was some kind of "movie adaptation" to what really happened in Eng 21. I mean, she did end up becoming more "modest" in that she put on a long-sleeved white blouse and a hoodie, whereas before she'd worn a mini skirt and tube top during the first day of class. Tell me this really happened. I can't sometimes believe that all happened. I was really feeling possessive. Like some trust was violated. As if I owned the Man's attention. They all sent me to hell with no absolute answers. I still have a lot of questions. I want to move on and be free from this baggage. It's 2022 and I still haven't made anything for myself. Most of my batchmates from those years have graduated already. I'm left behind and should have had some kind of publication already. My life is a constant stream of pain.