My world was larger before and it was mine, wholly mine. Now it's the result of some equation of loss. Then someone came in and it was the Big Bang and I folded into myself at the worst time, causing some stellar catastrophe and the worst implosion, so now all that's left is a void where everything used to be. Everything was just the fucking worst. A light has gone out in who I am and my soul is finally something I believe exists because what else could be the source of this ache I feel?

Here are my days: I can't leave the house still, barely seeing the sun, barely breathing anything close to the deep lungfuls of air I used to gulp down. Joy is a distant memory. I spend hours and hours just consuming media mindlessly because if I pay any mind to anything then I just feel the ache.

The tarot cards read you'd meet the One but I think they were talking about me meeting you. Some mystic miscommunication. The One who fucked it up and got sick. The One who can't even speak to her father or friends anymore because of such deep-seated anger for mucking things up when they were already so muddled. The One who carries shame on her shoulders and it weighs so heavy my neck cracks every time I try to move, but it could also be because I can only sleep on the couch despite the bed not even being a foot away because the memory of your body once occupying it makes it now a No Occupation zone. The One who lost the One.

Sleep can't even be an escape since for the first time in my life, insomnia has become a friend. A fiend, a foe. But I now know it intimately. We dance every night with the aches and every morning I wake up just devastated. Then I try again. Do tasks, life maintenance type things. Nothing big but it feels insurmountable, the effort needed to do what used to be easy. Possibly due to the medication, possibly due to the devastation. Then the anger comes again and I can't even reach out to my father in fear he may misinterpret it and cause more harm to go out into this world of mine already so filled with hurt. So I sit in it and remember that goodbye came even before then, that the loss of affection and attachment was due to my own unraveling, my unhinged behavior. So the anger turns inwards, cause Jesus why couldn't you just keep your shit together for a little bit? Some part of my brain kicks in and recognizes it's a disease, possibly even feeling resentment at having to go through the journey alone when he knew it was getting so bad for me. Then I press play on Netflix or some dumb true crime fodder just to quiet it for a second because this is a cycle that will repeat over and over throughout the day and I need a break. Get just enough reading done to passively participate in classes, but not enough and I know it. Leaving the house only for necessities, confined to these walls I can barely pay for now. Confined with my misery as the warden.

When sleep does come, it's fitful and filled with images of your face. I can't escape the ache of loss, the grief. Time has passed but it's getting sharper, not duller with every hour that separates us.

But who knows how long this will last. The Joy was momentary and now I have to remember for longer than I knew it. Perhaps this too will pass but at the moment it doesn't seem possible and my world is too small to accommodate anything else. I miss who I was in June, but perhaps that's the only version of myself I successfully did kill. 

 I've never been the subject of someone else's fear before. I've also never felt so much anger at those who care for me or so helplessly lonesome. Blame is a trinket that's easy to misplace. That was an easily learned hard lesson from that night, but digesting it now, really chewing on it the last few months has shown it's a many-layered jawbreaker that I can't help by gnash my teeth against. Who am I to put this crown of anger in my stomach on? The people who cared for me in such misguided ways, ultimately hurting more than helping by ripping apart the one thing I wanted most? Myself, for having a brain whose scaffolding collapsed? Or again myself for having cultivated a life where these situations could even happen? I'm playing a constant duck duck goose game of blame and anger and shame and guilt and it is driving me up the wall since it's just me at the end of the day holding with arthritic hands seams of my sanity together under this immense burden.

Forgiveness I can grant upon myself for falling apart. A medical condition. A diagnosis contained needly in a clinical abstract of my confinement. A treatable illness with specialized doctors ready to swoop in. Forgiveness I cannot allow myself to feel for becoming a monster to someone I cared so much about, even if I know I never wanted any of the Big Bad to happen. But when you know someone out there fears you, it sstarts to seep into your own bones and I'm beginning to fear myself as well. No matter my actions, my intentions, my being in and out of consciousness when all those damn great machinations decided to throw themselves into gear, was it not still just my presence, my being, my existence that caused anything to happen? How do you live with that guilt that someone else was caused so much pain, caused to be fearful? How can you process the loss, the anger, the loss over the people you are so angry at for acting like such idiots? I have no clue but every moment I feel more and more like a monster hiding under the bed, a creature of nightmares, than a girl and it terrifies me just as much. 

There's the selfish side where it's about me and these overwhelming feelings. But more than anything, it's the guilt and the shame to have hurt someone else. I don't want to be this creature but I am to at least one person. Doesn't matter anything else, in the end. Doesn't matter if I had a hand, doesn't matter if I tried, doesn't mattter that I hate it all so much it makes me want to vomit. It happened. That's all. Worse than anything I can feel about myself is this burden knowing harm was caused on my behalf to someone who didn't deserve it. I deserve no solace for righting the wrongs that never should have happened. All I get is this cold emptiness of knowing I made someone scared. I suppose that's the punishment and it's only just.

