I stopped being scared of the lights turned off,
the night underneath my bed
when I understood that there is a bigger dark within me.

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

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

"You sound off."
"Maybe I am or you heard me wrong."

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 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

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.

There is a place I call Soldier Way  
Sacked at the hem of one ruddy bay  
The open casket of a living ash town

Along the non cerulean periphery  
Waves in battalions besieged in the shores' retreat  
Flitting ceremoniously to a soup of heat  

The white sea calls in a scepter  
Of fleeting air lilies in salt-simmered clouds
Subsumed in daydreams of wet palm castaways

Fiery, elusive pearls praised at my feet  
Then went on to their deaths, fluxing flummoxed  
As flushed touch-me-nots upon human graze 

There, twenty eight steps apart—children cheered  
Flamboyant flowers in a backdrop of a resigned hue  
I smiled against the vigilance of momentary isolation  

In great imaginations, the sea does speak  
To the boulders by the homely sand  
My spring back on their furnaces

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

I saw this lady in North Street
Who walks in mystery,
Her eyes, mild, teary
Though her lips turns cheery

A muse in a daydream
Her grace, heaven's beam
Suddenly, from her came a scream
Like a gust of an impatient steam

She flew out in a rampage
A lioness unkempt from the cage
Frenzy in her madness she'd wage
To anyone who was not on her page

In this affair, I deeply despaired
But to contain her I couldn't have dared
I felt something off—weird
One by one, to me everyone stared
Like a freak show they feared

Curses quickly pooled at my feet
Blasphemy hurled at a moment of heat
I wept, baffled in quiet defeat
For it was then I became the strange
lady of North Street

The heat opened a casket somehow
Entombed in a white hot vacancy
Rests my summers day melody
Of gentle feet patting crunchy gravel
Along the pink spines of swamp snails
Out there with listless goats inhaling
The moss infected water
And how I am trapped in my protective
Jalousies like a silly little lifeguard
Waiting for a dip in the surface
An action in the preface

The fields are screaming silver mutiny amidst
The drought on their legs
What travesty happened here?
What reverie of the cosmic nature?
They left it bald as an onion
Sifted as cement
I can hear their pleas
To drop them my sweat
Like a mother to her children
All to ease their parched throats

The wind hangs like a scandal
Whip there, calm somewhere
Or a fusion in between
As fickle as my feet could carry me
I feel like a sponge in all
My sublime holes
Waiting for rain to drop its mercy
Submerge me in its ocean of rumination

It is horrible
I am fried like chops
Of hard meat about to skitter and burn
Rare you say?Not possible in this
Omniscient oven.
The birds turn brown in my eyes
Like lumps of soil with feathers for feet
They seem to be getting along
With the unforgiving sky.

Mother, mother guns everywhere
I woke up—the blood on their faces
The rats are out of their lair
Peasants shiver at their terrible aces

Mother, mother a rifle on your head
The place is on a storm , help me
I looked back but everyone is dead
The darkness slowly swallows me

Mother, mother abandon any hope
There is none to find, none to hold
If dying is freedom, then life is in the rope
My mind blazed in agony, but tears
stained cold

Mother, mother tell me goodbye
I'll close my eyes, remain unfeeling
As I bring your face in me until I die
Even though that thought will have
me hurting

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"

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.

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.

The angels must have smiled
When your little fingers fluttered
Open like delighted sunflower petals
Upon your mother's tears and
Your father's joy in the curve of
His mouth. They must have.
For I surely would have.

You are the umbrella to rain
You are the soft wind in a summer day
You are the relief to my pain
You are the blanket to the cold
You are the hand to hold when
everything slips
You are the book that stays open
for those who would want to dream more.

Fate is beyond us but friendship
is truly magical right?
I'd let the threads of time weave
some more, some more.
Until the day it fulfills a beautiful story
of friendship fated, friendship kept.