She finds beauty in everything, in everyone
But she can't find any in herself.

The very worst of demons are the ones that can't be destroyed because they are a part of you

Remind the children
in books
in tales
in life
that monsters
are not always supernatural
do not always live under beds
or creep inside closets
in fact they can be amongst us
walking, breathing, existing humans

Only they are far more real

**Far more terrifying

She was a spider
who spun and spun
webs of lies
which grew bigger and bigger
until all her fine spider legs
got entangled
she could breathe no more
and her web became her world
until she weaved her own undoing
strangled by the threads of untruths

The world is too uncertain for us to be sure of anything. Personally I don't think there is an absolute truth. There I said it. Take me away Nietzsche, I'm with you on this one. We are all so different, all so set apart in our unique, frail and wicked mortality. To have one single frame of existence is debilitating. If this difference is so telling of our humanity then why the hell do we have truth? To what purpose? To contain and unite us despite our individuality? Suppose the truth is given this way: A newborn and a goat are expected to survive with just a small patch of grass. Which of the two gets more chance of survival and existential fulfillment? How can that be when those two are apples and oranges? Their circumstances are so opposite. How is life supposed to be fair to the newborn? I am not saying that life is fair because hell it is far from it. But do we accept that unfair principle or make our lives a little better?  Will his happiness be on that grass as well? Of course not. So he looks for new ways to be happy. He has his own truth.

To this end, I have questioned everything from my faith, to myself, to people, to science even. Life grows along with time and so are our realities. This is why these past few months I've been contradicting myself to the point of thinking I've gone mad. But the fact is I've grown from these experiences of letting my two polar opposites meet. It is honestly scary when these inner voices start jabbing at you like pointed needles.I am a walking contradiction and my mind is a maze of paradoxes and questions with no answers. Eventually, I got used to this mentally exhausting activity. When something entirely different from what I believe be it an opinion, an idea, or a controversy) speaks up in my face I've learned to accept them not as the truth but as possibilities that could very well be right or wrong. I will never be always right.

People are so used to the concept of certainty that we have altogether ignored the existence of possibility. Or the gray area to which simply no one end exists. I realized that we are all predisposed to find answers, to hang on to some sort of explanation to a world so phenomenally ungraspable. It is to the detriment of our open mindedness enough for us to fabricate truths which may very well be coverups for the all too universal fear of the unknown. We are afraid of floating in the ambiguous nature of our lives that we'd rather correct this with assumptions.

The flower told the bee
Who was about to **** himself
"Why do you insist on dying?"
The bee, sad , replied
"Because in that death will
I only ever feel I was alive"
Shaking its pretty petals
In contradiction, the flower said
"You are wrong. To exist is to
live for something, for someone"
The bee now mad, cried out
"What do you know?You're
just a flower!"
The flower,smiled, sadly
"No I live for you"
"I breathe in knowing you need
me to stay alive and that
is enough reason for me to
live"

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.

They say live
live alone
straitlaced as an
arrow meant
for that
one gruelling
dot

Live for the
ambition
of the skies
and never the
gravity of
the ground.

I say
fall and rise
fire and air
swept in
torrents
up there
swinging
for burn or tide
downs.

I say create
and destroy
live still
and die all ways
change
and change
until time stops
its
crackle
and bustle

Every waking
day
Is both
a funeral and
a birth right

I say create
as we all
write our stories
amidst the
downpour of
life
and the ruins
in our heads.

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.

Lost, stumbling in the dark,
I struggled for Your light

You are your heartache
You are your mistake
You are your destiny
You are your catastrophe

Your thoughts are your poison
Transmuting to mindless action
Your words your dagger
That yourself can only conquer

You are the world you create
You are the answers you await
Be your own mentor, hero and friend
For the one who makes your life is you
In the end.

