Although I never got COVID-19, I did not escape becoming this pandemic’s casualty. Like everyone else, at its onset, I ran the gamut from disbelief to submission. I took my quarantine pass, doused my groceries with alcohol, and avoided people—camouflaged in double cloth masks and a flimsy Heng De face shield.
Then I started losing loved ones. The deaths and the inability to fully carry out one’s grief because of restrictions—these parts were the hardest. It hurt to attend wakes and funerals through a screen, miles away from my fellow abandoned, when elsewhere our miseries could be enjoying one another’s company until the break of dawn.
Then, there was the death of my four-year relationship.
We met in 2017. I was 27. He was 33. We attended the same university. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t instantly love. But it was easy (at least in the beginning), it was familiar, and it was constant. After a year, we got a dog. The following year, we went on our first overseas trip. Then for 2020, we were set to take the long-haul flight to Oklahoma to visit his hometown and see the possibility of putting down roots in the land of the free, maybe for good.
But before all that could happen, in February 2020, I turned 30. At the now-defunct FOO'D by Davide Oldani (another pandemic casualty), I, him, and 20 of my nearest and dearest clinked our rosés and switched plates through a five-course lunch — blissfully unaware that in a month’s time, what would switch in front of our eyes was the course of the world.
The logistical challenges of a lockdown led me and my ex to make the insane (in hindsight) decision to stay under one roof. Of course, at that time, it made absolute logical sense. My recent milestone birthday empowered me to make that swift and impulsive, you-and-me-against-the-world declaration, to boldly flee from the wings of my family to move even a fraction (let’s try this little by little) of my things and park them — at least in the interim — in his territory, not knowing that along with that big box, I would also surrender much, much more than its contents.
A number of my friends got hitched in the pandemic—in small, intimate, and sometimes unconventional ceremonies. At the back of my mind, I wondered what circumstances of the lockdown knocked them into believing that this specific juncture of history was the 100% perfect time to get down on one knee. Unlike them, over a year of being cloistered in what felt like an apocalypse with a person who called all the shots only made me want to get down on one knee… to secure my shoelaces and run.
Like many other breakups, ours happened gradually then suddenly. The final nail in the coffin was the dramatic long drive from his condo in Manila’s south to my home up north in Quezon City, with me in the driver’s seat a la Angelica Panganiban in Exes Baggage (2018): bawling her eyes out but never looking back.
Two years later, I still haven’t gone back. Sure, I’ve looked in the rearview mirror, but I never shifted into reverse. The forced isolation of the pandemic left me to get acquainted with my own company — something brand-new. Since my first boyfriend at 16, I was always either in a relationship or seeking the next. That was the entirety of the latter half of my three-decade lifetime, so this was the first time I was truly, deeply, alone.
At first, as expected, it hurt. Friday nights were our date nights, and my empty calendar made me go crazy. But in my 30s, I’ve learned that grief was a passage meant to be felt, not drowned in alcohol. So I lay alone in my queen size bed on those cold and painful Friday nights, and stayed there feeling all the feelings. I went through the entire rollercoaster of emotions: I acknowledged the longing, I played back all the good parts, and then I honored and accepted that they were over.
Then, I did something about my abundance of free time: I went back to school. I finally enrolled in a full-blown graduate program, and exceeded my self-limiting beliefs by following in the footsteps of Elle Woods and selecting Harvard (what, like it’s hard?). I also took a global management development course at my workplace, which allowed me to learn leadership fundamentals with colleagues across the world. But the biggest plot twist: I accidentally turned myself into Instagram personality Miss Chief Editor, which allowed me to be in the radar of people I never thought I would meet, such as legends Myrza Sison and Rissa Mananquil-Trillo. These drop-dead gorgeous women, whose physical beauty are nothing compared to their beauty within, had faith in me even while I was only at 1,000 followers. They, along with my now 13,091-strong “chiefs” (as of writing), have even more faith in me than I’ve ever given myself credit for.
These wins strengthened my sense of self. I had also moved into a new place, where from being one-half of a couple that struggled to assert herself in household decisions, I became one-whole lady of the house: in-charge of paying all the bills, buying (and at times, manually installing) the furniture, replenishing the supplies, keeping the dogs (yes, plural) fed, and arranging for cleaners and repair persons when necessary.
During this “lull”, I spent more time with family and friends — people I had neglected while I was madly in love, but who were there to help me pick up the pieces. On my first single Christmas, I took my sister out on a date at my favorite wagyu place, where I previously spent Christmases with my ex. It was her first time. After sinking her teeth in every fatty, flavorful inch of the incredibly marbled Grade 6 wagyu steak that was seared and salted on a hot stone, she quipped: “Sana lagi ka na lang single.”
If I had friends who got married in the pandemic, I also had friends who, like me, terminated their pre-pandemic relationships.
One of them is my college friend Liane Reyes, a banking executive and a brilliant writer. Last year, she became single around the time she quit her stable job for a new one — a few weeks before she lost her father. Today, she carries a two-foot-tall trophy for a major win in her only one-year-old role.
“It does get lonely,” she confided in me that evening, when I pinged her my congratulations and teased that single seemed to suit us. “Naisip ko tuloy, puro latak na ba tira? Iniisip ko rin to mingle and actively search kaso, katamad sis!” she said.
To that I could only reply with Ali Wong’s wisdom: “When you’re a woman with money, power and respect, your romantic options do not expand — they decline.”
But a few days later, she came back to me: “As cliché as it sounds, 2022 was my version of the pandemic, but what came after was a more resilient, self-aware me. And the universe made up for it by making me content and genuinely happy with the person that I am now who survived it all.”
“The universe threw opportunities my way and I always remember to thank the past me who didn’t waste time to catch what was coming her way,” Liane said. “Very kintsugi ang peg.”
Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with lacquer, sometimes mixed with gold, is closely tied to wabi-sabi, a philosophy that centers on the beauty of transience and imperfection in the natural cycle of life.
It’s the same vibe I got from the beautifully written tribute of Kathryn Bernardo, our latest recruit in the Single, Independent, Post-Pandemic Women Club: “I took it upon myself to take charge of my own life — the projects I work on, the way I dress, the people I surround myself with. I was encouraged to think for myself and decide for myself. Even when it comes to love. Especially when it comes to love.”
A similar narrative flowed in Antoinette Jadaone’s newly released Netflix series Replacing Chef Chico, which saw Chef Ella (Alessandra De Rossi) finding her niche outside the shadow of men, but without bitterness or anger. The series also shows us all that a world with a strong female lead is not necessarily one with an absence of men: if anything, good men are necessary to support and encourage us women to discover and unleash our inner power.
We owe our exes many beautiful years behind us, filled with wonderful memories and lessons we will carry through the rest of our lives. Parts of them — even tiny fragments — will stay with us forever.
The pandemic may have shattered us into a thousand fragile pieces, but like kintsugi, the parts we permanently lost are only replaced by lacquer and gold. We emerge stronger and even more brilliant than before — ready for the transience and imperfection of the natural cycle of life.
Follow Pola at @MissChiefEditor on Instagram.
