The Longest Two Years (Part 1)

It's funny to think that everything started for me in a traditional way. Go to school, stay focused, don't do stupid things, grow up, get a degree, get a job. And the plan was work, try to enjoy yourself, do your thing, then eventually retire. Grow old and die. Dad always told me, "...while you're enjoying yourself, why not fall in love with a nice woman, build a family, grow old together, then who knows what could happen," and over the years, I lived by that traditional, normal theme.

Come to think of it now, I didn't really learn how to express my emotions. As a person built on tradition (and from what I can tell, a lot of traditional childhood trauma), the emotions I experienced and learned were bordering on extremes: never show emotion, because boys don't cry; physically show when you're angry by shouting and smashing things, but don't cause permanent damage; get physical when your talk starts to make no sense; walk out if you can't be heard. So I didn't really learn much inside the home. It was when I lived apart that I started to learn complex emotions and how to express them.

What does this all got to do with my "story"? The fact that I was able to learn and grow much from two years is one thing that I'm proud of for myself. The "story" is the "why" of who and what I was and what I became within the two years, within the some-odd months before and after the "story".

And of course, the story started when the coronavirus pandemic hit the world in the year 2020. DK and I just came from Japan in the third week of February 2020. By then, a one-week quarantine is mandatory but wasn't yet strict. I have to stay at home, but nobody could stop me from going out. I finished my quarantine by the end of the first week of March 2020.

The following week, the world, and the Philippines, went to a standstill. The government implement lockdowns and community quarantine. We were given a chance to settle and prepare. In Metro Manila in the Philippines, I was fortunate enough to be in a place where mass panic didn't happen (or maybe I didn't feel it because I was too focused on a list of things to do before lockdown). DK and I went to the supermarket and bought two weeks' supply of food. Mostly canned and frozen. Good thing that prices were frozen that time, too. Otherwise our supply would have cost a lot.

And being on lockdown for the remainder of 2020 allowed us to really save up a lot. We planned to use our savings to go to Iceland, to see the aurora. It was our dream to be able to do so. But since we're on lockdown, we had a lot of time in our hands. My job told us to follow the lockdown protocol, stay put, and wait for instructions. Since we did not get any instructions for a week, I basically had to sit around at home and do nothing.

Internet access was okay, so we were updated on news. DK and I binge-watched all shows and movies we can. Time started to become distorted because our window doesn't really give us enough sunlight. I dabbled in live streaming some games and I even gained a lot of friends online. DK's job quickly shifted to remote work, so basically she was working while I sat alternatively between the TV, my computer, and my phone.

Lockdown was eased after two weeks and they now allow at most one person to step out. A little while later, my job allowed quick check-ins. Since I live quite near, I was assigned to check-in the office for an hour or two once a week, then go home.

Looking back, so much free time was both liberating and constricting. You feel like you have lots of time in your hands, but there's guilt that you're not giving back. I could go back to that time, but the standstill caused by the pandemic also meant that there'll be a lot to catch up to, and I am mainly referring to work. But I digress.

The free time allowed us to explore options in various aspects of our lives. And since we wanted to start a family, the Internet algorithm brought modern science to DK: in-vitro fertilization, or IVF.

Apparently, IVF is no longer "for the rich", and it can be afforded by anyone who is willing to invest time, money, and energy. And apparently, the pandemic opened mostly-online consultations which would have been impossible for us as fulltime workers.

A lot happened with the lockdown and community quarantine protocol, and it was sometime later in the year 2020 when the government started easing out the restrictions, and I was reporting to work once a week when DK told me that she attended a short talk about IVF and the procedure. DK also said that the money we saved over the past months (because of the lockdown), originally intended for our trip to Iceland, seems enough for a round or two of IVF. So she invited me to attend the more detailed talk about IVF, not to convince me, but for us to get more information that would help us decide.

It took a pandemic, 6 months of lockdown, lots of savings, and too much information for us to decide to go through the IVF route. It was a long journey for us trying to conceive, and this route sounded like our last resort to have a child of our own.

So when I get asked, "what's your story?" There's always an additional tangent, a side story, of "how it came to be". Listeners to the "story" are always surprised to hear (or read) that we went through IVF, since the lockdown would have led to a more natural path.

The first big step of growth we had was learning that we can, especially when we choose to, when there's support or foundation, and there's enough resources to do so.

But then again, IVF was only the beginning, and we're not even inside the two long years.

I will continue the story and then some in the next part of this series.

--Raisondetroy