Fragments of the Quiet Mind

It’s not the knife that breaks you. It’s the hand you thought would never hold one. I’ve had people talk behind my back. I’ve been insulted, excluded, underestimated. I’ve had strangers throw shade, coworkers act petty, random people online say stupid things. It stings for a second, but I forget about it by the next day. Because honestly, I expect that from people who don’t know me. Who have no investment in who I am. It doesn’t really get in. But what stays—the thing I carry—isn’t from enemies. It’s from people I trusted.  And it always catches me off guard. Every single time. Because you never expect it from them . The ones you let in. The ones who knew your soft spots. The ones who said, “I’m here, always.” The people who didn’t just know your story—they were in it. And then, somehow, they become the ones who hurt you in ways no stranger ever could. It’s never loud. It’s not some explosive betrayal with dramatic exits and slammed doors. No, it’s quieter than that. It’s the u...

  There’s a particular kind of silence that doesn't come from the absence of sound—but from the absence of being noticed . I started sensing it in passing moments. Someone would ask, “Have we met?” even though we had. I'd smile politely, pretend I hadn’t noticed. Or I’d speak in a group and the conversation would just move on, like my words were smoke that didn’t catch. It's not dramatic. It's not cruel. It just is . Like static. Like walking into a room and not shifting its air. I don’t think anyone meant to forget me. I just think I made it easy. Maybe it was a defense. Maybe if I became nobody in particular, I wouldn’t have to explain the contradictions in me—the softness I kept folding away, the chaos I never learned how to speak, the loneliness I wore like a neutral color. Being undefined was safer than being misunderstood. But invisibility has its own weight. A quiet grief. You start wondering if your life is happening to someone else. If you’re just borrowin...

It wasn’t supposed to feel this heavy. We were just moving out. A change of address. A few boxes. A goodbye email. That’s what the memo said. But the soul doesn’t read memos. The decision came down with the usual cold efficiency — political maneuvering dressed as “strategy.” Someone upstairs, removed the scent of our coffee or the soft glow of kindness at the front desk, decided we were better off elsewhere. More aligned. More brand-consistent. Whatever that means. I packed my things slowly. Not because there were many — a mug, some folders, a forgotten plant — but because everything in that space had stories tangled in it. The smile of the security guard who knew when you were too quiet. The landlord who once fixed the busted ceiling fan on a Sunday. The hallway where I paced during panic attacks and found calm in the hum of old fluorescent lights. How do you walk away from a place that remembers you when you don’t want to remember yourself? People call it “just a space.” T...

There are goodbyes that shatter, and then there are silences that echo. Not all endings announce themselves. Some just slip quietly into the background — like static you stop noticing until you realize the music’s been gone for a while. No slammed doors, no explanations. Just a gradual erasure, like watching ink fade from a letter you read too many times. You keep checking your phone, not because you expect a message, but because some part of you still hopes silence can be broken like a fever. Unspoken words hang heavier than shouted ones. The things we never said take on lives of their own — mutating into doubts, rewrites, what-ifs. You rehearse arguments you'll never have, play both sides until you forget which one was yours. And isn’t that the cruelty of silence? That it offers no shape to mourn, no moment to collapse against? Just a formless absence where meaning used to live. Closure is a myth we invented to survive unfinished stories. But silence — silence tells you there was...

  Way back in college, I found myself drawn to book sales at Centermall, that old mall in Baguio with creaky floors and stubborn echoes. I’d roam those cramped aisles searching for something steady, something that might outlast me. But grief—grief rewrites the rules. It taught me that what I thought was permanent was never really mine to hold. When loss came, it didn’t just take someone from me. It tore apart the foundations I built around them—the coffee cups we shared, the songs that used to stitch moments together, the streets that once felt like home. Everything I thought was solid softened and shifted beneath my feet. I realized memory isn’t a monument; it’s water—always flowing, impossible to grip. The silence after the calls stopped was the first crack. It wasn’t just absence; it was a rupture in my story. Grief isn’t a moment—it’s a slow dismantling of certainty. The past I trusted became a stranger, and I had to learn how to live with someone who knew me less than I thou...

  Sometimes, life feels like trying to hold water in my cupped hands, spilling faster than I can catch it. There’s a tension in that, a strange pull between release and regret. The thought that everything is fleeting—that nothing I build or love or dream of will last—sits with me often. It’s not always a heavy thought. Sometimes it’s light, almost weightless, and yet, somehow, it presses down all the same. If everything fades, does it matter? I ask myself this more than I probably should. But maybe the question is wrong, or maybe I’m just afraid of the answer. I wonder if we’ve been looking for meaning in the wrong places—in permanence, in legacies, in things that don’t move. What if it’s the movement itself that matters? On certain days, the fleeting nature of life feels like a gift. Decisions don’t carry the same gravity; I let things go more easily. I can savor a moment without needing to trap it, knowing it’s meant to be brief. And yet, there’s this undercurrent, a kind of s...

