Fragments of the Quiet Mind

Araw ng mga Bayani is the last Monday in August. You blink and it’s gone. One day. One flag emoji. Maybe a parade if you're in the right city or have a cousin in the military. Maybe not even that. But June? June is a full-blown event. It’s loud and layered and bright enough to make even the grocery store feel like it’s trying to come out. Thirty whole days of rainbow merch, playlists, themed drinks, hashtags, and heated arguments online. And I started wondering—not accusing, not judging, just… wondering. Why does the nation give a day to the people who died for its freedom… but a whole month to those still trying to live in it? I’m not saying Pride shouldn’t exist. I think there’s something beautiful about people finally being allowed to celebrate parts of themselves that used to get them hurt—or worse, made invisible. We live in a world that once forced queerness underground, so when it comes out dancing, yeah, let it dance. But it still feels strange that the people who died...

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...

There was this boy who used to sit alone on a rusted porch a few blocks from my childhood home. I don’t remember his name—just the stillness of him. Like he was holding his breath for a world that would never exhale. Some kids wear silence like a hoodie; he wore it like skin. People said his parents were “complicated,” which is adult code for we’d rather not get involved. He vanished sometime before junior year. No one asked where. It’s strange how easily a person can be erased just by not being wanted. Not hated, not bullied. Just… unchosen. And when someone goes unseen long enough, they begin to wonder if they were ever real. Lately, I think about him when I scroll past the headlines—another teenager radicalized online, another manifesto, another explosion of grief dressed as rage. People gasp, ask the same tired questions: How could this happen? Why didn’t anyone see the signs? But invisibility doesn’t leave signs. It leaves absence. We like to believe harm begins with intent. But i...

Take this:  Have you ever felt like you're dancing to a rhythm that only you can hear? As Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." In a world that yearns for conformity, I find solace in the haunting beauty of dancing to the melodies that others cannot hear.  Well basically, this quote has been a repeating theme of my existence and has resonated deeply with me, capturing the essence of my journey through life and the judgments I have faced along the way, a journey plagued by the piercing notes of overthinking which oftenly leads to melancholy. You see, there is a peculiar joy in finding your own melody amidst a world that often prefers conformity. There is a certain sadness that accompanies the act of dancing alone. It is a bittersweet symphony, filled with longing and a profound sense of isolation. It's as if I have stumbled upon a secret symphony, hidden within the recesses of my so...

It started with a simple question from a cousin at dinner: "Would you still vaccinate your future kids after all that Dengvaxia stuff?" I had just taken a bite of kare-kare. I chewed for a bit longer than necessary. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I knew the moment I opened my mouth, I’d become the uninvited spokesperson for science, ethics, and a country’s fractured trust. There’s something absurd about the way we treat public health here. We throw away decades of medical progress faster than we throw rice at a wedding, then panic when outbreaks arrive like uninvited relatives during fiesta. We trusted science — until it made a mistake. And like every Filipino family feud, we never truly recover. We just stop speaking to each other and pretend everything’s fine. For the past Months, the name "Dengvaxia" spread faster than the disease it was meant to prevent. A vaccine meant to protect became a symbol of betrayal. And suddenly, everyone was a...

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...

To suddenly come to the realization that I bring nothing but pain and hatred... Is this because of the belief that  happiness is possible in a seemingly futile case?  In this futile attempt in trying to reach for dreams, we seldom think of consequences, and technically, we end up killing people close to us. I guess people have  to weed out all remaining hope in this utterly meaningless condition. In as much as this kills us, staying away is the most sane option. It’s as if the entirety of our situation where people once believed in the achievement of goals and dreams is now turning into a realistic nightmare where they are weighed down by their very definition of universal concepts regarding justice, love, hope, bliss and others – but the saddest thing is, people don’t actually agree with an objective perspective of how things are. Most often than not,  concepts are defined through people's pompous and subjective understanding of everything. What's worse is the stu...