Fragments of the Quiet Mind

TBR 2014 is perhaps the most memorable run I’ve had for some reasons:  First, it was my first official full marathon,  secondly, it’s practically chasing your DREAMS  and lastly, it was run specifically summarizing my life at that point.  Six months before the big race, my left foot started playing a painful tune. So, I thought, "Hey, let's have a doctor jam session!" Turns out, Doc told me to rest and quit my long-distance running because my ankle was hosting a uric acid party. Apparently, running would be like adding an extra beat to the pain playlist. Plus, I was given some dietary restrictions, like watching what I eat. Did I listen? Nah! I turned a deaf ear and went on to conquer not one, but two half marathons. And guess what? The day after those "fun"-runs, I transformed into a limping maestro. Every step felt like a cruel punishment. But you know what? I'm just a stubborn virtuoso who finds solace in the symphony of agony. On November 24, 2013, lif...

They thought it would end me. The silence. The turning away. The way they spoke my name like it was something bitter in their mouths—or worse, not at all. They made the burial look like mercy, but I knew what it was: an erasure. A quiet undoing. They called it consequence. I called it betrayal. I wasn’t ready. And yet, the earth took me in. At first, I fought it. I clawed against the weight. I screamed in a language only the dead understood. No one heard. No one came. There’s something hollow about being forgotten while your heart is still beating. Something feral. Something cold. But the dirt... the dirt didn’t judge. It simply held me. I lay there. Long enough to forget the shape of light. Long enough to imagine that maybe I’d deserved it—this burial, this becoming no one. I wilted inward, until even my thoughts stopped making sound. But what no one tells you is that seeds don’t bloom in the open. They rupture in darkness. Quietly. Painfully. I cracked. Split wide, with...

The storm’s almost over. You can smell it in the sky—the way the air softens, the way the shadows begin to fold into something less cruel. There’s a kind of silence that settles when a storm decides it’s had enough. A hush that almost feels like forgiveness. And then— Dawn. That fragile thing, always slipping in like it’s not sure it’s allowed to stay. We call it “hope,” don’t we? That strange, irrational warmth that crawls into your chest even when the world is still broken. I used to mock people for holding on to it. Thought I was smarter. Sharper. A realist who had no room for illusions. But this year… This year, something inside me cracked. Hope found the opening and seeped in—not loudly, not like a revelation—but like water through old wood. Quiet, persistent, irreversible. It’s not the kind of hope that waits for miracles. It’s the kind that teaches you how to breathe again, even if your ribs still ache from everything that tried to crush you. I’ve been in bed for weeks. Not...

There was something cinematic about my collapse. You know the kind. The aching stare into space. The playlist suddenly making sense. Ashtrays filling up like metaphors. That slow descent where even your breath feels like dialogue from a French indie film. You can romanticize that. You can write about that. But healing? Healing is brushing your teeth. Again. It's drinking water when it doesn't taste like anything. It’s putting your phone down because there’s nothing to say and nothing to scroll for. It’s the slow erosion of the version of you that needed chaos to feel alive. No one writes songs about oatmeal. No one makes a montage out of "I got out of bed today." You sit in silence. You count breaths. You rearrange the furniture hoping something inside moves with it. And yet—this is where life actually begins again. Not at the peak of the heartbreak, but somewhere on the third Tuesday after it, when you realize you haven't cried in a week and you’re not sure h...