Fragments of the Quiet Mind

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...

  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...

This is w here the light breaks just to drown. Hope isn’t some pretty thing. It’s a slow burn that keeps you awake at night, fooling you with a whisper, “Maybe this time.” It digs its claws in, even when everything screams you’re done. Hope’s the hook you can’t shake, even when it’s tearing you apart from the inside. Despair doesn’t wait politely. It crashes in like a storm, cold and sharp, and it doesn’t care if you’re ready or not. It doesn’t dance with hope—they fight. It’s brutal, ugly. Despair wants to swallow everything whole, leaves no room for mercy. There’s no peace between them. It’s a war you didn’t sign up for, but you live it every damn day—grasping for that fragile flicker, even as the darkness tightens around your throat. You hold hope like a lifeline but feel despair pulling the knot tighter. No balance. No graceful dance. Just a mess of broken promises and shattered dreams. Hope keeps you chasing ghosts; despair waits, patient, knowing it will win. And the worst p...

W e are taught to seek healing as if it is an erasure. That once we "get better," the pain vanishes and the person we were before returns, whole and untouched. But I have never returned to anything. Only continued. Pain does not politely excuse itself when it's done with you. It lingers like smoke in the walls, reshaping the air you breathe. To heal, in the way most understand it, is to forget the fire. But what if you needed the fire? What if the pain was not a detour, but the road? I have grown not from resolution, but rupture. My becoming came through bloodied thresholds—through nights where sleep was a mercy I was denied, through mornings that greeted me with grief curled on my chest like a feral cat. I did not become wiser because I learned to numb it. I became wiser because I stayed awake through the storm, soaked and shivering, refusing to close my eyes. The world rewards polished survival. The tidy narrative. “I went through something hard, but I’m okay now.” But ...

I walk through this world unshaken, Unafraid of the eyes that pass, For their gaze is ash in the storm— It neither shapes nor scatters me. I am not forged by applause, Nor do I bleed in their silence. My roots twist deep in blackened soil, Feeding on the marrow of my own darkness. I do not seek the light of people's approval, For I have tasted the abyss within— Cold, relentless, unbroken. And in this quiet certainty, No mirror need reflect me, For I am the shadow and the flame I simply... am

I’ve been thinking about how good I am at understanding people. Call me an airhead and proud, but really, I am good at it. Maybe too good. It’s like my brain is wired to read between the lines, catch the half-hidden sighs, the subtle shifts in tone. I can sense when someone’s tired before they say it, when a smile is just a mask, when words are doing damage beneath the surface. And I do it so naturally that I barely notice I’m doing it. I make excuses for people before anyone else even feels the sting.  They didn’t mean it.  They’re hurting.  It’s not personal.   I rehearse their backstories and soften their edges, as if by understanding them better, I can protect myself from being hurt. But here’s the thing I’m only now starting to admit to myself: while I’m fluent in everyone else’s pain, I’m utterly mute about my own. When I withdraw, I hear the word “cold.” When I set a boundary, it’s “too much.” When I flinch at a careless comment, I’m “overreacting.” No one ...

 There is no justification for walking into a place of worship with a weapon. No cause, no grievance, no theory—nothing—can make sense of that kind of cruelty. To kill people in the middle of prayer is not rebellion, it is desecration. It is not rage—it is rot. The kind that begins in the soul and spreads through history, disguised as ideology. On October 27, 2018, a man entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire. Eleven people were murdered. It was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history. And yet, somehow, it wasn’t surprising. The world had been inching toward this—subtly, then shamelessly. Hatred no longer hid. It posted. It shouted. It ran for office. It wore suits and badges and usernames and smirks. And when it pulled the trigger that morning, it did so with the confidence of someone who had already been told: yes, you belong here too. The Tree of Life. Etz Chaim. A name that echoes through both scripture and longing. A symbol of ...

