Jan Mishka Du Will Always Be Inconsistent/Ever-Changing

By Mikael Rizada Borres

Whenever Jan Mishka Du is in conversation with people, she is often the one listening. 

Why? 

“I don’t like to share,” she would answer. “I mean, I share if pangutan-on [I get asked], but I don’t offer information.”

So, if Mishka is pushed to answer the question of who the real her is, how would she answer it?

One will find that her answer will be full of contradictions.

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Part One: Flip-Flopping/Evolving

For instance, ten minutes into my interview with Mishka, she said this:

“At my core, I’m just a very logical person. I don’t really like feeling emotions. So I just do what I think is right.”

Then, 31 minutes after Mishka made that statement, she said this:

“Ako na person, very impulsive. Kung unsa akong ma-feel, mao sad akong buhaton.”

(I’m a very impulsive person. Whatever I’m feeling, I act on it.)

“Hypocritical, noh?” Mishka asked, owning up to the discrepancies between her answers.

Mishka likes being the only one left at home, but she actually doesn’t want to be alone. She uplifts the people around her with words and vibes of positivity, but she can’t even give the same grace to herself. She believes that she should face her problems head-on, but she distracts herself to escape the responsibility of tackling those problems altogether.

Even when she says that she doesn’t like to share much about herself, she contemplates and mentions the disparities in her friendships when it comes to who knows the other person more. “Akong mga friends ba, muchika sila sa ilang life. Unya, ako, kay, ‘Wow, I know so much about you, but you don’t know anything about me.’ Mura’g inana ba.”’

(My friends talk about their lives to me. And I’m like, ‘‘Wow, I know so much about you, but you don’t know anything about me!” Kind of like that.)

When Mishka was asked about she feels about others not reciprocating her efforts to learn about them, she said: “For me, I’m fine with it kay I prefer sad na di kaayo… I mean, it’s confusing, actually, kay I don’t mind people not knowing about me, pero I think I’d appreciate it if they asked about me.”

(For me, I’m fine with it because I also prefer that it’s not… I mean, it’s confusing, actually, because I don’t mind people not knowing about me, but I think I’d appreciate it if they asked about me.)

If one listens to Jan Mishka Du, they may realize that the only thing consistent about her is that she is inconsistent.

“Usahay, makaingun jud ko na hypocrite kaayo ko,” she admitted to me.

(Sometimes, I can really say that I’m such a hypocrite.)

But perhaps Mishka is not inconsistent. Rather, she is “ever-changing.” Better yet, she is “ever-evolving.” If she is “ever-changing,” there is never a constant form of her being. From one second to another, at least one part about Mishka – no matter how minuscule it is – will be different. The ever-changing aspect of her may cause annoyance or offence as it may perplex those who are trying to figure out what Mishka is. 

Part Two: High/Low/Up/Down

The Du family (and the Du siblings’ significant others) celebrates their matriarch’s 50th birthday.

It’s also pointless to understand Mishka through her days as they are also ever-changing. (If you’re mean, you’d describe her days as inconsistent). She prefers to label her days – or at least parts of the day – with terms like ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ and ‘going up’ and ‘going down.’ There is no set schedule of when she is going up or going down, but she does know when she is at a high or low end. 

She is at her high when she knows that everything is okay, she is okay, and it’s okay for her to do the things she wants and needs to do. When at her high times, Mishka is faithful to the routine she has set for herself. Even when the work piles up and the schedule gets manic, she can persist through it.

She is at her low when nothing is okay for her. She doesn’t “do anything” when she is at that low point, laying on her bed until it feels like she has been there from time immemorial. “When I’m at my low, di ko mukaon [I don’t eat],” she said. “‘I can’t do it.’ Kana ra jud akong mindset, dugay nako mabuhat.”

(‘I can’t do it.’ That’s really my mindset, it takes me a long time to do something.)

With the reality that Mishka moves between highs and lows, she found it easier to not make the grandest expectations since the oscillations could upend what she may have been envisioning for herself. “You know how some people, they really hold themselves to a standard. They live through this standard. For me, I just do what I can.”

“You know how some people, they really hold themselves to a standard?” Jan Mishka Du asked me. “They live through this standard. For me, I just do what I can.”

“Kita, as people, daghan ta’g gi-think – ‘Oh, what if this happens? What if that happens? What if ang situation mu ingun ana?’ – when, in fact, you just have to take it day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Unsay imung na-feel karon, you might not feel it later. So you just ride the wave.”

(We, as people, think a lot of things – “Oh, what if this happens? What if that happens? What if the situation turns out this way?’”  – when, in fact, you just have to take it day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Whatever you’re feeling now, you might not feel it later. So you just ride the wave.)

Part Three: Surging/Glassy

Mishka’s all about riding the ever-so-unpredictable waves, notwithstanding what may come to her. Sometimes, it’s her hypocrisies that make the waves for her, but it’s always the waves that she can’t create she has to look out for.

Some of those waves Mishka has to ride on are surging ones. Surging waves are dangerous and dramatic, crashing themselves into shores and devastating whatever they come across. Unless one lives without the possibility of pain in their life as if he or she lives at altitudes the ocean can’t reach, one cannot escape having to ride those choppy waves. In some cases, those waves may come in so fast and so furious that you may get engulfed by them. 

One of those surging waves that Mishka had to attempt to ride was the death of her father, who passed away from sepsis back in 2021. She saw her father suffering from septic shock in their kitchen home. “Nakalit lang jud to,” she recalled. “Like, one day… pag early morning, mura’g siya na-heart attack.”

