Fragments of the Quiet Mind

There are stories we shouldn't have to write. Only silences we’re forced to translate. I read about a fire today.  A mother. Three children. A house that turned into a question no one knows how to answer. The most dangerous thing about depression is not how loud it screams, but how politely it knocks. It comes dressed like fatigue. Like waiting. Like trying one more time.  Until one day, it forgets to knock—and burns the door down instead. No one chooses to become unrecognizable. But pain does that. Not in sudden, cinematic moments—but in hours no one sees. When a woman looks in the mirror and no longer sees a mother, a daughter, a wife—just a thing that hurts too loudly to exist quietly. And what do we do? We wait. We say, “Let’s talk tomorrow.” We say, “Kaya mo ‘yan.” We say, “Magdasal ka.” And then we look away. We build systems that take reports but not responsibility. We believe in due process but not in urgency. We leave people at the edge and call it patie...

At the peak of midnight where its solemnly silent, in the mysterious realm of the night, where darkness veils the world, my thoughts take shape, unraveling like a tapestry of ominous reflections. Shadows dance, weaving intricate patterns that mirror the complexities of my inner self. Sometimes, within this nocturnal sanctuary, I find solace. Happiness blossoms briefly, suspended in the delicate threads of thought. In those moments, simplicity reigns, and I feel liberated from the burdens of the day. Yet, more often than not, the descent into night brings despair. The breath of morning carries suffocating tendrils, weaving invisible shackles that entangle my spirit. Reasons for this anguish elude me, like distant whispers lost in the wind. Stagnation grips me tightly, and respite feels elusive. I am drawn into a swirling vortex, a void of inertia. Lost amidst fragmented thoughts and vacant gazes, I float aimlessly, trapped in an unfathomable realm. The shattered mirrors of my mind refle...

Once, the weight of words fell directly into another's hands.  Over a table.  Beneath a your cheap slow ceiling fan bought at shopee.  In the shadowed pause between heartbeats where one dared to be seen . But now? Now we bleed into screens. We scatter our grievances across fiber optic veins, each confession wrapped in curated mystery — a status here, a story there — hoping the algorithms might understand the things we are too afraid to say aloud. It is not dialogue. It is performance. Therapy for an audience we cannot touch. We call it connection. We call it healing. But sometimes it feels like shouting into a void that only reflects your own voice back at you. We craft vague laments and exquisite accusations in 280 characters or less, praying for the balm of a like, the lifeline of a comment. We trade the raw, trembling labor of conversation for the quick narcotic of validation, forgetting that what we seek cannot be delivered by a tap on a screen. The person we...

At night, everything unravels. The day folds itself into strange corners, and the shadows start speaking again. Sometimes there’s a kind of quiet, where for a second, breathing feels like a choice, and not a battle. Those moments are rare. Most days feel heavier than they should. You wake up already losing, like something invisible got its hands around your throat, feeling suffocated even before you opened your eyes. And you don't know why. You drift. Half there, half somewhere else. Staring through people. Forgetting how to answer simple questions. The world feels like a broken mirror, with each shard showing a version of you you don’t recognize. You reach for yourself and cut your hands open. People try to help. They mean well. They tell you to talk, to "get out more," to laugh at things that feel hollow. You nod. You shrink. You learn how to smile without meaning it. You could pretend. You could meet them halfway. Lower yourself into that easy, forgettable noise. But y...

There’s a strange stillness that settles in the aftermath of everything falling apart—like the world has exhaled, but you’re still holding your breath, waiting for something to change. You move through the wreckage, unsure of what to salvage, but you know you can't keep pretending everything is fine. The weight of it all presses down on you, suffocating, relentless. Hope feels like a distant concept, something from another life, while the storm around you only grows louder. It’s as if you’re standing at the edge of a blade, every step carrying the sharpness of inevitability. You search for relief, for an escape, but what you find is the echo of your own pain. It’s not just betrayal—it’s the feeling of being left behind, discarded in favor of something more convenient. The faces you once trusted now hide behind their lies, their smiles sharp like knives that cut deeper with every moment. It’s as though you’ve become a shadow, a ghost haunting a life that doesn’t fit anymore. Each b...

Paradox.   It’s the thing that clings to us, even when we don’t ask for it. A puzzle without a solution, wrapped in the trappings of our daily grind. We're told life is meant to be lived, to be experienced, yet with each breath we take, it feels as though we’re slowly suffocating. Every step forward, a step into an endless loop. Who we were and who we are are distant echoes, separated by time and choice, like shadows that stretch and shrink without warning. We chase answers as if they’ll bring clarity, but all we find are more questions—more locked doors. The more we seek, the more it slips away, like sand through our fingers. There’s always a part of us that feels just out of reach, something we can’t quite grasp, yet the second we stop reaching, that same emptiness comes rushing in. The more we want, the more we lose. The more we run, the further we are from the finish line. And yet, stopping to rest feels like surrender, like admitting that this chase, this madness, might never...

Despair doesn’t knock. It just enters, creeping through the cracks in your mind, sliding into every thought, every breath, until it feels like it’s always been there. You never see it coming. One moment, everything feels normal, or at least bearable. And then, like a thief in the night, it’s there—silent but suffocating. It wraps itself around your chest, makes it hard to breathe, and the more you try to push it away, the stronger its hold becomes. It doesn’t announce its presence with any grand gestures, no dramatic flare. It’s subtle, sneaky even. Maybe it starts with a moment of confusion, a fleeting thought you can’t shake. Or perhaps it’s the weight of a thousand little disappointments, stacking up until you can no longer ignore their presence. Each new layer presses down harder, until it becomes your only reality. The world becomes distant, almost irrelevant. The faces you see every day, the voices you hear, they seem muffled and unreal, as if they’re happening in another worl...

I found myself talking to the walls during the lockdown. Not in the way people think—no dramatic outbursts or madness—but in that quiet, desperate way you mutter to empty spaces when the idea of being seen has faded. There’s a loneliness that’s not cinematic. No rain, no music. Just the stale company of your own silence, broken only by the endless ping of emails and notifications. But those messages weren’t from people. They were from apps, brands, employers. “You’re essential,” they said, while handing me crumbs and expecting gratitude. The virus separated us physically, sure. But the system? The system kept us isolated long after the virus faded, turning our loneliness into a subscription model. I noticed how every notification wasn’t about connection, but consumption. How grief became a product you could journal through, exhaustion a badge of honor, and self-care a market segment. Capitalism didn’t care if I was broken; it only cared that I kept buying the illusion of healing. I ...

Let’s begin with the obvious: some of us were simply built different. And by different, I mean wired to fall in love with people who treat us like foot rugs from NOVO—slightly discounted, questionably stitched, and always replaceable. You'd think we’d aim for warmth, tenderness, a hint of decency. But no. Our emotional GPS reroutes straight to the nearest emotionally unavailable person, preferably with a tragic backstory and 13 unread messages from us. We love them because they don’t clap when we win, they don’t check if we ate, and they only reply with “k.” In short, ideal partner material . Psych majors call it anxious attachment. Your tita calls it “ kulang ka lang sa palo .” But we know the truth: it’s probably our inner child cosplaying as a martyr. Some of us were not raised with affection; we were raised with conditional love and jokes that hurt a little too specifically during family reunions. We say things like: “but I see their potential” or  “they’re just going throu...