Please Don’t Perceive Kat Ruflo
By Mikael Borres
Trigger Warning: Depression
Somewhere on Facebook lies Katarina Fe “Kat” Ruflo’s secret account. On the account are unabridged videos of Kat spinning her yarn about her favourite books of the month a la Oprah’s Book Club, going on a tangent about the happenings in the European football world (probably obsessing over the Arsenal Women’s Football Club), and dissecting the music playlists she curated herself.
And somewhere on YouTube lies a channel called “college kids”, created by Kat and three of her high school friends. Those same four people also happen to be the only subscribers of this channel, but it’s not like they’re chasing fame when all their videos are either unlisted or set to private mode.
Back when the four had more time to film and edit videos, they captured moments of their trips and hangouts together through video; they also posted solo vlogs of themselves to share with each other. The channel’s not as active as it used to be since all four members have been busy getting on with their lives. But the channel's still up on YouTube, now serving as an audio-visual time capsule.
To catch a glimpse of the shenanigans Kat gets up to in these private online spaces, she sent me an unlisted YouTube video titled “KAT RANTS: GLEE Season 4 Episode 15”, all about one of her favourite episodes of the American musical comedy series Glee.
In the video, Kat laments how protagonist Rachel Berry gets what she wants despite living her life as an “insufferable bitch”, fawns over actor Darren Criss for giving his heart, soul, and “bussy” when he sings, and suspends her detestation of the TV love triangle trope for the complicated entanglement between supporting characters Jake, Marley, and Ryder.
Even if the video’s only meant for the eyes of four people (including herself), she doesn’t skimp on the editing, zooming in the camera frame on her face for close-ups of her reactions and inserting show clips as unironic b-roll.
One of Kat’s old dreams was to be a writer. She would be the essayist type, to be exact, convincing us all to be jolted in the brain by the ideas also jolting hers. With ease, she could write about how Britpop group The Spice Girls made their marks on feminism, girlhood, and sexuality.
And if anyone’s wondering, this is Kat’s Spice Girl ranking from most to least favourite: Scary Spice, Ginger Spice, Sporty Spice, Baby Spice, and then Posh Spice. “[Victoria Beckham] is beautiful and she’s very funny, but she didn’t really add much to the group,” Kat chuckled as she explained why Posh Spice is at the bottom of her totem pole.
If she wanted to, Kat could reveal to the world the knick-knacks making her tick and ticking her off. The Spice Girls analysis, the Glee show notes, the football rants–they all would make an entertaining viewing into what’s on Kat’s mind.
But she won’t. She doesn’t want to reveal all that to the world. The Spice Girls analysis, the Glee show notes, the football rants–they are not to be seen, read, and heard by the general public. To share her oddities, Kat spurns, and it is all in the name of her insistence on self-obscurity. When asked why she doesn't want her thoughts out in the open, she told me—a few times, in different ways—on a hazy, rainy afternoon in Cebu City’s Misfits Coffee café, “I think I’m scared of being perceived.”
Kat is not a complete unknown, at least in a professional context. As the soon-outgoing Research Department Head of the Today’s Carolinian, the progressive official student publication of the University of San Carlos, Kat can’t hide from other people’s perceptions of her as she presents and collaborates with her fellow student journalists to report on pressing student issues.
As a former intern for online news outlet Rappler, she debunked fake stories about the Philippines procuring nuclear-capable frigates from Japan and NATO defending the Philippines against the People’s Republic of China in relation to the South China Sea disputes. Her list of fact checks is extensive—enough to fill at least seven pages of Bing search results.
She’s OK with her name being written on the bylines of many articles and videos since she’s putting out the facts and not her opinion. But aside from a few peers, like the three high school friends who co-own the hidden YouTube channel, no one’s deducing what Katarina Ruflo is all about based on her private digital entries anytime soon. “I’m fine with being critical of myself,” said Kat. “When it’s being viewed by other people, I’m like, ‘What are they gonna say?’”
