[update] it's okay! tomorrow is always a blank slate, you're the one who decides what your worth is;
It's been a long time since I had to do something like this: sit myself down in the couch in my head and give myself a good heart-to-heart talking to.
To be honest, I was debating on whether sharing this here was wise. If me talking about anything to do with my personal life and emotional health is even okay in such a public space.
There is, after all, the available option to post it over at hernameisnoelle, the account I set up for myself when this place didn't feel safe. Only a handful of people are friended there, most of them people who have access to my Plurk account.
(A friend of mine, someone very special to me who found the place, asked about it awhile back. I didn't really know how to explain myself, so to have her tell me that she understood that I may have done that because I needed a safe place to go means worlds.
Just to say then: If you are not in that journal, it is not to say that the people who do have access mean more to me. There is no such thing as a hierarchy of affections with me. If you are my friend, you all matter a great deal to me; you are all special in different ways, but you do not differ in your weight of importance. You are all important. The journal was for my peace of mind. A place to put down thoughts in the easiest way possible because pen and paper take effort and manually written entries can be thrown away and discarded. While an online journal is easily deleted by a click of the button, it is the people who have access to it -- those who have had access to it who tie it down into existence.)
But I remind myself daily that I have to wake up in the morning and know that I am honest to the girl I see in the mirror. So this is copied from my Plurk with a few additional words here and there to expound on what was an otherwise primarily stream-of-consciousness post. This was originally locked to private with comments disabled, not because I didn't want to have my friends comment, but because I knew and understood that I couldn't have myself derailed from me talking to myself.
I am sharing it here, now, because I need it to exist in this journal. I need to be truthful to myself.
These kinds of promises after all, are the kind that you really need to keep.
the little one: [personal] please mute.
2 hours ago, private plurk to friends.
something is wrong.
i've been trying to avoid it for almost two weeks now and brush it off.
but the thing that happened with hiei brought it to my face. and stuff from yesterday and working a 6-day week has kept it niggling at the back of my head. these are just triggers, noey. and as much as they are that, they are not physical manifestations of things that can hurt you.
and it is okay to cry. not because you are sad or hurting. it is okay to cry if you are happy or overwhelmed with feeling. the body has to release whatever is inside somewhere somehow.
ghosts are just ghosts. they pass through you, make you cold, but they cannot cut you. that voice? the one at the back of your head? it is nothing in the face of the fact that you are loved.
be like kate. she stepped out from under her agent's sheltering wings and is out there looking for another agent who will help her get that publishing contract.
be like the boys, who you know you love primarily because they have what you feel you do not: courage. determination. drive. tenacity. that ability to pick themselves up.
hiei told you before. it is a foregone conclusion that you will make it. mags told you that it is only your own fear that holds you back. find the disconnect between what you do and what you love and drag it somewhere where the sun shines.
you tell your friends and your kids: if you want it enough, just go do it.
apply that to yourself.
you have already accomplished a lot more than some people have done. explored all the things you could achieve, no matter how small they seem. you played with the flag of this country on your jersey -- that means something. even if you weren't really philippine team. you were a full scholar for dance. had work not gotten in the way, you (probably) would have made company with a little more work.
why is it you are always on the VERY EDGE of what you want and then you stop and step back out of fear.
you know that not everyone is going to like what you put out.
you also know that there are people who love your voice. people who believe in you and want you to succeed.
what is one 'dislike' on youtube. you're closing that account anyway. and you have a new one: you can start over.
what is getting told that you are not worth the wait.
belle is right: people will do what is best for themselves at any one time.
you don't have to force yourself to forgive, but you are not the kind of person to hold the lack of people like a grudge. turn instead to the people who stayed. who came into your life after the fact and have offered to hold your hand every step of the way. backslides are nothing. they are a hiccup. a bump in the road. just keep driving. you'll get where you need to be eventually.
cry when you need to. do what you have to do. you're only human.
you're only human and maybe, in some ways, still very naive if only because you refuse to be jaded or to look at the world like there is nothing worth fighting for anymore.
you've looked into that abyss. you came out just fine. don't let this beat you. if you have to, remind yourself as often as you can.
if you have to, write it out as often as you need to. there is no shame in feeling weak just as long as you get your feet back under you.