She told me often when I was six, seven eight,nine and even ten that she used to read books, newspapers, journals (probably even shampoo labels), anything at all, every morning as she carries a breathing lump in her tummy—me. Growing up into a pensive, serious child,  my compounding curiosity was indulged with her providing a plethora of books. From giant, intimidating encyclopedias (I could barely understand but read on,still) to old, dusty fiction paperbacks to her interest in Greek mythology, she never ran out of things to tell me. How she told in a week the story of Goldilocks earning the rage of the three bears  and how I memorized it by ear when I was three or four, recited it in front of a throng of older kids in school. How her eyes glistened at that moment (I could not tell) but in retelling everything, her voice glows with just a bit of pride. She fed me fairy tales and in soaking in their magic, I found a dreamer in myself. I've always been a little different from other kids. A little too curious, precocious, mature, head in the clouds which I have maintained until now. She excitedly told me the story of how Thumbelina in her smallness had a larger than life adventure. How the last pig survived the wolf's bullying through his cleverness. How red riding hood looked dainty and pretty in her red cape. Or how tasty looking  her presents to grandma were. She read them all—every night—tirelessly as I held the warm milk I hated with all my naive heart at that time. I started writing for the school paper, eventually as a news and features writer. I did a lot of spoken poetry, orations, storytelling and speeches (mostly in school and some events) .Mom was in front row seats in all the writing and literary competitions I went to. And together with dad, they shut off the doubtful voices in my head real good.

I stopped writing in high school—when I was twelve. And for a long time, I wandered aimlessly with myself. To make matters worse, I was plagued with nightmares and an extreme sleep paralysis condition that heightened my fears. I often seriously thought I would die in my sleep. I totally got wrapped by my problems and forgot about writing and never got the chance to ask mom how she felt about that. But life paced itself differently when I was fifteen. One crazy dream and an insight in the shower later  and I began writing again. It was like I came from the bottom of a dry, dark well and someone wedged me with a rope back into light. I never looked back down the well, ever.

In all this history and flair for the literary, I go back to the fondness of the days and nights when mom was also my favorite storyteller who somehow put me in this direction, unknowingly. Now that I think about it, I always had an affinity with words. Like birds with the wind, like painters with their brushes. It comes as natural as breathing for me—maybe I should feel happy about that. Behind that deep connection was my mom and her stories that awakened my inner dreamer. One day, I hope to stack all the poems and stories, all the words I have ever written (good or bad) and hand it to her. Just like how she handed me this dream. I'd like to tell her I never stopped writing and probably never will. And in the very first page of that compilation, signed with my slanted signature are the words—*
I OWE IT ALL TO YOU, MOM, THANKS!

-Alex

The world shall fall as they fall
In their ruin, everything will follow
And so it ends

Bring in the seraphim
Tear the pure clouds, reveal the gods above
If doubt is a stronger virtue
Then I am its paragon

Women fall at lofty feet in a harem
Gorging on peasants' spines 'till faces turn mauve
Fear is the new moral breakthrough
A scale higher than the utmost echelon

The world shall destroy as they destroy
In their ruin, everything will follow
And so it ends.

The snake bite no longer stings
Calloused as a tyrant's compassion
The purest hands do grow relentless weeds
As they laze on the filthiest plots

Kings and hearts mount to slings
Foreboding most malleable deception
Blood spills bright on their letterheads
As truth gets set by red-handed bureaucrats

The world shall burn as they burn
In their ruin, everything will follow
And so it ends.

Marksmen are wealthier than diplomats
Golden bullets to the golden rule
The trend is to laugh at our silence
The principle is to break lives not dictates

There lies no purgatory for these aristocrats
On to the vile ember cesspool
Until then, they fawn in worldly omnipotence
And not one revolts, not even conscience

The world shall end as they end
In their sceptre,everything follows
And so it goes on.

Mother,
Tell me why people
Hurt each other
Why father tears you apart
Yet you smile in pain

Mother,
Remember the time
When a homeless man
Was a filth
In a woman's eyes?
A curse even in his helplessness?

Mother,
Why do the kids in school
Despise a color?
Is black all that bad?
I happen to like that boy,
why can't they?

Mother,
Why did cousin die
Just because
She wore the wrong clothes
Acted funny
When she was having fun by herself?

Mother,
Why do people hurt each other?
Make me understand
Please,please
My chest feels weird
When I see tears and black and blue
And scars, too
I hate seeing people sad
Don't you hate it too?

I pray that the every girl
and every boy
in earth
and the universe unknown and beyond
will think of peace
as a way of life
and not an impossible wish
that is about to fade from our
peripheries