Fragments of the Quiet Mind

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.

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...

Love is not blind—it is cruel enough to see you fully. To speak of love in the confines of simplicity is to rob it of its depth. Love, the greatest of forces, does not shelter us from the truth. It does not cloak us in the illusions of comfort; rather, it unveils us—stripping us bare of all our pretensions. The notion that love is blind, that it shields us from ourselves, is a lie perpetuated by the needy parts of our hearts, the ones that want safety, the ones that want to stay hidden in the quiet corners of longing. Love, in its truest form, is not a refuge from the world—it is a confrontation. A confrontation with yourself, with the person you love, with all the jagged edges of both. For how can you truly know another without exposing them to the rawness of who you are? To love is to endure. It is to sit in the discomfort of vulnerability and allow someone to see you—really see you—in all your complexity. To be truly loved is to be seen in your entirety, with all your flaws, your ...

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 are things I have never said—because I couldn’t, because words fracture the weight they try to hold. You see, some truths do not fit inside syllables. They are too wide for vowels, too wounded for grammar. I carry them not in my mouth but in my spine, in the slight curve of a shoulder that remembers who left, in the tension of a jaw clenched too often in silent rooms. This body—this soft machine of survival—has become a vault of truths I was too afraid or too inarticulate to name. And maybe that’s what we forget in our obsession with expression: that not all honesty is verbal. Some of it is kneeling on a cold floor after another sleepless night. Some of it is the hesitation before a touch. Some of it is how you flinch when the world comes too close. I have smiled while dying. Laughed while disintegrating. The world only sees what sounds pass through the lips. But what if I told you the real monologue was happening behind the eyes, under the skin, in the thousand micro-movements...

I just finished my 42km Marathon and yeah, at first it seemed like a brilliant idea.  I was fueled by overconfidence and way too much caffeine, thinking, “How hard can this be?”  Looking back now, it feels a bit like reviewing a movie where the plot twist is me questioning every single life choice that led me to that point. The marathon was less about crossing the finish line and more about having an endless conversation with my inner critic. At various stages, I found myself deep in debate: “Is this pain really worth it?” and “Did I actually need to run up that hill?” I practically had a tumultuous relationship with my chafing shorts, and let’s not forget the uphill stretch that had me questioning if I’d somehow offended gravity. But hey, through the sweat, the sore muscles, and the occasional existential crisis, I did it. I faced down every doubt, pushed through every mile, and emerged victorious—or at least, upright. So here’s to me, for running 42 kilometers and discoverin...