as silly and as unimportant as it is. you did something brave tonight. something you would have just done no questions asked years ago just because you felt like it; but something you would not have done last year or the year before because you would have reasoned out the many reasons why you should not and cannot do what you did.
didn't your mom tell you that the reason good, epic things happened to you -- things your brother retells to his friends; that your friends tell theirs -- is because you just do what you love. you just let people know what they mean to you. don't all your friends remind you every single day that they love you.
that says a lot. that people love you.
a person's greatest accomplishment at the end of his or her life are the number of lives they have touched.
isn't this what you have always wanted, at the end of every day?
you've improved a lot since last year. since two years ago when you started therapy. you are no longer on medication. you go out, you have fun, you have not panicked in the presence of large crowds. yes, you felt a little claustrophobic at Best of Anime. but you told yourself to breathe, walked around and checked out the stalls, had a meal and held yourself together until the cavalry came.
you are FINE. you are BETTER. you are healing.
this is a lot to ask in such a short span of time. other people take years. decades, even.
you told yourself to TRY for a year because you wanted to challenge yourself. see how far you've come?
dad is giving you his support in whatever way he can. he drove you to the gigs before, right? and now, he's been asking about the music that's been coming out from your room. he may not understand why you want this so much, may be scared FOR YOU because he knows, more than anyone else (with the exception of mom) how badly you tend to take rejection. because it hurts in the heart when you get turned down. because you care -- sometimes, a little too much than what is needed.
but he is in your corner. didn't he ask how it went? didn't he express enthusiasm over that guy from the indie circuit checking in with you about tapping you for that venue he plans to put up if it ever that does happen?
and hasn't audrey given you pep talks all week to remind you that there is something there. you have something to offer. haven't em, cyn, marie, dan, mama len, rika, kang and everyone else told you repeatedly that you have something special. that you have potential. that you should talk more about the thing that you love: this music you make but that you are so terrified to share?
of all the forces in the world, self-doubt is the most destructive of these.
you cannot do anything about the things that were said. of what has been done by people who em has repeatedly told you probably did these for reasons that do not matter in the long-run. wasn't it confirmed to you that the way those two went about things was a twisted kind of way to get you moving? yes, it was an ineffective and incredibly hurtful way to handle the situation, but take what audrey has been telling you and apply it to that:
there are always two ways to look at things. neither way is wrong, but the one you choose determines the direction you move in.
look at the flip side: all the messing with your head, all the poking at the issue from all sides and not being upfront; it was a crappy way to deal with it. this is a given. but you already know you are not lacking in any kind of originality. you are not hanging on the coattails of anyone else. you created so much in just the first half of this year: force majeure, a new song, a pet project that needs you to help get it moving along.
you are doing things at your pace because forcing yourself to go where you are not ready to go is rushing what you are unable to handle at any one time.
you are okay, noey.
you don't need to say 'will be', because you already are.
take what you know and run with it. learn to believe again.
if you can't take that leap of faith across the damn cliff, then let's look for another way across.
nice girls don't always have to finish last. and finishing last doesn't always mean being too late for the good stuff.
...
30 Days → 01, Introduce yourself. | 02, Your first love. | 03, Your parents. | 04, Your most significant childhood memory. | 05, Discuss your feelings on the word “love” and the way it’s used today. | 06, Your day, in bullets. | 07, Your favorite super hero and why. | 08, Your favorite quote, in your handwriting. | 09, Your siblings. | 10, The shoes you wore today. | 11, Ten things that make you smile and a picture of yourself smiling. | 12, What’s in your bag? | 13, Short term goals for this month and why. | 14, A book that you’ve read more than 3 times. | 15, Your best friend. | 16, The weather outside. | 17, Ten things you’d like to say to ten different people, without using names. | 18, Your favorite birthday. | 19, A picture of you when you were younger. | 20, Your favorite writing project/universe. | 21, The fears you can't seem to shake. | 22, Something that makes you feel better. | 23, A prized possession. | 24, Something that makes you cry. | 25, A first. | 26, One interesting fact for every year you’ve been alive. | 27, Something that you miss. | 28, The places you went to today. | 29, Your guilty pleasures. | 30, One last moment, in great detail.
