Before I became a mother, I was a dreamer.
And before I wore tailored blazers and sat in management meetings, I was chasing buses and stories with a secondhand camera and a voice recorder tucked inside my sling bag.
Flashback: The Reporter Life
It started after graduation. I was offered a writing and reporting job at a small but feisty news group based in Quezon City. They didn't pay much—barely anything at all. In fact, I had to spend my own money for transportation and equipment, and only get reimbursed weeks later.
Still, I said yes.
Because writing was what I loved. Storytelling had always been my safe place. It was my rebellion, my sanctuary, my quiet defiance against a world that demanded perfection.
But my mother didn't see it that way.
"Qué clase de trabajo es este?" she said when I told her. "You work to get paid, not to give money away. Es una estupidez."
I tried to explain. That it was a stepping stone. That some careers didn't bloom immediately. But she never understood anything that didn't have a salary figure to flaunt.
So I left.
I packed my things and moved in with Isabel, my half-sister, in Pampanga. A woman of quiet warmth and medical degrees, Isabel had carved a life of her own away from the noise of the family. She was a doctor, and she lived with her partner, Carmela, a pharmacist with the softest voice and the firmest principles.
I admired them.
Their life wasn't loud. It wasn't flaunted on social media. But it was solid. Built on truth and freedom. Things I had yet to learn how to hold.
They welcomed me in with no judgment, only the smell of brewed coffee and fresh garlic rice every morning. For the first time, I breathed without permission.
But eventually, bills came.
The news gig ended, and I needed a job—a real job, as my mother would say.
That's how I ended up in the BPO industry. No call center experience, no headset history, but my Latin honors and communication background pushed me straight into a Tier II post for a Canadian telco client. Overnight, I was transformed from field reporter to headset warrior, solving billing concerns and network issues, sometimes while suppressing tears of frustration.
And that's where I met Christian.
He wasn't my type—at first.
Tattoos. Helmet always in hand. A roughness about him that hinted at long roads, past midnight rides, and secrets hidden behind smirks.
He worked for Microsoft, on the same floor but in a different department. He always smelled faintly of wind and smoke, the scent clinging to his leather jacket.
"Writer turned agent?" he asked the first time we shared a smoking break. "That's rare."
"I'm a journalist at heart," I said.
"Good. The world needs more people who care about the truth."
That's how it started—quietly, softly. Shared coffee from vending machines. Random lunch breaks. Him riding up on his bike and tossing me an extra helmet.
He listened.
He paid attention to what others didn't: how I preferred silence over small talk, how I pushed myself too hard, how I hated loud surprises. He made me feel seen.
So I fell.
Quickly, deeply, foolishly.
But I should have known.
One afternoon, I visited him during his rest day. He left his phone unlocked on the table. It buzzed once. A message preview popped up from "Ate Liza (Wife)" with the words:
"Baby #5 has a fever again. Please buy meds before coming home."
I stared at the screen, frozen. Five. Kids.
My stomach dropped.
I didn't even know he had one.
I left his apartment before he came out of the shower. I didn't answer his calls. I blocked his number. And I cried for three days straight on Isabel's couch while she rubbed my back and said nothing except, "You'll rise from this, Jaimie. Maybe not now. But you will."
She was right.
That was the first heartbreak I owned.
Because that time, I couldn't blame fear. Or my mother. Or my childhood.
That time, I chose the wrong person.
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