As “cancel culture” roams around to dictate how public discourse should play out, Kat tries to steer clear of being on the societal hit list by remaining uncontroversial, or more yet, remain behind the curtains. “I’m scared of ‘cancel culture’, man,” said Kat. “It’s scary because sometimes, I see people getting cancelled, and it’s like, ‘Shit! I could have said that shit, too. I could have done that.’ It’s so scary being even slightly famous, because people dig up everything about you. And I’m like, ‘Fuck! I said dumb shit in high school that’s still probably there on the internet.’”
And yet here’s Kat, about to be perceived by you, the reader.
It was October 2024, and yet another tropical storm devastated the Philippines, adding to the long list of climate change-turbocharged natural calamities that have wrecked the country. In other news, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were at the eleventh hour of the pig wrestling that was the 2024 United States presidential election, knee-deep in the proverbial political mud. Going local, the backlash against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte continued for her vivid declarations of exhuming a dictator’s corpse and assassinating her former ally, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
The year was 2024, and it was not a great time to be human. Kat thought so, too. In what felt like the beginning of the end times, Kat felt deflated by a world that seemed to be embracing the retrenchment of peace and the weakening of truth and science. Kat thought to herself: “Wow, the path of our lives and the Earth as a whole is going down a very steep downhill slope.”
Around the same time, Kat was dreading her college graduation and the uncertainties that come with the end of her most recent life chapter. Attending law school looked like the most predictable path for her, and perhaps her most uninspiring one. Unlike her college batchmates who dreamed of being public defenders and corporate legal experts, Kat never dreamed of being a lawyer. “I feel like doing law is just a given,” said Kat, whose argumentative streak prompted relatives to presume a professional life she would take. If only they knew the Spice Girls idea, maybe they would have heard her out about being a writer.
With the internal stress kicking at the back of her mind and the external chaos unfolding in front of her face, Kat grew more anxious, suffering through what she can only describe as a “complete breakdown of her facilities.” Waking up to see another day became one of those “microforms of suffering” tormenting Kat.
In the face of future days that looked too ugly to see, Kat locked herself in her room and discovered what true “bedrotting” means. She lied down not to sleep, but to let the anxiety weigh her down.
“I've just always been a naturally anxious person,” said Kat, “and I think the more aware I became about the world, the more anxious I became, and then that just snowballed into worse situations for my mental health.”
Kat confessed: “I didn’t know where I was in life, if I wanted to keep going. I didn’t see myself past graduation.”
It was only this year when, at her mother’s suggestion, Kat sought mental health help. And after a disastrous first session with the first psychiatrist she went to (“He was this older guy. By old, he was probably in his 70s, so ‘boomer’, very typical conservative mindset, trying to downplay my issues”), her second psychiatrist diagnosed Kat with severe depression and severe anxiety.
“It was only a matter of time that it was going to be something that would negatively affect my day-to-day life,” said Kat about her anxiety, “and it was only a matter of time before I seek professional help to tackle it before it would bite me in the ass.”
To put those emotions and thoughts into words and having to hear herself admit that she was in fact struggling was hard for Kat. But to verbalize those emotions and thoughts in front of her parents was excruciating. “During my first psych appointment, [the boomer psychiatrist] called my parents in,” Kat recalled. “And I didn’t want them to come in. My mom sat there, crying and being like, ‘Why didn’t you tell us what you were going through? I thought you were just a happy, normal kid. And I didn’t know how to tell her that, ‘I don’t want you to know.’”
As the middle child squished between a bubble-wrapped younger sister and older brother who never felt like a role model to her, Kat assumed the role of a parent in the trio. She feels especially so for her younger sister (younger by one year), whose frailty in terms of health sprung a strong sense of responsibility within Kat to take care of the youngest Ruflo. Kat feels a similar responsibility for his older brother (older by also a year), who gets constant coddling from their mother.
Kat’s earliest memory of feeling the middle child syndrome was from when she was in kindergarten. “All three of us were in the same school,” Kat recalled. “At that point, in kindergarten, I would always be the one going to their classrooms during dismissal and, you know, corralling them in an area to wait for someone to pick us up. I’d remind my older brother to do this, I would remind my siblings to do that.”