I've been putting off this entry for awhile, mostly because I've been having a hard time figuring out exactly how to answer this day's subject.
I may not have a photographic memory, but I have a tendency to remember a lot of things so trying to pick one and to classify it as "most significant" is very difficult. My memories are littered with childhood shenanigans.
I could tell you all about the time my brother, Nate _thenothing_ and I decided to turn the floor of my parents' bedroom into a makeshift "ice skating rink". None of us here at home (with the exception of Neal who had not been a 'twinkle in my mom's eye' at the time) will ever look at baby powder the same way ever again, I am afraid.
I could also tell you about trips out of town: for example, when I mistook a really humongous crab for a 'rock', the butterfly farm from my senior year of high school. I could recount my Retreats and Recollections, family trips to Bacolod, or the time I was thirteen and a guy fired a gun at the airport and the bullet grazed my cousin's cheek.
I could tell you about the first time I became friends with someone, or even the last time I ever had contact with a particular friend. These are all significant to me, after all; but while each of these things have changed me in some ways, I think I need to start somewhere earlier. Someplace important that I actually don't remember all too well.
>
I was seven years old and in first grade when I fell headfirst off this stage that was set up every week on a Monday in the Prep Area of St. Scholastica's College.
There wasn't any foul play. I wasn't pushed or anything like that. In fact, I can't help but wonder now about whoever it was (I can't remember her name either) who was supposed to catch my hand when I ran from the middle stage out of my 'frozen' state to the 'safe zones' designated for Ice/Water.
I think it might have been a Tuesday. Or it could have been a Friday. Piano lessons were always Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ballet Wednesdays and Fridays. But that stage would only be available on Tuesdays, so I really can't be sure.
I know the ground was wet. I wasn't too particular about wet ground ruining my ballet shoes at that age. I was dressed in a pair of white tights, a white leotard with a belt around my waist. My hair was up in a bun, the weather was balmy, the sky gray.
I don't remember much. I just know I was tagged 'free' and then I had to get to the 'safe zones' quickly. And then someone screamed and the concrete was under my cheek and someone was yelling orders to call a teacher or the school nurse.
I don't remember how I got to the clinic. I know I had a person under either arm -- or did someone carry me? I really can't be sure; but somehow I was laid out in the bed they kept on the first floor and the school doctor was asking if anyone knew the number to my house.
I'm not sure who told them that information. Every year in elementary, my parents would always put together a class directory that we would distribute to my class as a gift. I know this because I collected everyone's information on a long-size pad at the start of the year and Dad would let me type up some of the information on our computer after Mom picked out the border design.
I can't even remember who told me that they had to talk to my dad and not my mom. I just know from talks afterwards that Mom had gone sheet-white the moment she picked up the phone to hear that the school nurse had called to tell them that I'd taken a dive from a stage both my parents knew was roughly over three-feet high.
We joke about it now: me and friends. I learned in second year high school that it spawned an urban legend in my school... at least, that was before they remodeled the Peace Garden and replaced the slab of concrete that everyone referred to as "that grave of the elementary student who died and got buried with the school's favorite rabbits".
How is this significant?
Two years ago in February, you could say I had something of a wake-up call. I tell this to people in a very open manner because it explains my decision to later accept a friend's prompting to seek professional help to deal with a depression that had been plaguing me for a long, long while. But anyway: I was heading home from shift when I looked up to see the stoplight turn green. I was a few steps from the crossing and there was no one there. The other lane had started moving and I distinctly remember seeing a bus (pink and purple and white, don't ask about the color scheme I don't get it either) and I walked right into that street.
Obviously, nothing happened. The great thing taking uni where I did, is that you learn to play patintero¹ with incoming vehicles and come out safe on the other side of the street (I do not recommend this, it is unsafe and it is important to observe traffic rules). But kidding aside, there was that terrifying moment when I thought to myself: "Okay, I'm done. Let's just make this easy."
The first time I told Mom about this I told her, before I offered her my apology, was that it was the thought of how it would affect her that made me pick up my legs and break into a run. I spent a few hours in the hospital that day in First Grade just watching her cry and just hold onto dear life, her fingers curled around my hand. After seeing my mom cry like that, I knew I never wanted to scare her that badly again.