(It was just sudden. Like, one day… it was early morning, and it looked like he was having a heart attack.)

That day got even more stressful for the Du household when they were looking for a hospital with an available bed since the hospitals nearby were already at full capacity due to the high number of coronavirus cases at the time. “So the whole day, nag-wait ra mi sa ambulance [we were just waiting for the ambulance],” said Mishka. When Mishka’s family finally got an ambulance for her father, they had to drive to a nearby city to find space for him.

As the day passed by, it became clear that the possibility of Mishka’s father surviving the shock will be improbable, if not impossible. She was told about the unlikelihood of her father’s survival around 7 or 8 of that night. “Ninggawas ra ang emergency room na attendent. They were like, ‘Nag-start nag-fail ang iyang heart.’ So they were doing compressions na. Unya, if maabot na pila na ka times na mubalik-balik sa compression, mag-order na daw sila’g ‘Do Not Resuscitate.’ So mao na to, pili na lang para dili na sad lisud ba.”

(The emergency room attendant went out. They were like, ‘His heart is starting to fail.’ So they were doing compressions. Then, if it reaches a certain number of times of them repeating the compressions, they said they’ll be asking for a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ order. So that’s that, we had to choose so that it’s not gonna be hard anymore.)

“I didn’t really expect bitaw. I didn’t expect na mu-pass away akong dad,” said Mishka.

(I didn’t really expect it, actually. I didn’t expect my dad to pass away.)

The Du family, dressed in shades of blue.

Throughout the day, from the moment Mishka saw his father going through septic shock to the moment she knew he was going to die, all she could feel – if memory serves her right – was a shock within her. But she had to keep on moving.  All she thought that morning was nothing but looking for a hospital her father could get admitted into. All she could do to push through the night he passed away was to sort out the documentation. She had to be the one doing so because her mother and brother were relatively “inconsolable” in comparison to her. “They were both crying,” Mishka recalled.

She cried too when it all went down, but she understood that she had to move forward, “I think I take from my dad. My dad was very logical too. So, at the time, mura’g naka-think ko na, ‘Siguro, this is what he wanted me to do.’ Kay luoy man akong brother ug mother. Hilak man sila. So I took it upon myself to do it [processing papers] na lang para mahuman na sad.”

(I think I take from my dad. My dad was very logical too. So, at the time, I got to think, ‘Perhaps this is what he wanted me to do.’ Because my brother and mother were really sad. They were crying. So I took it upon myself to just process the papers so that everything gets done.)

The funeral itself was a lugubrious event, but its level of somberness was heightened due to the circumstances at the time. The funeral – held through a blended format that included an online memorial and in-person ceremony –  took place during the height of the 2021 COVID pandemic case spike in the Philippines, and there were fears of a possible lockdown that could upend occasions like funerals. The online option was beneficial for relatives and close family friends who could not come to the funeral; some lived with family members who could be in danger if they contracted the virus like seniors and those with comorbidities.

For Mishka, she felt and was “OK,” but not in the sense that she seemed nonchalant about it all. Mishka may have felt somewhat at sea during her family’s period of grieving, but she was able to feel alright as he remembers her father. “He was very interesting,” Mishka reminisced. “He was very good. He was a good man. Daghan gyud siya’g kaila. Talkative. Talkative jud siya kaayo. Like, usahay, naay times na, kami na lang muingun na, ‘Pssst, stop na, stop na! Muuli na ta.’”

(He was very good. He was a good man. He knew a lot of people. Talkative. He was really talkative. Like, sometimes, there were times when my family and I had to tell him, ‘Psst, you should stop! Let’s go home.)

The silver lining that came out of the death and during the time of grief for the Du family, if there is any, is that they reflected and will forever reflect on a man who gave them so many highs. They will always be surging waves that will wreck Mishka’s shores, but the best waves to ride on – the “glassy” ones that break in one direction – will always come around at some point. 

“Katung small pa ko, iya kung dad-un-dad-un ba kay… not to brag, but cute kaayo ko pagkabata nako,” Mishka bragged, then laughed.

(Ay! OK. When I was still small, he would always take me around because… not to brag, but I was so cute when I was young.)

“Like, fat ko ba, so malingaw jud siya da nako. Naa tuy time na nagtambay mi sa SM.”

(Like, I was fat, so he enjoyed bringing me along. There was a time when we were hanging out at SM.)

“Good kaayo siya na dad. He cared for us so much.”

(He was a really good dad. He cared for us so much.)

Before Mishka’s father passed away, both of them got to talk about the inevitable truth about death. “Iyahang outlook ato [on death] kay, ‘You know, naa man ju’y time, tanan tao.’ So, during that time, nag-understand lang jud ko na… mao na jud to. We’re just happy na we could spend time before that.”

(His outlook on death is like, ‘You know, everyone will have their time.’ So, during that time, I just tried to understand that… it’s time. We’re just happy that we could spend time before that.)

Mishka now finds herself to be in lockstep with her father about death. “It’s something na dili jud malikayan [It’s something you can’t avoid.]. One day, it will happen to everyone. It’s something you have to accept.”

Mishka with her mother, attending her brother Jean-Dale Du’s graduation. In the center is a framed picture of the Mishka and her brother’s father.

Mishka and Mikael held an in-person interview on Friday, November 25, 2022.

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