I DO NOT have a cure-all for everyone.
But I am a good healer because I listen to my “patients”.
I listen, and assess.
My prescriptions, and interventions, are personalized and unique.
From person to person, my cure for depression varies.
For the same person with anxiety disorder, my cure changes from situation to situation, from one day to another.
***
To one person, I would prescribe getting more sex, even if meaningless.
To another, I would suggest abstinence from meaningless sex.
To yet another, I would just give condoms and lubes.
And to yet still another, just condoms.
***
My friends like me for my attention to their situation.
Even if some of them are just faking their condition to get my attention.
Still, because I know exactly what to prescribe at a certain time, my friends continue to be alive, high functioning and highly functional (I insist that these are two different things), and—if they let me have my way—generally happy.
Because my happiness is contagious, they want to be around me…
Even when I do not want to be around them!
***
I am easily the happiest, if not the ever-happiest among my various sets of friends.
I think that I understand why.
And those who think that money is not part of my happiness got it all wrong.
***
Money per se does not make me happy.
But having lots of it gives me a sense of security, a sense of confidence.
And such confidence translates to a lifestyle that is not dependent on clocks, and schedules.
My poor friends eat three times a day—timed breakfast, lunch, and supper.
My better off friends eat maybe five times—breakfast, lunch, merienda, dinner.
My patay-gutom friends eat six to seven times a day—breakfast, first snack, second snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, midnight snack.
***
I don’t time or schedule my meals.
I try to do intermittent fasting; and sometimes, I’m okay with just one meal a day.
I can do this well because I know that I can eat anything at anytime that I want.
I mean, I just have the money for it.
There are some 24-hour fast food trucks in Dumangas; there’s Seven-Eleven.
But I will not shy away from waking up an old woman in the middle of the night to cook something for me and my friends, or for me and my boyfriend du jour.
***
These days, I do not spend much on food.
My friends feed me.
I would try to go fasting, to go hungry, go starving.
I would go with them to try a new restaurant, and I would not order anything except water.
And they would end up putting food on my plate.
Or force feeding me!
Now, my rule: you order it, you pay for it; even if I eat it! Haha.
***
Now, my friends’ miseries are rooted in lack of money.
My gay friends who “buy” their boyfriends are always out of money.
I still cannot understand why they need to feed the whole basketball team when they only want to eat the three-point shooter.
Doesn’t it make more sense to just buy the boy at a special price?
***
Not that I have to pay a boy, but if I had to, I’d ask him—
Do you want me to take you and your friends to Jollibee?
Or, do you want me to just give you P5,000 so you can treat them anywhere you like?
***
Some of my friends cannot pay their electric bills.
But you know what?
That’s not my problem.
If they can afford their boys, why should I bail them out of their regular bills?
Now, if you are smart, do you think I will lend my friends some money so they can hire a prostitute?
I mean, why should I do that?
***
Some of my friends are miserable because they cannot afford rent boys.
They cannot afford a hamburger! Haha.
Poor unfortunate souls.
So, I sit by them without eating. (It’s working for my intermittent fasting diet!)
And then, they can’t stand it, and they would think of ways so that they can eat, so that they can feed me.
Misery solved!/PN