The first time I opened up to Nate about it, it was short of midnight and we were waiting for the train at the GMA-Kamuning Station after a night of drinking beer and bonding with my cousin Tiffany. I hadn't told anyone about going to therapy other than my mom and I really wanted to come clean to my brother, the boy I used to refer to as "my twin who came into the world two years late". He held me really tight just as the train was coming in and swore at me that he would kill me himself if I tried anything like that again. He didn't cry, but he doesn't really cry if he knows things are fixable; but he stuck by me the whole evening home while we walked the length of Ortigas looking for a cab.
I haven't told Dad. The day I opened up to him about seeking therapy I tried, but I couldn't.
I told him that I had sought a therapist to help me, that I was on medication to help balance out whatever chemical imbalance there was in my brain; but I couldn't tell him I seriously thought about taking my life, even if this isn't the first time suicide ideation has crossed my mind. I don't know. If he finds this entry, I'll open up to him then. But for now, for his peace of mind, I don't bring it up. What's important is that I'm here, after all.
A few days ago, someone very special to me -- a friend of mine who I've known and loved like family since high school -- jumped off a bridge. She's alive, which is the most important thing, and she is being treated in a hospital. Some of you have had me turn to you to talk about this, because being so far away from her and unable to visit or talk to her face to face is incredibly hard and something I would never wish on anyone.
I haven't heard from her and there is a record on my phone of the two times last 5th October at 2:53 and 7:42PM she tried to reach me. I have been trying not to feel guilty for sleeping too deeply having come from a really stressful shift at work. I just want to hold onto the thought that she is getting the best care that the hospital she is in can offer and have left her a note via Tumblr that I love her, that we all do here at home and how my brother and my mom both send their best regards and their love.
It is a gift to live. It may not feel like that, most days when everything seems to crush you from all sides.
But it is a gift to breathe and wake up and spend time with the people you love, and cross paths with strangers who can be potential friends. To turn on the radio or television -- or hell, Youtube and listen to songs or see things that move you. To plug into the internet and connect with individuals who can change your life in miraculous ways.
It is a gift to fall and get up. To know that just because you hit rock bottom, you can get your feet back under you.
[1] - Patintero is a traditional game played by children in my country. For more information, you can learn about it via this website
To be honest, I was debating on whether sharing this here was wise. If me talking about anything to do with my personal life and emotional health is even okay in such a public space.
There is, after all, the available option to post it over at hernameisnoelle, the account I set up for myself when this place didn't feel safe. Only a handful of people are friended there, most of them people who have access to my Plurk account.
(A friend of mine, someone very special to me who found the place, asked about it awhile back. I didn't really know how to explain myself, so to have her tell me that she understood that I may have done that because I needed a safe place to go means worlds.
Just to say then: If you are not in that journal, it is not to say that the people who do have access mean more to me. There is no such thing as a hierarchy of affections with me. If you are my friend, you all matter a great deal to me; you are all special in different ways, but you do not differ in your weight of importance. You are all important. The journal was for my peace of mind. A place to put down thoughts in the easiest way possible because pen and paper take effort and manually written entries can be thrown away and discarded. While an online journal is easily deleted by a click of the button, it is the people who have access to it -- those who have had access to it who tie it down into existence.)
But I remind myself daily that I have to wake up in the morning and know that I am honest to the girl I see in the mirror. So this is copied from my Plurk with a few additional words here and there to expound on what was an otherwise primarily stream-of-consciousness post. This was originally locked to private with comments disabled, not because I didn't want to have my friends comment, but because I knew and understood that I couldn't have myself derailed from me talking to myself.
I am sharing it here, now, because I need it to exist in this journal. I need to be truthful to myself.
These kinds of promises after all, are the kind that you really need to keep.
the little one: [personal] please mute.