It's been two many months

 There persists this acute ache that I can't shake off, no matter what I try to do. Which is hilarious if you see me in person, since all I do is shake. The trembles and tremors have spread from my fingertips to my core, which is where I suspect the ache resides. Side effects of the meds. Main effect is I don't try fastening a garrot again and suspending myself from the pipes I so tantalizingly left exposed in the house renovations. But the side effects are I shake. I can't work. Can't sleep. God, I miss sleep. Typing this is blissful torture, since the shakes and the aches in my hands are the worst, but somehow all the ache inside me gets better when some words spill out. So let them spill. I'm already a puddle on the floor, what else can we add to the mess I've made?

School has been damn hard. Very difficult to focus on the words I need to take in when all I want to do is vomit them out. Side effect is maybe I don't get to be who I want to be in my life, but then again I'd be alive? The scales are balancing but maybe they aren't for justice. Main goals, unintended consequences.

I keep looking at before and after pictures of natural disasters. Deeply relating to the loss. The before and after. All the time that ticks by now is just the after. All I was before has been wreaked havoc upon or something wreaking something and I'm left in the wake. Picking up the pieces is the primary task, but things keep dropping since these shakes keep coming. Horrible violent convulsions of the mind and the body. Unsteady and unsure of who I am anymore, where before I was so very focused, so secure. Maybe the ache is for that comfort in myself? Maybe that ache is for what I lost? Maybe it's guilt? Maybe it's anger. Maybe it's fear, this terrifying fear that grips me in the night when sleep won't come that I'll never get back to who I was, to what I had, to anything even remotely like before. That I can't rebuild. Fallen to ruin, permanently, yet stuck living out the main effects. Likely, it's grief for it all.

Coming of age

In those films where the sweet child turns into this brooding new entity, I struggle to find things to relate to. I don't remember any transition. I don't remember any marked period. What I remember is being a child and then not being a child and realizing this so suddenly that I was not prepared to stop the fear from coming in through the doors. 

I often fantasize about my childhood. It wasn't a particularly good one, but it was mine. I also don't remember a lot about it, some suppressed memory bullshit probably. Perhaps the biggest thing I miss is not having people care for me and baby me, but having a self that I could turn to. Some identity, some assurance of who and what I am. When I was sad and young, I would cry. Now I cry and hate myself and hate myself for crying. Now some boy thinks I'm a monster, which is the cruelest thing to do to someone suicidal. Now, I get suicidal. 

When I was a kid my arms were smooth and soft and the skin was only marred by the occasional knick from playing in the garden and climbing trees. Now, I can't remember what it even was like to have no red lines running vertically up and down from wrist to elbow. And the raised ones, oh god they hurt when I stretch my arms out. And they itch. And they ache. And those are just my arms now. Not like when I was a kid, but at least for this one thing I do remember when the Before became the After. And the After stayed the Present and the arms have bled into the hands and if surface and aesthetic damage was bad, wait til you hear about the nerve damage. Never had those problems as a kid. But I suppose they were just lying in wait, patiently letting the years pass until it was time.

I hope to whoever that there's no After this After. I have run out of space to cut and run out of pain to bleed.

Baby steps

 So I got out of the psych ward, sat in the dark since the electric bill was inconveniently forgotten about, then I went out with my dog and fell asleep while these two brothers who make me laugh with their dumb accents went out to drink. The dog got hamburger bits, I got sick to my stomach from the damn vape pens. I spent way too much on dresses, new dresses, dresses I'll have first dates and new memories in. Cropped my hair so short you can see my scalp. Then today, today being day 2 since my release, I got a tattoo. It's a patent drawing of a Gatling gun. Been wanting it for a while but finally decided to pull the trigger. All in white. Then I had a job interview for another position in the United Nations.

Ratatatatatatat. Off she goes, spinning and running headfirst into the whatever the hell is next. The mind that never stopped was forced to pace the Makati Med hallway for the better part of two weeks and what do I get in the end?

I'm alone.

I had told my dad, that day, that I was going to kill myself. Hang myself. And he let me go home. Then he changed his mind and had a team of beasts steal me from my home, tie me down, and stick me where the sun don't shine. It's literally a fucking basement, there's no sun. My circadian rhythm has been all sorts of fucked (hence also falling asleep when the two boys were trying to be gracious hosts, but they love the beagle so it's fine). I told him also, that this, this choice he made, meant our relationship is over.

I'm already lonely for Christmas. For holidays and birthdays. I had one person in my corner always and now I can't stand to look at him. So I'm alone. Mind is getting better, I suppose, and the soul hurts less with each breath, though it still stings like a motherfucker. But there's nothing worse, absolutely nothing, than being sad and alone. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, and that just so happens to be myself so there you go.

