Dear Cara: An Open Letter to a Friend

I should have never made you cry. When you took me by the hand and told me to sit for a while, you never wanted anyone but me to heed your throes. The instant you began disclosing your emotional quandary, deja vu seemed to manifest and, once again, history has repeated itself.

What do you want me to feel? As a friend, a confidante, I have never missed to offer you advices you sorely needed to mend your relationship with N. In the first place, I don’t think my advices matter to you at all. Again, you drench yourself in the puddle of confusion…misery. You needed me to be honest. I almost smashed your head like a tennis ball just to get you back to your sanity. Your tears fell.

I was saddled with guilt, thinking that telling you “You never learned from your mistakes” elicited those tears to fall from your eyes. That moment I knew you still linger in the past, and the thought that moving on seemed to be the only resort, I proved myself off beam. You still love N despite her skewing affection towards you and the “other party.” You still love N despite the fact that she never loved you back, or if she ever did… I don’t know. The truth is that, you loved her more than she did love you.

You always have the choice, my friend. And my silence, my ocassional nods as I listen to you, will assure that I am always here ready to lend an ear…a hand.

PS:
Go back to poetry.
Your friend,
Sed

 

bitter musing

tonight i tread

with sadness along the shore,
and let the moon cast
her light upon the memories
buried in my footprints

how soon the waves
race toward my feet,
her splash soothes my skin
and comforts my soul
who longs for a heart
amid the island’s subterfuge.

When Everything Gets Bipolar, So I Believe

When I was seven, I nearly stabbed my Mom with a knife because she did not want to take me with her to the hospital. When I was seven, I tried breaking my father’s motorcycle because he would not take me to the town with him. When I was a child, I wanted all of them to be dead. All these thoughts and actions happened out of the emotions–anger, hate, resentment–which surged out because of unexplained reasons. Just because I felt like it. Because by doing that, I would be satiated. Needless to say, my family considered me the black sheep. One simple reprimand would break me into tears and tantrums. I was a handful. Much worst, my sexual urges developed when I was still very little. I had my first experience at the age of six.

As I grew older, I have become self-effacing, trying to conceal myself to the whole world, repressing my emotions, out of fear anyone who discovers the real me would shudder at my laconic demeanor. For almost twenty two years, I tried to live a very normal life. A life people want me to live, things people want me to achieve. But deep inside, there is a child who seriously needs help. Acceptance. A child who manages to control himself despite doubts and fears. A child who tries to understand himself despite the darkness that adumbrates his psyche.

Growing into maturity has been a wayward journey, an unending quest for answers. I turned to religion. I turned to magic. I turned to arts, which greatly plays an important role in understanding my self more. Without poetry, without music, without painting, I could have drowned myself into the pit of despair. I could have killed myself sundry times already. And still, from time to time, the nightmare from my childhood keeps haunting me–the surge of emotions, the mood swings, the self-effacement–they are all coming back to me now, as the popular song goes.

When I turned 29 last week, something had triggered this nightmare to return. And again, this unexplained feeling that the world is turning against me, even my closest friends. There was this urge to hate everybody, to shut myself from the world, to let the world come into my control. I had been down in the dumps, and I was happy for a second, and at the end of the day, everything was just so crazy. If this is what growing old means, then I will not have it for the world. Not ever. But I cannot stop myself from growing old and along with the growth entails, well. depression.

Just to let everyone know, whether they care about it or not, I have a bipolar tendency. In layman’s Hiligaynon term, “katok.” There are deep reasons behind this display of disorder. I don’t want people to understand me, and I’m not even apologizing. Let me be. I just want an assurance that despite all these, I have someone to turn to. I have been dealing with this for a very long time. I guess, being 29, I could handle myself better. There is still the child who still needs help.

I have been taking BP self-tests and the results are quite alarming. I am trying to deny it, but looking back, it would not be a surprise that I’m suffering from that disorder. The tests though do not affirm my condition but they will serve as bases for psychological help. But deep inside, I am really praying that this is just a phase that I could overcome. Because this is something not to be proud of.

Of imprisoned Poets and Imaginary Beings

There are only two reasons why I write poetry: to suppress and to release. When I read Muriel Rukeyser’s poem taken from her collection The Gates, I told myself, I could have written these lines, or someone could have written these lines for me. The poem’s message reverberates to me like voices of the thousand binukots in Tarangban.

Waiting to leave all day I hear the words:
That poet in prison, the poet newly-died
whose words we wear, reading, all of us. I and my son.

All day we read the words:
friends, lovers, daughters, grandson,
and all night the distant loves
and I who had never seen him am drawn to him

Through acts, through poems;
through our closeness—
whatever links us in our variousness;
across worlds, love and poems and justices
wishing to be born.

Reading the poem, I suddenly remember the possibility of the memetic power of poetry which can actually bridge strangers across distance, beyond time, despite diversities. Honestly I took the poem as a “love poem” on first impression, where the persona ruminates on her love for this poet, an imaginary being, who, “through acts, through poems” can create connection between her and the addressee. I know this is a lame reading, but that was my immediate interpretation.