To this old, defeated apple
Skin blazoned in rosy tunic
Slippery as fate discarded, fate in a bubble
How you've crossed my sight like a cynic

You rest cold and unamused
In my warm, subversive hands
It's as if your insides have set themselves loose
Unarmed in their pure dwindling strands

Fat worms whiffed spotless fields of honey-gold
Floundering shallow water fishes in unconscious fathoms
Seared the sweet flesh with spawns in manifold
You stand still in spite of downtrodden autumns

I took you in my mouth, your rot conspicuous
As if you whimper upon my numb tongue
That you won't last an age longer in this limping malice
Where your seed grows only to get wrung

I am coming back to myself. My depression is starting to lift itself off. I told myself weeks ago to turn all the sadness and meaninglessness around. Easier said than done. But after having a serious talk with my mother and a friend who is suffering , I realized once again that pain is telling me to help others carry their burden. I was needed. And this is not to fill a desperate want to have someone depend on me but to acknowledge that through my condition I could understand those who are losing hope/grip in life. I learned some pretty dark things and I was afraid I could once again slip into despair but so far I didn't. Repeating to myself every day that there was something to look forward to helped in many ways. I couldn't write for the past few days but I was happy I had that going on. I mean, the world could **** me up so bad and maybe when I wake up tomorrow I would  be depressed, but writing is something no one can take away from me. Words have become my greatest comfort. Just reading some of my older, crappier works cheers me up a bit. There might be some break downs in the future but after close to five  months of experiencing this, I can get the hang of depression like it's an old friend. It's far too early though to call me normal because my mood swings are ambiguous as hell. But I am beginning to entertain hope and push away the negativity as much as I can. Small steps, small steps

I realized I got disillusioned because I found out that the world would like to keep me in a certain way. Only some will care about what I dream, what I have to say or do. The rest will keep me in bounds because they  are afraid I'll break out the order of how things work out, how it always runs. I am just tired of trying to fit in when the world is definitely not in my league.

I can't make brushes
dance all flamenco—
red, blue, purples
on a peacock's feathery
canvas

Nor can I raise
unborn symphonies
from a string's womb

Instead, I piece
words caught
like fireflies
in the air
stir their light
through and through
in cosmic metaphors
in sea allegories
in flights of soliloquies
in lovelorn colloquies

Really,
I can't dazzle eyes
nor fuddle ears
but I behold
the days to come
with tongues from
yesteryears

I am wine in a jack-in-a-box cellar
Wonderlands, neverlands propelling in a boomerang war
Exalting stubborn as weeds in the gardens of well-tended graves
As far off as the most withered waves

I'll drop my roses of singularity
And let the world leap topsy turvy

Eyes turned upside down like folded floral peels before a fallen angel
Rubbing errant pointed brushes against an airy easel
The teapots are now dancing round rainbow tornadoes
Clocks reverse themselves in a scourge of a prose

I'll drop my roses of singularity
And let the world leap topsy turvy

Singing horses dallying kings and queens with whips of cod
Skinny, scorned nutcrackers lolly gagging for a later maraud
Spoons racing Jack and Jill down a spiny valley of prats
I'd shut them off, they come alive with vicious spats

I'll drop my roses of singularity
And let the world leap topsy turvy

My trappings with all things mad
Wafted me ajar a silvery smoke of sad
I breathe the clouds of my helter skelter
As if in every catatonic whir it flutters rises an answer

*I'll drop my roses of singularity
And let the world leap topsy turvy

I never for once thought that I'd take writing seriously. It was just one of those passing things I did when I was in fourth grade (and it was journalism, even). Short stories became a breather in high school but somehow that stopped too with the revival only happening towards my end in college.

