Fragments of the Quiet Mind

I found myself on the couch again, a cup of lukewarm coffee forgotten beside me, the familiar cartoon flickering on the screen like an old friend with secrets. The colors felt sharper now, the jokes less innocent and more like whispered truths I hadn’t noticed before. Episodes I once watched for simple laughs now unravelled themselves, each character’s struggle echoing parts of my own hidden scars—fear, hope, and the quiet ache of growing up. I realized that rewatching cartoons after therapy wasn’t about nostalgia. It was about decoding the language of my past self, translating childhood magic into adult meaning. What was once just silly hijinks became mirrors reflecting wounds I was only just beginning to heal. The heroes weren’t perfect; they were flawed, trying, failing, learning—the same way I had to. There’s a strange comfort in this. Like meeting a younger version of yourself, not to rescue, but to understand why you carried certain stories so tightly. The laughter feels bitter...

I remember the night clearly—the kind where the city hums low, and every door is shut tight except mine. I was alone in the apartment, sitting on the edge of the bed, and the silence pressed in like a weight I hadn’t noticed before. I began to speak—not to anyone, but to the empty room itself. Words I’d never dared say aloud poured out, honest and unfiltered, like a confession whispered to shadows. There’s something strange about talking to empty rooms. They do not judge or interrupt; they absorb. The quiet becomes a canvas for the parts of ourselves that people seldom see—the raw, unfinished edges we hide behind smiles and scripts. In that silence, I found the courage to be more truthful than I ever was in company. Honesty is rarely a gift we give others. More often, it is a debt we repay to ourselves—spoken quietly, without expectation. These confessions don’t seek applause or agreement; they simply demand acknowledgment, a witness in the absence of another. When I spoke to that e...

I didn’t notice when loneliness stopped feeling like a stranger. It was the night I sat alone in a coffee shop at closing time, the dim hum of the espresso machine and the scrape of chairs the only company. At first, that silence felt like an empty room, cold and echoing with absence. But somewhere between the second sip and the last flicker of neon outside, something shifted. Loneliness stopped knocking. It pulled up a chair. You realize it’s not about filling the void but sitting with it—an awkward dinner guest who doesn’t talk much but teaches you to listen. We live in a world terrified of being alone, as if silence is a punishment. But solitude is not a cage; it’s a mirror, reflecting parts of yourself you never bothered to meet. In that reflection, you find a strange comfort—the steady rhythm of your own breath, the unspoken stories waiting beneath the surface. And the twist? Loneliness isn’t the enemy you thought it was. It’s the familiar face in a crowd that never quite get...

It started in line at a coffee shop. The guy behind me kept brushing my backpack with his tote bag, not enough to be aggressive, just enough to be noticeable. I turned slightly, made eye contact, gave that tight-lipped smile — the one that says, “We're both human, I forgive you, please stop.” He smiled back. And did it again. So I let him. I didn’t move. Didn’t say anything. I just stood there, rehearsing twenty polite versions of “Could you please back up a little?” in my head — none of which I actually said. When I finally got my drink, I thanked the barista too brightly and left too fast. That’s the thing about politeness. It masquerades as kindness but often performs silence. It applauds itself for not causing conflict — even if that conflict is the only way something real can happen. At some point, we learn that to be "nice" is to be inoffensive, which slowly mutates into being invisible. We trade boundaries for harmony, truth for tone, self-expression for soci...

It’s raining and I’m sitting in a bus going somewhere—somewhere vague enough to feel like progress but familiar enough to make me question if I’m just looping through life on autopilot. The windows are fogged, people are half-asleep or pretending to be, and outside, the rain politely ruins everyone’s plans. I glance at the umbrella tucked beside my seat. It's smug today. Useful. Fulfilled. Finally, it gets to do its one job. No more sulking in dark corners of my bag like some emotionally neglected sidekick. Today, it’s a hero. Rain? Bring it. Wind? Let’s tango. But then I wonder: What about the days it never gets opened? Three sunny days in a row, I still carried it like a nervous habit—just in case the sky changed its mind. And on those days, did it feel... betrayed? Like it wore its best water-resistant outfit for nothing? Like it practiced its unfolding motion all night and then got ghosted by the clouds? Do umbrellas spiral into existential crises when the weather app lies?...

