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epictails Aug 2015
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.
Super rough draft. My writing has become pretty meh but I really wanted to share this. I have jumbled all my ideas in what seems to be an incoherent mess. Though in my defense, my brain has worked 5 times slower ever since. I could still count but most of the time my head's all black canvas with slight moments of paranoia.
Isoindoline Dec 2012
You've really got me
turned around
left is right
and up is down

It's quite a sight
to see me
as I walk upon
the ceiling

Cornering rounds
instead of
rounding corners
tripping over
ill-placed dormers

It's even more
confusing when
the world halts
this dizzy spin

and reality comes
crashing down
I find myself in
a wedding gown

its corset is
much too tight
the color fair
far too light
for I'm no
****** bride

but I cannot move
to search for
the elusive exit door
instead I'll stare
enraptured
with the carpet
patterned floor.
Go read "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gillman.
Emily Norton Sep 2015
The soft curve of your face
in the light of a yawning sun.
Warm floors
on which giants play chess.
The badly tuned piano taunting us with an
almost recognizable tune.
Showers that made the day
perfect
because they were
cold in the summer
and hot in the winter
the feel of the air-conditioned together rooms.
Popcorn smell,
the play of a fan on bare flesh,
footsteps sounded by phantom feet,
dormers,
darke tile and
white walls,
open windows and dust,
friends,
the smell of home,
and fun.
c quirino Dec 2015
i never really appreciated the wealth of light afforded to me.
yet i still have cravings,
for graceless dormers,
naked and looming.
quartered divisions with their faint, finger panes
intersecting in the middle of my forehead.

i really love the feeling of walking through a wooded path at night.
maybe not wooded, not so looming and treacherous.
but a place much warmer in light.

i live by light.

i remember the city because of its light.
its muddled outlines,
pin box interiors you only see for brief moments in passing.
eight by ten foot worlds
partitioned only by your doing.

what other place can make sense to you,
so perfectly that you tesselate within it,
one multi-minded collection of elements
in swarms of others,

what place,
besides the one that drives you up a ******* wall.
Ken Pepiton Sep 1
I agreed to read, thinking
September signals change.
And I imagined seeing it change.

September now, hints of winter,
and of fire season if those latter rains tarry.

Last year they got here during Burning Man,
we saw the wannabes all flee the mud, on TV,
we saw the children of our youth,
roll in it with laughing abandon,
real life,
this year, the rain is just as likely,
so we pay attention to the whole idea,
seasons, on the cosmic scale, now after

the fullness of times is on us, nine billion
others in the etherical medium tying us up,
using us as staves binding broken bones,

fundamental bottom thought, structured
stories said to have inspired our dormers,
and our seven gables,
and our back doors,
and our cellars,
each we must wonder at once, ¿?
are we involved in production, or consumption,
supply side or inside out hungry ghostly chances,

bemusing the beguiled with smile lacking cause,
acausal confrontation with frowning judgmental

adverse reactions to sublime subtlety suggesting,

take and eat, in truth, imagine yourself seeing,
first time, the true beauty of the elephant
reaching past low hung fruits to take
a taste from the high branches.

Shining thing from Eber's legendary written
rules, all translating into knowing how we live
and have our being in times you must imagine

looking back, magi, always were apparent
in the mix of biographies preserved to lead us

let us, all with the will to learn, learn if
we think
we may imagine, using mere words, and tech
so new that you may not reckon how far we are

from yesterday.

when I agreed to read,

because I never read
The Brothers Karamazov,
so  I agreed to read, and
I read it, upto the bitten finger,
if you know the story, and a little more,
another chapter or two, awaiting the death
of the elderly sage of Ruskie Orthodoxy,
whose name is fictional, of course,
but he knew he could walk into the woods,
and live free using known grown means
to quell the thirst from mushrooms,
with buckthorn berry wine,
imaginable
in the Cuyamaca boulders and pines.

Here, with me, a display of color harmony,
the ribbonwoods bloom a creamy burst,
and as suddenly, begin to rust, autumnal colors.
Not New England bright, more subtil by far,
desert shades, surrounded in evergreens,
manzanitas and hemlocks and pines and black oaks.

Time, at the level of cosmic clocks, as a thought
passes faster as we expand into our ever after
thought, as we compress to spring after winter,

feeling years as days, morning childhood,
noon survival, evening to cool starry night
of knowing which lies were used to turn me,
on, or around about
which truth alerted me to nonconformity,
be the new thing, the new old form mankind,
be the representative of we, the people in time,

who played the fools who glorify war, for a season,
while we are lacking learning, having never known,
why we never put our minds to final form, grown
courses taken eroding finished soils to feed seas,
paths past nonsense, past purpose proposed
to be supposed by all who follow, thinking

should we agree, geistlich at this distance,
using English with poetic twists allowed by license,
vide licet, showing all with eyes allowed to notice,
viz.
I am native to this planet, I am part of what is changed,
I am a peasant child from the times of industrial efforting,

establishing the profit motive any tree imagines,
blooming, superfluous fruit for any with appetite,
what is right in life is not pain, but persistant will

to wait on next, imagining ever
experienced on earth,
as it must be where prayers are all answered, yes,
most certainly, on earth as in ever, fires included,

functional consumption and transition into next
now,
as you think I imagined magi, and found I did, imagine
that.
When one reader activates the pen, one writer imagines making my day.
There are no records left; I asked them.

The probation officer arranged it, he was helping my brother. My trip may have been unofficially organised.

I was taken to meet the lady, I remember her name, her home clearly. Mum kitted me out in hand knitteds, summer and lace up shoes. I was shocked by the latter; I aways had straps.

I may have been 6 years old; there is no record.

We went on the bus , cook and I, to the small cottage hotel, Lelant by the sea. A bus ride from St. Ives, a short walk down the hill to the beach to play.

My host went shopping, introducing me to her friends, and worrying over my hair. The hairdresser suggested that cutting was not the answer and I was provided with a dark green ribbon, shiny, wide and expensive. I imagined the cost.

The food was unlike any I had known, just tomato soup, scones with cream that left my tastebuds traumatised. I liked the boiled eggs; I was used to them. Cook looked after me kindly and understood, told me to say. The gardener suggested that as I must pass through the kitchen garden to school, I may eat as much fruit as I liked. I did.

I liked the little school, made friends. The laceups were a great succes as I could walk on my toes, like a ballet dancer. The soles were thick. Friends were made and one girl lent me her woollen bathing costume to bathe in the estuary. It sagged when wet; my self esteem lowered.

Adding here that at that age who knew of self esteem? We just felt bad.

I was given the sweetest little bedroom in the roof, all dolls and dormers. They took away my comforter, and it seems then I walked in my sleep. Moved downstairs to the piano room where no stairs could harm me, I felt unsettled.

Yet the days moved nicely. There were little troubles, nothing to diminish the beauty of it all.

The day came when I was sent home, I guess it was agreed; there are no records. I had wanted to stay, and I still feel guily for that.

My family met me from the bus, laughed at my accent and threw the ribbon away.

Weeks later I found it ***** in the lane, and kept it, hid it.

Years later I went back. In the museum, met a man who recognised me. We were then in our fifties, and he said I looked the same.

I am not the same. There are no records.

I never was a ballet dancer.

sbm.

— The End —