Ever since then my life has been in a kind of complicated knot. It's hard to get out of but a lot harder to understand. There are days when I like what I've written and sometimes I just want to burn my notebook with all the poetry I made. Every single time you get this brilliant, excitable idea come to you from nowhere, your blood springs up, you sweat the small stuff, your fingers itch—that kind of nonsense. But the writing part is a hell's worth of tricky. You see I'd start writing then stop midway because my brain shuts down in the best times. Kind of like a sprain during a running momentum. I feel terrible because I can't move on from that sort of limbo. And then I swear at myself for being too stupid and incompetent—it's insane. It can't be undone, it's somehow part of my process now. The worst thing is I get even more riled up if I don't get to write down that idea completely. The immense relief I feel when I finish a story or poem is unimaginable. It's comparable to having a cavity lifted out of your sore mouth. You can sleep better, do things better. Ball of stress but it comes from your thoughts.

Now that I am too invested in writing, there is only the fact that I must continue this no matter what kind of life I lead. I might become a diplomat or a crackhead (who knows life is fickle) but I think I need to write or I'll be doomed in my world of ideas. Writing is the closest I can get to a relationship lol and I humor myself in the silliness of it all. Honestly, I feel empty not doing it everyday but at the same time it gnaws on my biggest self-doubts. You know you're in too deep when it becomes a reason for being depressed as it is your hope in the ******* days. It has been with me in my extreme highs and lows and in times when I don't think anything is important.

All my entries here in HP are truly my babies. Which I also call out on my bad moods and frequently tell myself that they are utter crap. I'd work so hard to expunge them out of my system but if people tell me they're as hopeless as a Thomas Harris fiction then I don't mind, I plan on getting rejected anyway just so I can take writing even more seriously.

Though I realized from all of this that writing is not for the blind optimist or the stubborn pessimist. I'm more of a realist. Poetry, literature do not go with people who fool themselves with lies just to be happy. Luckily, I am not the sort of person who will compromise my thinking just so I could smile like a marionette. With writing, I realized that some of my beliefs were illusions that we tell ourselves. And I left them because I'd be lying to myself. This is probably why I've been writing darker material. Nobody wants to talk about them because they leave a bad taste in the mouth, so why not, right?

I've come to believe that our existence feeds on dark and light. (That yin and yang stuff is starting to make sense.) People thrive on two ends to grow and being happy all your life is completely overrated. Pain, sadness and death are some of the things I embraced thanks to writing. Hey, we can't have everything, it's better to just tolerate the different sides. If you deny pain, you will never understand the pain of others and how will you ever learn compassion? And so on. Writing has taught me that crap is crap until you change your perception and acceptance of things.

So all in all in this annoyingly long rant, I've exposed how I'm a self-absorbed little ****. Sorting things out has been my top priority since everything (except writing) became boring as **** to me. Not even food could cheer me up and that is a big sign that things have gone the wrong way. My mom complains that I've been sleeping too much, been extremely lazy but I saved her the bother of asking incessant questions because my depression is too hard to explain. Just the other day, I thought of doing extreme sports hoping the adrenaline rush could kick me out of the slump. But I also thought about getting bored with them so nahhh.

At the other end of this muffled line, I hear rehearsed tears of steel, plops of fresh rain from kisses of young May. "Come home," you tell me as the telephone embraced me more warmly than the wall that has risen high and hard between us. I'm sipping stale coffee as you talk me down to my lowest corners. "There is never going to be a love as mere as ours," I proved to the held voice that has missed your outspoken lies.  *

Stop calling me.
Stop calling me.
Stop calling me.

I never want this cold.
Not when it comes from you.

I am not scared of the monsters under my bed
or the ones you told me as you went home from
summer camp—(bonfire stories near the lake
of green-eyed goblins and moon howlers with
famgs that oversee the mountains)

I am in fact afraid of the monsters that knock
at 2 am in the morning prying my wooden
chambers of sanity like its playground

—giants that stay on top of my body as the
strongest and closest gravity I could ever know

—two little voices of small people debating
in a prosecution against myself. One brings me
dishonor, another brings me out of dark,
empty cells

—a vampire of the day that ***** out life
as the sun rises to its crown. Once done, I am yet to
fall in a haze of delirium and ecstasy of the sunlessness
that precipitates in my heart

I am afraid because I know them too well. But the thing is,
**they know me better