Way back in college, I had this quiet hobby of slipping into book sales. Not the big ones—just the messy, dusty tables tucked inside Centermall, one of Baguio’s oldest malls. The kind of place where the lights flicker and the scent of rust and forgotten pages lingers longer than the shoppers. It wasn’t about finding something specific. It was the hunt. The maybe. One afternoon, I came across a book with no title on the spine. The cover was soft, torn in the corners, like it had been through several hands that never loved it properly. Inside, on the first page, someone had scribbled in pencil: “Don’t finish this unless you’re ready to lose something.” I didn’t buy it. I kept turning the thought over in my head though, for years. I don’t even remember the plot. Just the feeling it gave me: like someone had whispered a secret then vanished before I could respond. We never really crave the thing, do we? We crave the tension before the having. The idea of it. The fiction we write a...

I saw her on the escalator. She was coming down as I was going up. That small, cinematic distance—just enough time to recognize, remember, and rehearse a lifetime in the space between two floors. Her hair was shorter now, the shade lighter, like the kind of choice you make after surviving something no one clapped for. She looked firmer in the shoulders, like she'd learned how to carry herself after being dropped too many times. More put-together. Less hesitant. But her eyes still had that old flicker—like she could still vanish into her own head mid-conversation. She was with someone. Maybe a partner. Maybe someone passing through. He had the look of someone she trusted with silence. The kind of man who didn’t ask her to shrink her dreams to fit a dinner conversation. I watched him lean in, say something only meant for her. She laughed, and it was soft, real, clean—like she no longer had to apologize for her joy. Then she saw me. Just a second too soon. Her expression shifte...

The last flight home was nearly full, and the window seat was a silent battleground. Not because anyone shouted or shoved, but because it represented something unspoken—something deeper than comfort or view. It was about space, about choice, about who deserved the sunlight that filtered through the scratched glass. I watched the subtle negotiations unfold, the hesitations, the quiet claims. The window seat wasn’t just a seat; it was a symbol, a small slice of privilege carved out in the cramped metal tube hurtling through the sky. It reminded me how in life, personal space isn’t just physical. It’s emotional territory, carved out carefully or wrestled for in silence. Some get it by default—an unspoken right. Others wait, watch, and sometimes surrender their claim, so the “chosen” can have their moment in the light. There’s a bitter irony here. We crave freedom, yet the very act of wanting a place to call our own binds us in unspoken hierarchies. The politics of proximity—who gets cl...

 I found an old notebook tucked away in a drawer, its pages filled with half-written letters and unfinished plans. Names I almost called, places I almost went, dreams I almost chased. The weight of those almosts hit me like a cold wave—ghosts of what could have been, pressing heavy on my chest. Almost is the ache of standing at a door, hand raised, and pulling away at the last moment. It’s the sound of footsteps fading before they ever reached you, the glance that didn’t meet your eyes long enough to matter. These almosts aren’t just missed chances—they’re fragments of a life that teased itself into existence but never quite formed. There’s a peculiar grief in mourning what was never fully real. The almosts live in liminal spaces—between hope and regret, desire and denial. They haunt the edges of memory like shadows that refuse to vanish, reminding us how close we’ve come to something meaningful, yet how far we remain. What do we do with these echoes? How do we carry the ache wi...

