Eriko De Castro – Part One: He’s Overthinking About This Article
By Mikael Borres
Quotes have been translated from Cebuano (Bisaya) to English for clarity and length.
The first few weeks of Eriko Angelo De Castro’s summer of 2025 were nothing but time for him to breathe. With his undergraduate studies wrapping up—waiting to get his political science diploma and gearing up for law school—his days consisted of playing video games, watching movies, and getting some drinks with his friends.
From Eriko’s perspective, all this free time only meant one thing. He was going through what John Mayer crooned about: a “quarter-life crisis”.
The storm started to subside outside after minutes of strong winds and rain sweeping through the Cebu Business District. The weather fogged up the wide windows of The Spring, the cafe where we had our interview. I first asked Eriko how he was, to which he replied, “I guess that's a hard question to answer right now. Well, I guess, day-by-day, I’m good. But at night, I’m not good.”
Accustomed to and enraptured by the thrill of getting things done in his college academics and extracurricular activities, the school summer breaks were idle time breaking the routine he built for himself. The weeks between the end of classes and his graduation ceremony were leaving him restless. Not having to worry about something worried him.
As he picked on the orange-coloured petals of the LEGO Chrysanthemum Flower Set in the middle of our table, he assured me that whatever he was experiencing was not depression. But during summers, “I really feel empty,” Eriko confessed. “I play games, I drink and go out, but I don’t feel fulfilled.”
If he can’t find joy in movies, which used to be an easier task when he was younger, he looks to find it through his doomscrolling of his social media feed.
The dry spell of idleness is expected to be short-lived. Law school will inundate him with the pressure he desires. Nevertheless, he’s still fretting over hypotheticals of his future lawyer self just standing still and rotting in his bed during the down time in between cases. It was only in the days of his recent summer break did Eriko understand that he cannot separate himself from his work and academics.
“I don’t have a life outside that. Take everything away, take that away from me, I think there’s nothing there. That’s all. That’s why I’m having a quarter life crisis. What am I outside of class? What am I gonna do with myself if I’m not doing any work, if I’m not doing any class, if I’m not relaxing?”
Eriko’s guilty of overthinking, the most detrimental downside of him having too much free time. When he can’t drown out the inner thoughts through work, three things could happen. First, Eriko could “spiral” to oblivion. Sleep turns into a scarce commodity; his skin bursts at the seams with acne; heavy breathing and vomiting insert themselves as temporary parts of Eriko’s daily regular programming.
If Eriko’s not breaking down, then the second scenario could happen: he projects his emotions onto others. He “badgers” people with questions about the very thing he’s distraught about. “It’s a bad trait of mine. I still do it up to now. I’m trying to minimize it, but I still do it up to now. I will try to look for a problem instead of facing my own problems.”
“And the third thing is that I just drink it out,” Eriko continued. “When it gets really bad, I will drink it out until I fall asleep. And then, when I fall asleep [...] you know that feeling when you’re really drunk, you want to sleep but you can't, your head just aches?”
It’s not like Eriko doesn’t know that his overthinking and how he reacts are issues he has yet to resolve. But even as he embarked on an active search for the answer, no good leads cropped up. Hence, he seeks out work for fleeting relief.
He’s aware that distracting himself with professional responsibilities only delays the need for him to face those personal struggles, not destroy them. However, that tactic–if you can call it that—is his only known effective coping mechanism, even if the effectiveness lasts for a short while.
What about activities he can turn to in his spare time? Yes, he used to have hobbies. Golf. Film. Fashion. Video Games. Drawing. But his college happenings put those interests on the backburner. Moreover, Eriko’s afraid his hobbies would pull him from his academics, leaving him reluctant to try picking them up again. Yet, despite those circumstances, he’s on the lookout for a hobby that’ll stick to him like, as Robin Williams would put it, “shit on Velcro.”
Eriko considered going to therapy in hopes of overcoming his overthinking, recognizing the damage his behaviour brings to those around him. That manicness can bring down ships, like friendship. But Eriko hesitates making the step of seeing someone to deal with what he’s facing. “I don’t know if I’m being full of myself but I believe in my resilience, that I get over this on my own. I don’t know how it’ll pan out, but I’m still kind of figuring it out.”
In the meantime, aside from a few close friends and the people he loves, he’s not asking for others’ ears to hear his anxiousness. He’ll continue to project a public image of himself devoid of the concerns plaguing him inside. To show yourself in the most amicable way possible, that’s what his mother taught him at a young age. Eriko said, “You have to be out there to present yourself. Don’t show weakness – that’s how you survive.”
Eriko and Mikael conducted an in-person interview on Friday, June 6th, 2025.
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