So today, I just had some sort of epiphany. It's weird because I get these sort of things when I am in the weirdest places. And that weird place for me is inside a plane. Near the window seat, not quite ,but the soft sunlight hits me in the right way and I feel pleased.  I had coffee before I boarded so it had the effect I needed to behave quite cheerfully. Oddly enough today I did not go through my all too familiar episodes of inability to function normally, submerge jn a lake of hopelessness or just hate everything and anything all at once. Though to be quite fair my stomach feels strange again maybe be cause of the cold drink I had or the influence of feeling panic every single morning (an uncontrollable fear that usually starts before I get depressed, I may add) or maybe both. It's so amusing how my mind works to be honest. I started observing people in the plane, the ones beside me and the ones who are going back and forth to stow their stuff or whatever.  Then this sudden thought about my depression laced my mind like a orange streak during sunset. I thought exactly this "Hey I don't feel so sad or miserable despite of barely having an hour of sleep after the tedious packing last night. This is good—this is great." And I just found it strange because there were times when I longed for the tide of melancholy—that despicable depression every time I am in the normal mood. At first, I was almost certain I have gone insane. Or totally depressed. Or both. I mean who wants to be ******* depressed all the time and then go through emotional calm and then the ******* cycle recycles itself like trash made to look pretty but when consumed gets to become trash again. Who ******* does? But I also realized I must have come to this sense of familiarity with the pain that drove me to the edge for almost a month now. It really becomes your home when you lose sense of yourself and the only thing comforting you is that very pain which have wrecked your home.

And all too suddenly, these thoughts just made me half hysterical half teary-eyed. Because at that moment as I waited for the plane to ******* trace the runway already ( I get impatient, yes) I felt grateful. The word really is grateful. Not even happy, delirious or euphoric. Just a hell lot of gratefulness. I find myself thanking this moment of just grasping happiness even if I know for sure I'll probably get depressed tonight again (as per usual). Before I'd get hyper and just laugh like there is nobody to mind me but I never felt this thankful ever. I started looking back to those moments of happiness where I get to believe in greater things again. Where I'd worry for a second then dismiss it saying "Ah this hardly matters, so ***** it." After being drenched in so much unexplainable pain and going through this high and low almost everyday, I've come to a conclusion that I never really appreciated those moments of peaceful glee as much as I am at that moment. And I thought hat could have never been possible if I wasn't crying myself for nights, being vulnerable and seemingly weak to a bunch of people, admitting to myself that I was losing interest in life itself. It was like going through a warzone unarmed but after the trail has left the danger, you start feeling a wave of relief—a recovery after the storm.

When I started accepting the fact that I am a person with a high tendency to get depressed, I also came to accept that I've always been a sensitive person. It hardly ever shows, to be quite honest. I can appear to people as uncaring or too self-absorbed or reserved but it's only because I **** at the art of self-expression. Really, since 1995. I'd keep it all to myself although inside I am shattering. And people would have no idea because I NEVER SHARE. But ever since I was a child, I'd get these instances of melancholy simply because I can see other people (who I should not even care about) twist in pain or I'll see so much injustice that it makes me feel indignant or I can see something is wrong with someone the moment I talk to them. Things just affect me in ways that I could never understand. Add to that is my defining characteristic of being a ******* introvert. My introversion has given way to me becoming a highly introspective person. So I'd think about life a lot, question life a lot, wonder why we are as we are and some existential **** like that.

I hated all the pain I went through these past few weeks. I am a person who is independent and knows herself completely. But when depression hit me, I was clouded in a mist of ambiguity. I dont know anymore who I was, I could not understand y emotions, i could not feel happy when I am doing the things that I love. It just ****** me into a black hole. There were times that sleep was my only remedy. Partly because I wanted to escape the loneliness, the anxiety, the self-loathing and my entire body refusing to cooperate and partly because I felt tired all the ******* time and even if I slept for an entire day, I would still feel the same when I wake up. But today, I felt happy that I went through all of them. Even if there was one time that I gagged my mouth with pillow because I was about to scream in so much pain— (thank god I was alone in the room) and afraid that I might scare the other dormers away. That night as my eyes felt like rivers ,I swore that I will not let this control me. I swore that someday I'll find out why the hell this happened to me. And then I cried even more because even when all that pain was overpowering me, I still had a little hope left in me. I felt like I found a fragment of myself again. That somehow I wasnt totally *******. It was absolute contradiction but at that time I existed in between the two polar opposites of myself.

