Monday rants and self-loathing

I’m used to being broke, and right now, most ardently, I need to complain about it.

It’s always Monday that brings me down. That doesn’t make me unique or special. Everyone dreads Mondays. But for me, it signals the start of another cycle. Another unwanted push to stand up and return to whatever version of hell I’ve unwillingly placed myself in.

I’m 23. Just starting out. Broke. From a lower middle-class background in a Third World, corrupt country—the Philippines. Not from a broken family, just a broke upbringing. Like many others.

We always hear that it’s important to know where you came from, and maybe that’s true. But sometimes, that knowledge doesn’t ground you. It confines you. The angst born from poverty and the forced romanticism shaped by Filipino humility and pride become the very thing that both inspires and exhausts us. It pulls at us, irritates us, and drags us into a depth with the fakest, subtlest smile we never asked for.

Every day, we’re expected to live and endure. Today, I am not meant to endure. It’s tiring.

I get jealous of other people’s success. I congratulate them, yes, but deep down, I hate how they make me feel so small. So worthless. I worked my ass off in college. I did well. But even with a job, I have a little money. Every fiber of my being feels insignificant. Everyone else seems to be doing okay. Or maybe they’re just better at pretending.

Back then, I was just a student. Studying, laughing, trying to enjoy life—those were luxuries I didn’t realize then. Now, I work. I worry. I think about rent. I think about whether I’ll have enough for a full meal. I think about how family expenses are no longer someone else’s responsibility. They’re partly mine now—sometimes.

Even something as trivial as adding items to an online shopping cart feels like a cruel joke. I pile in things I’ll never buy, just another way to distract myself from reality.

Feeling all of this heaviness and helplessness makes me feel guilty. Guilty for even feeling at all.

I complain. I blame the government. I curse corrupt politicians. That’s how I cope. Activism, once something noble, started to feel more like a personal release than a communal or collective act. A way to blow off steam. It became self-soothing. I made it about myself when it should have been ours.

Everything became too much and too expensive. Not just every bilihin, but every emotion I felt.

Nothing feels right or liberating anymore. Even writing, something that once brought me comfort, now feels like entrapment. I question whether I’ve already been reduced to this one identity: broke, tired, angry.

I often wonder if there’s any real depth in what I’m going through. I don’t even know if this reflection qualifies as a proper essay, or if it’s just better kept in a private journal or buried in a forgotten blog post. Feeling broke—truly and constantly—pulls a person in so many directions that you start to lose track of what actually matters. But what haunts me most is the realization that I’m probably suffering less than many others. I’m privileged enough to own a laptop, to have had access to education, to know how to express this heaviness in words. That realization makes the guilt even worse.

I feel like I’m not good enough because I’m not earning enough. I feel broke not only in terms of money, but in my sense of self-worth and ability to contribute meaningfully. I live in a society that romanticizes hardship, glorifies self-sacrifice as the highest form of virtue, and teaches us to measure our value by how much we are willing to endure without breaking. When we do break, we’re expected to carry on anyway—quietly, even gracefully.

There are days when I wish people were more honest about their pain, struggles, failures. But instead, we hide behind borrowed quotes, curated inspiration, pretensions, and the illusion that everyone else has it figured out. I don’t have the answers to these things. I just know that for people like me, who feel like we’re not good enough and who are constantly struggling just to get by, surviving is already resistance.

There’s beauty in grit, and there’s a certain je ne sais quoi in embracing the ugliness of the human experience to carry on. These days, everything feels so important. Everything is made into a big deal. Everyone wants to be an inspiration—but most of us can’t afford to inspire anyone because we can’t even find a reason to celebrate ourselves.

There’s so much more to the chaos we live in during this modern era, and sometimes, it’s okay to acknowledge and even highlight the negativity we carry. It’s okay to say that we’re not okay.

Right now, this Monday rant—this usual cycle of self-loathing—is poured out into this space. Maybe it’s meant to be kept. Maybe it’s meant to be seen and judged. And maybe, someone else will read it and feel a little less alone.

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Hyung Sun James P. Maestrado, 23, is a bookworm and a customer service representative. He graduated with a degree in English.

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