  I've always been drawn to the raw, unfiltered energy of heavy rock music—the kind that feels like it’s tearing something open inside of you, leaving you exposed yet somehow makes you stronger.  Waaaaayyy back in college, when the world seemed divided into groups— the rockers on one side 💀😈💀, and hip-hoppers on the other ✌✌👌—I knew exactly where I stood.  Rock was more than just music; it was a statement of identity, a rebellion against the mundane. The aggressive riffs, the head-banging intensity, the sheer force of it all—it was like channeling the chaos of life into something tangible, something powerful. So, when the era of Nu metal emerged, blending rap and pop with my sacred rock, I didn't like it. It wasn’t that I couldn’t appreciate the craftsmanship behind it—I could—but it felt like a dilution, a watering down of everything I held dear. You had to pick a side back then, and I chose rock with a sort of blind loyalty, fueled more by the need to belong than by...

  While cleaning out the garage, sifting through the debris of forgotten years, I found an old photograph tucked into a small box, yellowed at the edges, stubborn against the dust. I knew it before I even looked — the weight of it humming in my hands. A snapshot of a boy I barely recognize now: hair a little wild, a smile a little too sure, eyes chasing something just beyond the frame as if he believed the world would always wait for him. I wonder what he knew back then — or what he hadn't yet learned. How many choices still lay untouched before him, how many hearts would be gathered and dropped along the way, how many nights would stretch endlessly beneath a sky too wide to hold all the questions that would come. A boy smiling without knowing the cost of wonder. A boy chasing after futures that would later burn themselves down to ash. I am not haunted by what he hoped for — I am haunted by the purity of his not-knowing. Sometimes, I envy him — the unbroken faith he carried...

Some ghosts wear zippers instead of faces. There was a time I couldn’t go anywhere without you. You were comfort on bad days, silence when words felt too sharp. You made cold mornings softer. Loneliness easier to carry. I didn’t question you. You were just there. Always. We went through everything together—late-night walks, grocery store breakdowns, bus rides where I tried to disappear. You hugged me when no one else knew how. I kept you even when you started falling apart. Even when I knew you were past your prime, unraveling at the edges, losing color in places that used to feel like home. You stopped fitting, but I made excuses. Called it loyalty. Called it love. And still, I held on. Maybe out of memory. Maybe out of guilt. Or maybe because I was afraid of what letting go might say about me. But the truth is— I don’t miss you now. Not really. Not who you’ve become. You're stretched out. Sagging. Smell like an old version of me I’d rather forget. You don't ho...

We were down to the last box. The walls were bare, echoing in a way they hadn’t since we moved in. There’s a strange silence to empty rooms — not peace, not absence, but something heavier. Like the air knows what’s no longer being said. I sat on the floor where the couch used to be. There was a faint imprint on the carpet — the ghost of comfort, or routine, or both. I traced it with my fingers like that would help me remember who I was when I still belonged here. You don’t realize how much of your identity gets stored in spaces — in chipped mugs and drawer handles, in hallway shadows and the way light used to fall at 4:17 p.m. And when you leave, it doesn’t all come with you. Some parts stay behind, hidden in the corners you forgot to clean. The real abyss isn’t the fear of what’s next. It’s this: The stillness between no longer and not yet. Where memory becomes unreliable, and the self starts to blur. Everyone talks about the grief of endings, but no one warns you about the sil...

I sat alone on the worn couch, remote in hand, staring at the familiar opening credits of a show I once watched every week like it was a lifeline. Tonight, the laughter felt hollow, the jokes like whispers from someone else’s life. I wasn’t here to be entertained—I was here to visit an old version of myself, the one who believed this story held answers. Rewatching a show I’ve outgrown isn’t about reclaiming warmth or comfort. It’s about tracing the slow unraveling of who I used to be, like sifting through dust-covered photographs. The characters haven’t changed, but my gaze has—older, wearier, carrying the weight of roads taken and roads abandoned. Sometimes, growing up feels less like moving forward and more like leaving behind a self who was never fully ready to leave. There’s a strange grief in watching those scenes again—not for the story itself, but for the self who once saw herself reflected in it. We return not to revive but to mourn, to honor the ghost of who we were before g...

Losing your keys is the quiet rebellion of order against itself. At first, it feels like life has hiccuped. The kind of rupture so small it shouldn’t matter, yet manages to unhinge everything. You check your bag three times, then the counter, then the jacket you haven’t worn in a week. It's not about the keys anymore. It's about what their absence unravels. Because keys aren't just metal. They are continuity. They are the mundane rituals that trick us into believing the world makes sense — that if you follow the same path each day, you'll arrive somewhere familiar. But when keys disappear, the path collapses. Suddenly you’re not just late—you’re disoriented, unmoored, estranged from your own routine. And in that moment, a door becomes a symbol. Not of what's locked, but of how little you understand your own thresholds. How many doors have you opened without knowing what they kept out? How many times have you walked in without noticing what you left behind? The l...