Ratatatatatata. Gatling gun Ally continues screaming into the nothing. I want to avoid saying the void but then again, there I just said it. 

While I have no real scientific proof to back this claim up, I'm honestly beginning to believe there exists a real link between my orthostatic hypotension and my indecisiveness.

Let's lay out the evidence.

When I sit still for too long and then stand to rise to any occasion, all the blood drains from my head and goes somewhere I can't trace it to. It leaves me when I need it most (there's some deep sadness to mine in that comment, but I don't want to play into my own stereotype of sad girl too much more than I already have). Depending on the severity of the episode, my vision can swirl or simply vanish. But when the lights go out, it's not quiet and comforting like nights back home in Davao. There's nothing to see here, but everything is here. Rather than crickets, it's my own eardrums humming, humming, making they're own sort of music. Who knew tiny bones could be so musical? Who knew you could be made to feel so unwelcome in your own body by your own body? I like to think of my little glimpses into the darkness as sneakpeaks into my own skull. Something like a private tour I've gate crashed and now I can see my own inner workings. The buzzing of my brain cells firing off electric signals to each other.

But then my veins and arteries start working and the blood comes back and I come back to where I was, which is just me standing. It wasn't that great of a feat.

In terms of my lack of fortitude to make real solid commitments, here's what I've got. Listen up. Lend me your ears.

I've never been good at choosing restaurants. So please, don't ask me where I'd like to eat because first of all, let's start with do I even want to eat? Next, such a weighty decision (pun intended) is one I cannot make for another. The pressure! It's the 'pass-the-aux' of social commitments. This inability to commit to things, especially when my decision could affect others, leaks past menus and into every other aspect of my life. If I lived alone on a desert island, I'd be happy and I'd know my daily itinerary. But as sad as it is true, no man is an island and I exist in connection with millions of other people. In Metro Manila alone there 12? 16? How many millions of us? How can I commit to anything, how can I decide anything? How can I move past the fear that any action could butterfly effect and destroy something, someone, or everything, everyone? How can I forgive myself when I do destroy? 

Clawing my way back

It's been a hard damn couple of weeks.

Food, let's talk about food. My family would send me soup every day, all I had to do was go down to the lobby and eat it. The eating part was the hard part. Elevators helped with the first part. See, eating and I have a long and complicated relationship. An off and off again love affair. It's not so much that I dislike it, but I can't stand what it represents. If you eat you live, and well, living is a concept I continue to toy with, unable to commit. I'm a flighty, avoidant consumer. If I put this in my body, then my body will continue to exist and I'm still not fully sold on the idea that that's a good thing.

But we're trying. Hot damn, we're trying. Plural since it's been a team effort getting me back from the absolute hellhole breakdown I've been in the last few weeks. If I could list the things I've lost I'd run out of space. So let's just keep it brief and say everything. 

Hubris now. Let's talk about hubris. Damn, I was so confident in myself that I had it all figured out. On track to be a lawyer, damn good one at that, working high level jobs, high level competence, high level output. High level functioning depressive. Sneaky fuck, that illness. It crouched down and found me when my nervous system was all on fire with excitement and threw a plastic bag over my head. Suffocated me, suffocated the life out of me.

So if I'm so non-committal to the idea of living, why try to hard to get back from the dead? Good question, no answer. Maybe I just have nothing else better to do and I'm not that skilled at murdering myself. Many attempts, zero success. I need to find a new line of work, something else to put my brain to use with. 

Fuck these weeks have been hard. I don't think I've ever felt so low. Like gum stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe and then they walked in dog shit and then they dumped me. Fuck. Everything out of control and I hate that, since the food thing is also about control let's not forget that. 

Not sure where I'm going with this. Does this count as journaling? Does this count as therapy? Supplemental to the actual therapy I'm paying so much for. 

Anyway. I'm trying. Yet to see how it turns out, but I'm trying and maybe that counts for something.

 Okay. Breath a bit. Listen, girl, to yourself. Inhale, exhale, deep deep deep dig dig dig.

This is meant to be a personal pick-me-up but I don't know how to start. This is not about a dumb boy. Jeez, I've spent too much time caring about what boys think about me. Okay, let's write positive things. Frame me like a mirror does, reflecting back the truth of who I am and showing the way the light can bounce off me. 

There are fruits on my table that probably grew on trees that are older than me. But maybe they won't last so long anymore. Climate change and depression in a desperate race against each other to see what will meet its demise first, my world or the world in general. 

Where was I going with this? 

A sad swan song. A waste. A waste of potential. A wasted life. Oh no, sorry I forgot to be positive.

My issues are too enormous. I'm going to starve myself to death.

I only ever post when I'm going through a meltdown

There are minor feelings. Minute feelings. Small, inconsequential seeming emotions that turn out to be the building of a swell. Checks on a chalkboard that add up, like you’re in prison, confined and bored, counting the days. Ticking time bombs, turns out.