I remember the news trickling in, the way the earth gave way in Benguet and Cebu — houses swallowed, lives buried beneath rubble that was once the land we called home. It’s easy to point fingers at mining companies, at open-pit scars carved like wounds across the mountainside. But what about us? What part do we play in this quiet violence? Mining is a cruel pact. We dig not just for gold or minerals, but for the promise of progress. We tell ourselves the earth will forgive us, that the price we pay is worth the convenience and wealth it offers. But the land does not forgive — it remembers. The landslide is not just soil collapsing; it’s the earth’s way of whispering a bitter truth: we are strangers here, not masters. The calls to ban mining are calls to respect a fragile balance we have long ignored. Yet, the complexity of survival in a place like the Philippines makes this no simple moral judgment. The people who rely on mining for livelihood are caught in the same web of contradict...

You ever sit at the dinner table, trying to explain something you just learned about the world—like systemic racism, gender identity, or climate change—and watch your family nod politely but clearly just waiting for you to finish? Yeah, that’s my life. Being “woke” in a family that isn’t feels like shouting underwater. You know the words, the concepts, the nuances, but the room stays heavy and silent, like you’re speaking a language no one else remembers how to hear. I’ve gotten so used to dialing back my passion or twisting my words so they don’t sound like accusations but invitations—kind of like explaining a complicated joke. And sometimes, that’s exhausting. It’s lonely in a way that’s hard to explain. Because on one hand, I want to scream, Why can’t you see this? But on the other, I know that waking up is a slow, personal journey. Some days, I’m patient. Other days, I’m not. I’m learning that “woke” isn’t just about knowing the right terms or politics—it’s about choosing love ...

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 ...

I used to believe the world had a place carved out for me—a bright, undeniable purpose, a calling whispered through the chaos. A dream job that would illuminate the darkest corridors of doubt. But the truth I found was more elusive, more quiet. There is a shame in not having a dream, not because ambition is shameful, but because the silence of absence is deafening. It’s a soft, persistent ache—a question that gnaws beneath the surface when the crowd chants “Find your passion!” as if it were a command rather than a gift. I carry this shame not as a scar, but as a shadow—one that stretches longer than the daylight. It’s the shame of drifting, of not belonging to some grand narrative of destiny. Of waking every morning to a life that feels like a rehearsal without a script. And yet, I realize: maybe this absence is not a void, but a space. A quiet room where I learn what it means to exist without ceremony. This quiet room teaches me something radical—there is dignity in the ordinary,...

Funny how life casts you in roles you never auditioned for. Me? Always the background character — the reliable extra who’s there, but never quite seen . Like a houseplant nobody remembers to water but somehow still alive. I hold the umbrella when no one wants to get wet, carry groceries nobody remembers, and pop up just in time to fix problems — then disappear faster than free food at a meeting. It’s a strange kind of existence: essential, but uncredited. Honestly, I’m beginning to think my superpower is perfecting the art of invisibility... or maybe just excellent at hiding behind the snacks. Sometimes I wonder if I’m secretly an invisible superhero. Not the cape-wearing kind — more like the person who makes sure the coffee’s brewed and the Wi-Fi doesn’t throw a tantrum. Meanwhile, the spotlight hits, and I’m already offstage, watching from the wings — probably scrolling through my phone pretending to be busy. Exhausting, really. But maybe that’s the point — being background means ...

I used to think the universe was out to get me. Not in a dramatic, lightning-strikes-twice kind of way, but in the quiet, petty way it forgets to answer your prayers and lets your socks vanish in the dryer. You know, the small stuff that feels personal even though it obviously isn’t. Eventually, I stopped waiting for signs. Stopped thinking the traffic light was red because I needed to slow down metaphorically. Maybe it was just red. Maybe the universe wasn’t teaching me anything—it just was. Motionless in its vastness, humming its own tune, not even aware I existed. And weirdly, that helped. There’s a strange relief in realizing no one’s scripting your life behind the curtain. That fate isn’t micromanaging your heartbreaks or curating your triumphs like some cosmic film editor. Things just… happen. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you don’t. And it’s not personal. It never was. But that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. You can still assign meaning. Stitch it into the fabric of or...