2 hours ago, private plurk to friends.
something is wrong.
i've been trying to avoid it for almost two weeks now and brush it off.
but the thing that happened with hiei brought it to my face. and stuff from yesterday and working a 6-day week has kept it niggling at the back of my head. these are just triggers, noey. and as much as they are that, they are not physical manifestations of things that can hurt you.
and it is okay to cry. not because you are sad or hurting. it is okay to cry if you are happy or overwhelmed with feeling. the body has to release whatever is inside somewhere somehow.
ghosts are just ghosts. they pass through you, make you cold, but they cannot cut you. that voice? the one at the back of your head? it is nothing in the face of the fact that you are loved.
be like kate. she stepped out from under her agent's sheltering wings and is out there looking for another agent who will help her get that publishing contract.
be like the boys, who you know you love primarily because they have what you feel you do not: courage. determination. drive. tenacity. that ability to pick themselves up.
hiei told you before. it is a foregone conclusion that you will make it. mags told you that it is only your own fear that holds you back. find the disconnect between what you do and what you love and drag it somewhere where the sun shines.
you tell your friends and your kids: if you want it enough, just go do it.
apply that to yourself.
you have already accomplished a lot more than some people have done. explored all the things you could achieve, no matter how small they seem. you played with the flag of this country on your jersey -- that means something. even if you weren't really philippine team. you were a full scholar for dance. had work not gotten in the way, you (probably) would have made company with a little more work.
why is it you are always on the VERY EDGE of what you want and then you stop and step back out of fear.
you know that not everyone is going to like what you put out.
you also know that there are people who love your voice. people who believe in you and want you to succeed.
what is one 'dislike' on youtube. you're closing that account anyway. and you have a new one: you can start over.
what is getting told that you are not worth the wait.
belle is right: people will do what is best for themselves at any one time.
you don't have to force yourself to forgive, but you are not the kind of person to hold the lack of people like a grudge. turn instead to the people who stayed. who came into your life after the fact and have offered to hold your hand every step of the way. backslides are nothing. they are a hiccup. a bump in the road. just keep driving. you'll get where you need to be eventually.
cry when you need to. do what you have to do. you're only human.
you're only human and maybe, in some ways, still very naive if only because you refuse to be jaded or to look at the world like there is nothing worth fighting for anymore.
you've looked into that abyss. you came out just fine. don't let this beat you. if you have to, remind yourself as often as you can.
if you have to, write it out as often as you need to. there is no shame in feeling weak just as long as you get your feet back under you.
as silly and as unimportant as it is. you did something brave tonight. something you would have just done no questions asked years ago just because you felt like it; but something you would not have done last year or the year before because you would have reasoned out the many reasons why you should not and cannot do what you did.
didn't your mom tell you that the reason good, epic things happened to you -- things your brother retells to his friends; that your friends tell theirs -- is because you just do what you love. you just let people know what they mean to you. don't all your friends remind you every single day that they love you.
that says a lot. that people love you.
a person's greatest accomplishment at the end of his or her life are the number of lives they have touched.
isn't this what you have always wanted, at the end of every day?
you've improved a lot since last year. since two years ago when you started therapy. you are no longer on medication. you go out, you have fun, you have not panicked in the presence of large crowds. yes, you felt a little claustrophobic at Best of Anime. but you told yourself to breathe, walked around and checked out the stalls, had a meal and held yourself together until the cavalry came.
you are FINE. you are BETTER. you are healing.
this is a lot to ask in such a short span of time. other people take years. decades, even.
you told yourself to TRY for a year because you wanted to challenge yourself. see how far you've come?
dad is giving you his support in whatever way he can. he drove you to the gigs before, right? and now, he's been asking about the music that's been coming out from your room. he may not understand why you want this so much, may be scared FOR YOU because he knows, more than anyone else (with the exception of mom) how badly you tend to take rejection. because it hurts in the heart when you get turned down. because you care -- sometimes, a little too much than what is needed.
but he is in your corner. didn't he ask how it went? didn't he express enthusiasm over that guy from the indie circuit checking in with you about tapping you for that venue he plans to put up if it ever that does happen?
and hasn't audrey given you pep talks all week to remind you that there is something there. you have something to offer. haven't em, cyn, marie, dan, mama len, rika, kang and everyone else told you repeatedly that you have something special. that you have potential. that you should talk more about the thing that you love: this music you make but that you are so terrified to share?
of all the forces in the world, self-doubt is the most destructive of these.
you cannot do anything about the things that were said. of what has been done by people who em has repeatedly told you probably did these for reasons that do not matter in the long-run. wasn't it confirmed to you that the way those two went about things was a twisted kind of way to get you moving? yes, it was an ineffective and incredibly hurtful way to handle the situation, but take what audrey has been telling you and apply it to that:
there are always two ways to look at things. neither way is wrong, but the one you choose determines the direction you move in.