“I have always felt that I’m always the one who’s handling, to step up, but also take a step back. Step up in the sense that for everyone else, for my siblings, I’m the one who has to be the bigger person, the more responsible person, the more independent one. In the eyes of my parents, I’m the one who doesn’t need much attention, that they can just leave alone, which I guess I don’t mind ‘cause I’ve never known anything else.”
Kat never cared for the attention anyway, finding enjoyment in the freedom afforded to her because her parents’ eyes were on her siblings. The absence of pampering taught Kat to act on her own, relying less on other people to function. This hesitation to lean on someone else manifests itself when Kat refuses to share her pains and struggles with her others, keeping them in the dark. “I don’t want to be a burden. I don't want to be seen as fragile, or I don’t want to be treated differently because I’ve been treated this way.”
To have the roles reversed during that psychiatrist session with her parents, from self-reliance to deep dependence, Kat abhorred. She cannot describe what her parents’ faces looked like when she told them about her experiences and thoughts, but she can only guess what they felt by the sounds of her mother’s crying.
Ever since Kat’s parents heard their daughter talk in that first psychiatrist session, they got fixated on her needs and well-being. For a short time, many of the family's plans revolved around Kat to check up on her and see how she was faring. That never sat well with the middle child who never got the attention beforehand. Kat said that after months of that initial mindset, her parents walked back and went back to the status quo of how they treated her, “which I prefer.”
- - -
It’s June 5, 2025, the day of our interview, and the bromance between US President Donald Trump and multi-billionaire Elon Musk began to explode like a SpaceX Starship rocket. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to ignore international law with his systematic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, and Vladimir Putin ordered more missiles to strike Ukraine to satisfy his bloodlust for the glory days of the Soviet Union.
It’s 2025, and it’s still not a great time to be human. Kat thinks so, too. Kat’s still deflated by the world and thinks that we’re still on a downward trajectory.
It’s June, and Kat’s still dreading graduation, but she has dispelled some uncertainties. Weeks after our interview, Kat’s going ahead with law school to pursue her non-dream of becoming a lawyer.
Nevertheless, even with the short-term security, what happens in the future still seems difficult for Kat to see with much positivity. Island nations? With rising sea levels, might as well move to the Alps. Ukraine? Who knows if Volodymyr Zelenskyy will come out as the victor or turn into a speck in the ash heap of history. Artificial Intelligence? Could cure blindness or could destroy human intelligence.
Kat’s coping with her feelings and thoughts now consists less of bedrotting and more hangouts with friends, both in-person and through Minecraft, “distracting” herself to stop the anxieties from consuming her.
Moreover, and more importantly, Kat’s medicated during these end times. To manage her depression, Kat gets prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a type of antidepressant meant to increase the amount of serotonin in one’s brain.
To Kat, taking this medication meant “rewiring” her brain chemistry, thus having to adjust and relearn how to live life with this new circumstance. “And so, for that first month [of taking SSRI], physically and mentally, I was at my worst. Every day was a haze,” said Kat.
The first month was full of body soreness and cold sweats; vomiting occurred every now and then. Her state of fatigue only knew to be regular, sleeping for a long hours after taking her medication. “There were times where I would hide in the bathroom because I was so physically broken that I would be like, ‘Lord, just kill me.’”
But after a month of agony since taking her medication, Kat can now handle her antidepressants. The fatigue’s gone away and the cold sweats are at bay. On occasions when the task to take her medications slips her mind, her head aches; she starts to feel woozy in the middle of her day.
It’s been months since Kat lost herself to the throes of her anxiety and then subsequently seeking help to deal with her mental health struggles. Although she still can’t help but look at the world with the glass half empty, she perceives things to be looking a bit better these days. These days, Kat might just go back to sound off in private online spaces and continue to mull over the Spice Girls, only to not have those fascinating ideas out in the open.
“Life’s been better recently than the past six months,” Kat reported. “It’s like now, like late April, early May, I thought that things were starting to look up again after a rough period. So I’m back to being my old self–well, to some extent.”
When asked what the greatest lesson she learned through the order, she ditched the pessimism for a few positve words. She said: “Life is so short and unpredictable. We just have to enjoy the moments while we can.”
Kat and Mikael conducted an in-person interview on Thursday, June 5th, 2025.
Recommended Song: Stop - Spice Girls