I used to think growing up meant becoming some grand, polished version of yourself—the one your childhood self would cheer for, maybe even brag about at recess. But here I am, ordering my third cup of coffee at 9 PM, staring blankly at a screen, and wondering if I’ve just been winging adulthood all along. Growing up is realizing you’re your own unpaid intern. Turns out, the kid inside me would side-eye this version pretty hard. Not because I gave up on dreams, but because I forgot how to be recklessly hopeful. The fearless wonder? Buried under endless to-do lists and a growing collection of "shoulds" I didn’t even know I agreed to. Hope is the most expensive habit with the worst Return of Investment. But here’s the twist: maybe that side-eye is a good thing. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of reminding me that I’m still in progress. The kid’s shock is just a mirror—reflecting not failure, but the distance traveled. Sometimes the only thing growing faster than you is your coll...

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 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...

Amidst the depths... When life has scraped the marrow of your being,   and hardships outnumber the stars in the night sky. Yet, in that abyss, there lies a flicker, a spark of resilience refusing to be extinguished. For it is in the darkest moments,   where the strength to endure is forged with every breath,   and the embers of hope persist against the odds. Amidst the depths,  a transformation takes hold,   where wounds become scars,  and vulnerability turns into fortitude. With each trial endured,  a fragment of wisdom is gained,   a lesson etched deep within the dark crevices of the soul. And as the weight of the world threatens to suffocate,   the spirit within rises,  defying the gravity of despair. For even amidst the depths,   there exists an unwavering belief,   t hat the human spirit is indomitable,   and from the depths,  it shall ascend,   t o pierce the night with a beacon of resilience.

The world is a vast and mysterious place, and sometimes it can seem overwhelmingly dark. At 2am, when the world is still and quiet, and the only sound is the beating of your own heart, it's easy to get lost in your thoughts. It's a time when the mind is free to wander, and most often than not, it's during these moments that our most profound ideas emerge. 2am is the most intriguing hour (at least for me). It is the time when the world is at its quietest, the mind is at its loudest. It's in these moments of solitude that the darkness of the world comes creeping in, and my thoughts dwell with the problems that plague humanity. Yet, even within the profound darkness, the promise of dawn lingers; even in the depths of despair, there is hope. It is the first glimmer of light on the horizon, a gentle whisper that speaks of new beginnings. Hope is the light that shines through the darkness, illuminating a path towards a better tomorrow. Just as the night cannot hold back the...

In the depths of your spirit, a blazing inferno roars, A tempestuous flame, yearning to explore, Yet weariness ensnares you, a suffocating shroud, From years entrenched in survival's merciless crowd. You're not lazy, devoid of drive, nor ensnared in plight, Banish such thoughts, let your spirit ignite, For within your weary soul, lies a dormant might, Waiting for its moment to unleash and take flight. Survival's domain, a violent realm it seems, Where relentless battles are fought in shattered dreams, Every day a grueling struggle to cling and cope, And exhaustion descends like an anchor's heavy slope. But know this kindred, there's a difference here, Between weariness and a spirit held clear, You've weathered storms and faced your fears, Now it's time to rest, to dry your tears. The world may whisper, "Keep moving, don't cease," But listen closely, find your inner peace, You've earned this respite, this moment of pause, To heal your wounds...

Today, I learned that … In the company of fools and in trying to make your point be understood by them is as futile as forcing a pig to fly. Never underestimate the ingenuity of fools, or you’ll end up sounding like a total moron. Helping colleagues with their messes will only make your boss call you in her office and give you an hour sermon about responsibility, indifference and how altruism is in fact defined as stupidity. Overthinking is the universe's way of saying “Have a coffee with a friend.” a simple thank you from your colleagues whose asses you just saved despite being scolded by your blood thirsty boss is somewhat soothing. in the silence of the remaining hour at work, uttering a short grateful prayer brings back an equal amount of pain and bliss. a stick on pad with a sunflower and a sun god drawing on it can make a downhearted soul be hopeful. life is full of surprises, the person you don’t expect to be there when you need someone to talk to happens to be the perso...