look at the flip side: all the messing with your head, all the poking at the issue from all sides and not being upfront; it was a crappy way to deal with it. this is a given. but you already know you are not lacking in any kind of originality. you are not hanging on the coattails of anyone else. you created so much in just the first half of this year: force majeure, a new song, a pet project that needs you to help get it moving along.
you are doing things at your pace because forcing yourself to go where you are not ready to go is rushing what you are unable to handle at any one time.
you are okay, noey.
you don't need to say 'will be', because you already are.
take what you know and run with it. learn to believe again.
if you can't take that leap of faith across the damn cliff, then let's look for another way across.
nice girls don't always have to finish last. and finishing last doesn't always mean being too late for the good stuff.
...
30 Days → 01, Introduce yourself. | 02, Your first love. | 03, Your parents. | 04, Your most significant childhood memory. | 05, Discuss your feelings on the word “love” and the way it’s used today. | 06, Your day, in bullets. | 07, Your favorite super hero and why. | 08, Your favorite quote, in your handwriting. | 09, Your siblings. | 10, The shoes you wore today. | 11, Ten things that make you smile and a picture of yourself smiling. | 12, What’s in your bag? | 13, Short term goals for this month and why. | 14, A book that you’ve read more than 3 times. | 15, Your best friend. | 16, The weather outside. | 17, Ten things you’d like to say to ten different people, without using names. | 18, Your favorite birthday. | 19, A picture of you when you were younger. | 20, Your favorite writing project/universe. | 21, The fears you can't seem to shake. | 22, Something that makes you feel better. | 23, A prized possession. | 24, Something that makes you cry. | 25, A first. | 26, One interesting fact for every year you’ve been alive. | 27, Something that you miss. | 28, The places you went to today. | 29, Your guilty pleasures. | 30, One last moment, in great detail.
I've been putting off this entry for awhile, mostly because I've been having a hard time figuring out exactly how to answer this day's subject.
I may not have a photographic memory, but I have a tendency to remember a lot of things so trying to pick one and to classify it as "most significant" is very difficult. My memories are littered with childhood shenanigans.
I could tell you all about the time my brother, Nate _thenothing_ and I decided to turn the floor of my parents' bedroom into a makeshift "ice skating rink". None of us here at home (with the exception of Neal who had not been a 'twinkle in my mom's eye' at the time) will ever look at baby powder the same way ever again, I am afraid.
I could also tell you about trips out of town: for example, when I mistook a really humongous crab for a 'rock', the butterfly farm from my senior year of high school. I could recount my Retreats and Recollections, family trips to Bacolod, or the time I was thirteen and a guy fired a gun at the airport and the bullet grazed my cousin's cheek.
I could tell you about the first time I became friends with someone, or even the last time I ever had contact with a particular friend. These are all significant to me, after all; but while each of these things have changed me in some ways, I think I need to start somewhere earlier. Someplace important that I actually don't remember all too well.
>
I was seven years old and in first grade when I fell headfirst off this stage that was set up every week on a Monday in the Prep Area of St. Scholastica's College.
There wasn't any foul play. I wasn't pushed or anything like that. In fact, I can't help but wonder now about whoever it was (I can't remember her name either) who was supposed to catch my hand when I ran from the middle stage out of my 'frozen' state to the 'safe zones' designated for Ice/Water.
I think it might have been a Tuesday. Or it could have been a Friday. Piano lessons were always Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ballet Wednesdays and Fridays. But that stage would only be available on Tuesdays, so I really can't be sure.
I know the ground was wet. I wasn't too particular about wet ground ruining my ballet shoes at that age. I was dressed in a pair of white tights, a white leotard with a belt around my waist. My hair was up in a bun, the weather was balmy, the sky gray.
I don't remember much. I just know I was tagged 'free' and then I had to get to the 'safe zones' quickly. And then someone screamed and the concrete was under my cheek and someone was yelling orders to call a teacher or the school nurse.
I don't remember how I got to the clinic. I know I had a person under either arm -- or did someone carry me? I really can't be sure; but somehow I was laid out in the bed they kept on the first floor and the school doctor was asking if anyone knew the number to my house.