It was a quiet morning in Baguio, I'm off to my usual morning run, when I heard a child speaking broken Ilocano with a cadence that didn’t quite belong here. His mother, wrapped in layers too thin for the mountain cold, held his hand too tightly—like someone afraid of losing something else. I didn’t ask where they came from. I didn’t need to. You can recognize dislocation even in silence. It has a certain weight. Like a suitcase packed with the wrong memories. We talk about refugees as if they all cross oceans, but some just cross rivers, or barbed wire, or city lines. And some don’t even move at all—they’re just slowly pushed out of the center of their own lives. Not every exile is geographic. Sometimes, it’s spiritual. Cultural. Bureaucratic. We measure displacement in kilometers, but it is better measured in lost language, eroded rituals, in the way children forget how to name the trees their ancestors worshipped. What makes a home isn’t the walls, but the ability to imagine ...

It always starts the same: light through blinds, the click of the kettle, the soft groan of plumbing. You don’t realize you’re building a ritual until the ritual disappears. Then suddenly, the absence has shape. My old apartment had a window that faced nothing special—just a brick wall, faded graffiti, a stubborn weed that grew through concrete. I used to stare at it while waiting for the toaster to pop. I never thought I’d miss that view. But now, it visits me uninvited. In sterile hotel rooms. In the blur between meetings. In the quiet moments before a notification chimes. We think we miss people or places. Sometimes, what we miss is the version of ourselves that existed in those hours we never thought to notice. Mornings are forgettable by design. They're repetition, maintenance, routine. But there's something sacred in their silence. The way the world is half-asleep, and so are you. No performance yet. No crisis. Just the click of a spoon against ceramic and the low hum ...

It starts with a sound—a footstep, a laugh, a name said too softly. Then silence. Then the echo. And it never really sounds like the original, does it? Slightly stretched, slightly delayed, slightly lonelier. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. How echoes work. How they’re just sound waves bouncing off surfaces—walls, mountains, empty rooms. Science says they’re reflections of energy. But it feels deeper than that. It feels like proof that the past never really leaves. Just changes shape. I read somewhere that sound never truly disappears; it just gets quieter, swallowed by time. That somewhere, in some imperceptible way, every word I’ve spoken is still rippling outward, endlessly diluted, endlessly persistent. That haunts me. Because if that’s true, then all the things I’ve said in anger, in longing, in love—they’re still out there, decaying in slow motion. Still traveling. Still arriving. Maybe that’s why certain places feel heavy even when they’re empty. Rooms hold mor...

I used to believe faith was a steady flame handed down—warmth that sheltered me from the cold winds of doubt. It was a map drawn by hands older than mine, with clear roads, familiar landmarks, and promises stitched into the sky. I carried it like armor and sanctuary, the kind you don’t question because it’s part of your bones. But growing up is learning to step outside that light and see the shadows it cast. The edges blur. The roads fork. The promises twist in ways you never expected. Outgrowing faith isn’t a clean break. It’s a slow peeling back, a quiet unlearning, an ache that feels like betrayal and freedom all at once. It’s realizing that what once protected you may now confine you. That your soul, hungry for something deeper, refuses to be tethered to the stories you were told. I see now that faith is less about certainty and more about courage—the courage to face the unknown without the safety net of old truths. It’s a paradox: losing belief but not losing hope. Letting go b...

 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...

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...

Sometimes, there are moments that just hit me, like a sudden gust of memories that reminds me of things I’ve tried to forget and perhaps hide in the compartments of my mind. Also, it’s in the stillness— in these calm, unguarded moments— all of it comes back to life. Before I know it, the weight of those memories hits me, pulling me into a space where I’m left standing at a crossroads, with nostalgia on one side and reality on the other, wondering how I ended up here, caught between what was and what could have been. Chasing dreams sometimes feels like balancing on a knife’s edge, and in the rush, I end up hurting those closest to me without even realizing it. I sometimes get so locked onto the goal that the quiet chaos I left behind slips right past me. It often feels like I am wandering through an endless maze, and with each turn, it feels like I’m losing pieces of the world I once thought I had figured out. What once shimmered with hope now feels distorted and distant. Justice and lo...

Today I realized… ... That beautiful memories do not demand forgetting. They only ask to be touched gently, like a scar you’ve come to love. ... That Marlboro Gold tastes like dried sweet potato leaves—bitter, earthy, the kind of disappointment that reminds you you're still alive. Some truths don’t burn, they just wither. ... That silence is not emptiness. It's where wisdom blooms in the corners of the mouth that chose not to speak. There is grace in the unsaid. ... That too much care can drown the very thing you love. Like the stargazer lily I tried to keep alive—I watered it with good intentions, smothered it with tenderness. But love, without listening, kills softly. The wilt was not betrayal. It was instruction. ... That no matter how tightly you hold your pain behind a smile, someone will always see through it. Soulmates are not just found—they are the ones who see you and don’t flinch. You can’t wear masks around them. They were never fooled to begin with. ... That...