The other night, I sat alone in the kitchen, reheating leftover rice and eggs, the kind of meal that tastes like nothing but fills you anyway. The silence wasn’t heavy — just there, like an old friend who doesn’t need to speak. I didn’t do anything extraordinary that day. No breakthrough, no milestone, not even a witty reply to a text. Just dishes, emails, socks that don’t match, and a sky that forgot to impress. But there, in that unremarkable moment, something settled in me. A quiet knowing. That I might never write a masterpiece. Might never be remembered by strangers or quoted in someone’s wedding vows. And maybe — maybe that’s okay. We spend so much time trying to matter loudly. As if worth needs a witness. As if love only counts when it’s performed. But some days are just meant to be lived, not captured. Some joys come in lukewarm cups of coffee and inboxes with no emergencies. And maybe that’s the rebellion — choosing softness over spectacle. There’s a kind of courage in waki...

Words we never speak don’t vanish. They settle like dust in the corners of our minds, silent witnesses to what we dared not confront. The weight of what’s left unsaid is heavier than any shouted confession, because silence folds itself into the architecture of our being. Every pause, every withheld truth, becomes a shadow trailing our steps. We carry them like scars, invisible but raw—reminders of moments when fear or pride won. They echo louder in empty rooms, haunt the spaces where connection should have bloomed. It’s strange how silence isn’t peace. It’s a prison built from broken promises to ourselves. We tell ourselves it’s mercy, kindness, or strength—but mostly, it’s fear wrapped in politeness. The words could’ve freed us, but instead, they chain us to regret. And regret isn’t just memory. It’s a slow poison that colors the way we move, the way we love, the way we see ourselves. It’s the weight of words that became ghosts—always there, always watching, never quiet. Eventuall...

I live in the tension between freedom and belonging—the silent pull shaping every choice. Freedom promises escape and autonomy but leaves a loneliness like concrete pressing down. Freedom isn’t just no chains; it’s a room where no one calls your name. Belonging is messy, a weight carried because isolation terrifies more. It demands surrender, risking erosion—wearing a soft wound as armor until it bleeds. Freedom isolates. Belonging erases. We crave both but find them strangers wearing the same mask. The door to connection often leads to a subtle cage. We trade one prison for another, hoping at least the bars are invisible. No one teaches this dance—how to want people but hold your edges, how to be vulnerable without dissolving. I’ve fled closeness and begged for space. Stayed too long and left too soon. The hardest place is between what we want and what we lose. Maybe freedom and belonging aren’t destinations but forces held in uneasy balance—fractured and whole, both at once. Livi...

They said it like scripture, soft and rehearsed. "Things will grow if you just believe. Just stay. Just wait." So I did. I stayed. I bled into the dirt. I broke skin for something that never sprouted. The sun never came. And the soil? The soil was already full— of bones. Of memories with teeth. Of things I was never meant to uncover, but did anyway. They didn’t plant flowers. They planted ghosts. Carefully. Aesthetic. Like trauma could be arranged in rows and called design. They built a graveyard and named it “opportunity.” Hung fairy lights over decay and dared to call it “safe.” And I—I knelt like a fool, watering phantoms, thinking it was love.  Thinking it was growth. It was rot. Ritualized. Systematic. Here’s the truth no one wants to speak out loud: The worst betrayals don’t scream. They whisper. They wear your tone, echo your values, mirror your hopes until you’re too far in to crawl back. It wasn't an accident. They knew this place was hollow. They han...

I used to own this small potted plant I kept by the window.  I don't remember its name—some hardy, leafy thing they said wouldn’t die easily. I believed them. That was the first lie. Or maybe the first faith. I never really watered it. Not on purpose. Not out of malice. Just... I got busy. Or I thought the sunlight was enough. Or I told myself I’d do it tomorrow, and tomorrow kept moving without me. Strange, how we forget to care for the things we once chose. Eventually, the leaves curled in, quietly. No protest. No drama. Just a slow folding, like a secret being buried alive. And still, I left it there. Watching.  Witnessing.  Me, in all my distractions. And it makes me wonder—what else have I left thirsty? What else did I promise life to, only to offer absence? Sometimes I think about legacy—not in the grand, carved-in-marble kind of way, but in the intimate, quiet ruins we leave behind. The forgotten promise to a hopeful person that we didn't really gave much thou...