These little things, unfortunately, they build. People like me aren’t prepared for such developments. Drain the bathtub and hide the bleach, don’t let people see the little emotions.

I feel like I’ve spent my entire life hiding from little feelings, scared to let anyone else know that it’s become a tide inside of me dragging me out into the deep blue. Jesus, I feel so blue all the time. It’s so unfair to people who care about me, and there are many. It’s unfair to them to get the 2 AM calls and the frantic messages.

I’m blue. I’m sorry. Can I call and just listen to a friendly voice?

My dad always said that when I’m sad, my voice gets too high-pitched. He can’t hear me. He cant understand me. I am a crackling voice on one end of a tenuous connection that he can’t decipher because it’s beyond the human ear’s capabilities. How am I supposed to tell my dad that I’m trying but I have a cursed brain that keeps trying to kill me and oh my god my entire body feels like it’s on fire, but I can’t express it in an octave that elicits care not disgust?

I imagine him.

Calls in the middle of the night. Middle child trying to kill herself again. Exhausting. I am screaming because screaming is the only thing that helps but no one wants to hear someone screaming. You’re on the receiving end of another Ally meltdown. You want things to be okay but between everything, the middle doesn’t feel like the middle anymore. There is no ground because I constantly feel like I’m falling to my death. Even typing it out, I’m exhausted of myself.

Back to the little feelings.

So here they sit. Somewhere between the diaphragm and despair. Little pellets of lead. Am I being weighed down or am I the weight? I don’t know how much more therapy I can do. I intellectualize my emotions rather than feeling them, but some boy told me recently that I feel too many emotions. Grippy sock vacations call my name like the way the sea calls to others but I am losing my grip on who I am. Minor little feelings, small cuts, many of which sit on my wrists. Scars and graffiti. Confetti, a celebration of a life that felt too many things. A memorial service for the greatest burden. Here lies our greatest regret. Potential laid to waste. A waste, an expenditure of energy and money and time and what else do we have space for on the tombstone? Here lays a lay-away. Here lies a liar. Here, now, quiet. We tried to help her, but she was beyond saving, and Christ Almighty, may you bless her in another life with a voice an octave lower. Is that a good epitaph?

Cuteness cures

 Even now, years after the fact of my pathetic teenage unraveling, I still get those tight feelings in my chest and those urges that say 'cut, cut, cut'. As if I never progressed passed my adolescence. As if all I'm destined to be is a this. Here. Now. This.

Feelings, right? I'm governed by them. Held sway by their power. The earth is moving under my feet and the sky is tumbling down and I just can't tame these goddamn feelings. Negative, dark, twisted, and unexplainable emotions that sway me like young bamboo caught in a hurricane  Very lame, I know. I'm but a sad-sack excuse for my species, a testament to the flawed theory of our supposedly superior - so-said cerebral - evolution, a sad girl cliche ala Tumblr 2014. Is it hormones or a congenital defect? Is it written somewhere on my mitochondrial DNA that I, like my mother and hers before her, am doomed to routinely self-destruct and cry like a bitch in the shower? Whatever. Basically, I still get sad sometimes. Boo hoo. What a revelation.

Thankfully, the great adventure of life provides easy, simple distractions. Despite the many terrible traits I inherited in the genetic lottery, I won a few hands and scored some cards that make these distractions easier to partake in. I'm pretty. Whatecer. Taking advantage of the symmetry and frame I was given, I dive deep into the worldly pleasures of boys, boys, boys. Boys, at least, are easier for me to comprehend. Boy, at least, are explicable. They're puzzles I know how to solve. Games I know the cheat codes to.

Of course, there's a new one. There's always a new one.  This is why we're hear. 

Unexpected but easy. 

Cosmic karma.

The end of the fucking world. 

So where does this one fit in to the tapestry of my love's and losses, wins and big L's? I'm not sure yet. 

Here I come, this freight train, stumbling through the bramble and writing just because I feel enamoured 

Maybe it's the rush. Do I live for the chase? Or the letdown that inevitably follows me winning them over then losing interest?

Maybe I am, like my psyche tells me, just a raging bitch with an unquenchable thirst for dick and more, more, more.

Maybe I'm a romantic.

Maybe I'm a user.

Maybe I'm a succubus born on this earth to suck men dry.

Maybe I'm just clinically depressed and trying to explain why I like sex so much.

But maybe, just maybe, this is the shot that will land true. Maybe this is the boy who will fuck away my problems. At worst, we'll both score some pleasant memories to revisit in summers yet to come. At best, maybe I'll be cured, be happy. Be best, thanks to some transformative care and love - haha - or whatever they call it, I'll be cured. 

If not, at least I have another name to pin to my lapel and another adventure to write home about.