Depression is like being on the edge of a very steep cliff. You're about to fall, constant fear stops you but beneath your feet, you see wonder from beyond. You see possibilities. You see a town from somewhere far where there is so much life. You see a forest from afar and it seems so wonderful you start believing in good things again.I've  come to remind myself that I had a family, I had friends but most importantly, pain is a great wake up call. I thought love is a great unconquerable emotion. I severely underestimated pain and how it can change people. Pain brings wounds that either scar us for life or bring a different perspective. I'd say I've seen the worst possible side of me when I got depressed. It was scary and it makes you hate yourself. You get repelled because it's dark and ugly. But on the flip side, I saw how pain has made me see that after all that, I could make it. In fact, everyone can. I also peered into the mind of depressives and it was extremely helpful since I have good friends who have been cursed with this disease (they were suicidals even). I'd lack the understanding when they shared their experiences to me before but now I was slapped in the face for even considering to call them selfish or cowards. They are not. I feel like I need to tell people this because depression can only be understood when you have been there. People have different ways of handling pain which my mom likes to call 'pain threshold'. Some have it deeper, some can only contain pain in few doses. I wanted to give each and everyone who had ever been depressed a big hug because nothing is worse than losing meaning in life. And my heart goes out to each and everyone of us who caged all that pain and somehow moved forward despite the odds. Quite honestly, I would have preferred being hit by a car and be confined for more than a month than go through all that sadness and meaninglessness where hell is walking right inside you/strong desire to want to give up on life altogether/strong desire to be shaken off by society as an outcast and that won't even matter. You'd literally want to do anything just to take away all that hopelessness and misery. But at the same time you're too tired to do anything. Most terrific **** I have been so far, just ******* terrific.

*I wrote the first part of this entry when I was on the plane going home. Tonight, I finished it with a heavy heart. I am depressed again despite being with people that I love most and engaging in lovely talk with them just a couple of hours ago. My emotions are being strung along by someone other than myself. My distractions are no longer working—I might need new ones.  As I looked back to parts of this entry I realized that this condition gives me brief chances where everything is peaceful. I just hold on and wait for those chances. I've seem to tolerate this better now and my mood swings reveal a general pattern of anxiety first, normalcy then on to depression. Sometimes there are specific times, sometimes it's all random. This has been unnecessarily long but I have only been comforted by two things during my depression: music and writing. Although to be quite honest, writing can also cause me to be more depressed as I have lost my energy and motivation to write even when the other side of my brain cries in frustration because I do love writing so much. Music on the other hand gives me a lot of hope for some reason and a form of escape from all the unwanted thoughts. Some songs do make me more melancholic but my interest in music has changed ever since I started getting depressed.

Piles of crickets in my gut chattered like peasants again
Straight to my heart of pebbles—crashing whole as a full speed train
Every second ticks like a passing in hell
A long winding pit that only those who've gone could tell

Limb by limb I am restrained by an invisible force
Keeping me chained to illusions,leading to an undesired course
I am at the mercy of the shadows that sprang like weeds from inside me
Sweeping me stolen like a forest with not even one solitary tree

They tell me to laugh it off like a drunken's joke
To push on with what is left of my cursed yoke
If I cut myself in pieces they'll hang their mouths open instead
For they'll stop it with the "it is all just in her head"

The sun that warms me vital has long been eclipsed in my vision
In this blanket of sadness, there is only growing oblivion
I'd like to rise some more but how can I? I am the battle
There is nothing to see here except for me to be reduced in a rubble

It ***** to be a realist. To know that the world can be terrible and at the same time be filled with the possibilities of the wonderful. And then there's you, the poor realist, who somehow has all this truth and hope and idea of everything black and white, good or bad. So you build up this fear inside you, this pain that everything can go either ways of opposing extremes and there's nothing you can do about it except go on  and live with both sides.