I'm not sure who told them that information. Every year in elementary, my parents would always put together a class directory that we would distribute to my class as a gift. I know this because I collected everyone's information on a long-size pad at the start of the year and Dad would let me type up some of the information on our computer after Mom picked out the border design.
I can't even remember who told me that they had to talk to my dad and not my mom. I just know from talks afterwards that Mom had gone sheet-white the moment she picked up the phone to hear that the school nurse had called to tell them that I'd taken a dive from a stage both my parents knew was roughly over three-feet high.
We joke about it now: me and friends. I learned in second year high school that it spawned an urban legend in my school... at least, that was before they remodeled the Peace Garden and replaced the slab of concrete that everyone referred to as "that grave of the elementary student who died and got buried with the school's favorite rabbits".
How is this significant?
Two years ago in February, you could say I had something of a wake-up call. I tell this to people in a very open manner because it explains my decision to later accept a friend's prompting to seek professional help to deal with a depression that had been plaguing me for a long, long while. But anyway: I was heading home from shift when I looked up to see the stoplight turn green. I was a few steps from the crossing and there was no one there. The other lane had started moving and I distinctly remember seeing a bus (pink and purple and white, don't ask about the color scheme I don't get it either) and I walked right into that street.
Obviously, nothing happened. The great thing taking uni where I did, is that you learn to play patintero¹ with incoming vehicles and come out safe on the other side of the street (I do not recommend this, it is unsafe and it is important to observe traffic rules). But kidding aside, there was that terrifying moment when I thought to myself: "Okay, I'm done. Let's just make this easy."
The first time I told Mom about this I told her, before I offered her my apology, was that it was the thought of how it would affect her that made me pick up my legs and break into a run. I spent a few hours in the hospital that day in First Grade just watching her cry and just hold onto dear life, her fingers curled around my hand. After seeing my mom cry like that, I knew I never wanted to scare her that badly again.
The first time I opened up to Nate about it, it was short of midnight and we were waiting for the train at the GMA-Kamuning Station after a night of drinking beer and bonding with my cousin Tiffany. I hadn't told anyone about going to therapy other than my mom and I really wanted to come clean to my brother, the boy I used to refer to as "my twin who came into the world two years late". He held me really tight just as the train was coming in and swore at me that he would kill me himself if I tried anything like that again. He didn't cry, but he doesn't really cry if he knows things are fixable; but he stuck by me the whole evening home while we walked the length of Ortigas looking for a cab.
I haven't told Dad. The day I opened up to him about seeking therapy I tried, but I couldn't.
I told him that I had sought a therapist to help me, that I was on medication to help balance out whatever chemical imbalance there was in my brain; but I couldn't tell him I seriously thought about taking my life, even if this isn't the first time suicide ideation has crossed my mind. I don't know. If he finds this entry, I'll open up to him then. But for now, for his peace of mind, I don't bring it up. What's important is that I'm here, after all.
A few days ago, someone very special to me -- a friend of mine who I've known and loved like family since high school -- jumped off a bridge. She's alive, which is the most important thing, and she is being treated in a hospital. Some of you have had me turn to you to talk about this, because being so far away from her and unable to visit or talk to her face to face is incredibly hard and something I would never wish on anyone.
I haven't heard from her and there is a record on my phone of the two times last 5th October at 2:53 and 7:42PM she tried to reach me. I have been trying not to feel guilty for sleeping too deeply having come from a really stressful shift at work. I just want to hold onto the thought that she is getting the best care that the hospital she is in can offer and have left her a note via Tumblr that I love her, that we all do here at home and how my brother and my mom both send their best regards and their love.
It is a gift to live. It may not feel like that, most days when everything seems to crush you from all sides.
But it is a gift to breathe and wake up and spend time with the people you love, and cross paths with strangers who can be potential friends. To turn on the radio or television -- or hell, Youtube and listen to songs or see things that move you. To plug into the internet and connect with individuals who can change your life in miraculous ways.
It is a gift to fall and get up. To know that just because you hit rock bottom, you can get your feet back under you.
[1] - Patintero is a traditional game played by children in my country. For more information, you can learn about it via this website