I looked hard at the lake
Saw a villain from within
I caved in the existential murkiness
To question all that rots, all that wrecks
The heart of the unknown
Is both wonder and disgust

My breathing is an orchestra
The dissonance is unbelievable
Almost blasphemous
Some creatures nip at my fleshy mortality
I wonder how they tasted me

The cold calls me with ordinary gesture
I say my greetings to the other side with pleasure
Asphyxiation desensitized me with ******* rhyme
As the romantic swell of death settles

There is no god to claim me
I am the reason for everything
That I am
No more and nothing else

Two-faced.
The emptiness pockets up my chest
Like a night thief
I've grown accustomed but weary
Candor-laced, the confidante
As time flapped its wings
I shrank in prison
The little wardens beside me
Kept me back with whispers
To the cell that has been
Licked clean with blood and tears
I am afraid of something
I cannot even name
Sleeping like doom in a crib of calm
I am afraid of two faces
Taking turns on the stage
Of my reeling
I am afraid.

I'm chasing the divine moon
In its most full state
There in the eagle's claw
Rests my house of cards
The gods hear me but do they listen?
Either I rain my blood on this war for Ares
Or Gaia opens to receive me

I might fall to a ravine
Broken bones and dead encounters comfort me
I might devour the dark pill
That intercepts my self-proclaimed hero

But I long to talk to her
To my muse who strives on the sharpest points
Like the bone that hangs in Cerberus' neck
She must want to bury me in her
Or take hold of my soul
Bless it to the god and her lady
Who dwell near the enchanted river

In this odyssey with nothing on the other end, perhaps
I'd find her whispering me to take the oars
Move along
For as my Tritogeneia
She'll give way to my long awaited Ithaca
Where I'll hold the pen
As she weaves the stories
Above the mortals
Above the gods
Hidden and alive
Since time immemorial

"But no one will even know," he mutters, deciding against himself as the burgundy hue of a dwindling life stripped him bare right to the shallow blue pools of tear-stained eyes. The bitterness brimmed at his gut as the early moon of solemn June waits, vulture-like for the looming despair that follows after the storm has ravaged all that is left to hope for. The bottle sat nicely in the clammy, pale hands. The glowing hard print spitting at his vain pretensions. It says Tennessee's finest, soon to be his worst.

The hum of his wife's uneasy breathing came through the thin walls but he heard it as one with the cry of the night, unable to bail him out of the self-made prison of thoughts. He shifts and turns with the clock's dance but his mind went back to the beginning and the end. Slowly reaching a conclusion with the reality that failed him, his shaking hands went to the hateful curse that soothes every pain with a sardonic grin.  The liquid dagger slithered down his eager throat, a murderer settled on the ****. Licking his flaky lips one last time, he received a life of no return with the loudest sigh of regret.

I tasted your lips in a sip of that coffee
Bittersweet, strong though it calmed me
You are the aphrodisiac that dug through
my subtlety
Awaking me with your aroma invitingly

I'd take another cup of you, be drunk on
wakefulness
Collide in our own magical listlessness
You burn my tongue, twist me in a mess
My love, my love your love does impress

Standing by myself
The memories of you hang like a ghost
Glasses of orange melting in our tired hands
The fact remains to freeze our eyes bare

Nibbling on burnt cookies as they buried
The invisible lumps down to the chests
Stale alcohol dancing in noses
Decks of cards gathered dust in the gambler's absence

Lipstick stains on the cold glass of your coffin
As the women withered and the men stiffened
I'd call you out but my voice went somewhere
Perhaps to the last scene that gave you away

How time catches and lets go
Them who hated you
Them who loved you
Bewildered in the kitchen
You are the refuge to seek
Though you are no more