misguidedmonarch

[misguidedmonarch]

#1 - September 12

Isang buwan na ang lumipas

Baka puso'y tuluyan nang nakaalpas

Sa nadaramang pagsinta

Kailanma'y di inakalang magugunita

Apat na linggo na ang nagdaan

Sa atin nanaig ang katahimikan

Mga kulitan, tawanan at kwnetuhan

Tila mga alalang ibinaon sa kailaliman

Marahil ay mali na aking ipinagtapat

Nadaramang kailanma'y di sasapat

Ngayon sa ating dalawa'y may lamat

Tila parusang nararapat

Noong isang buwan ay aking pinangako

Na laban ng aking damdami'y isusuko

Ngunit maging ngayon ayaw maglaho

Pag-ibig para sayo'y totoong siphayo

Isang araw, nawa'y tuluyang dinggin

Oh Bathala, aking nag-iisang dalangin

Nawa'y wala nang pag-ibig o pagtingin

Walang kaba o takot na paiiralin

Dahil pag-ibig na laan sayo

Ay akin nang lilimutin.

[misguidedmonarch]

A mystery, indeed. My website – My Facebook page – See me on LINE Webtoon!

[misguidedmonarch]

🌅 (at Puerto Galera) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3mOfD1Avh6epFDb5tU0WgB2NLcJM-Cx7ymDEE0/?igshid=lr3bcnvbgozc

[misguidedmonarch]

Smiling, but actually I've been under medication for anxiety and depression for 26 days now. Won't be posting anything to sensationalize or romanticize the topic, but if you're struggling with any form of mental illness or experiencing withdrawal or self-loathing, don't be afraid to reach out for help. It's not our fault that we experience these things. It never was. I know it's okay not to be okay, but always keep in mind that there is more to life than being just "okay". https://www.instagram.com/p/B3mL6_DggaYHOxtNBWDy86hfyXrztENMbxmhQY0/?igshid=241gz9a1rfg1

[misguidedmonarch]

Don't leave me sinking (at Puerto Galera) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3mGj0fgXn4o6JuoFiah48pWs62yeR9Tw5S8o00/?igshid=8n81zvo7ublb

[misguidedmonarch]

🌇 (at Makati) https://www.instagram.com/p/B21cF7nAyy5Fcv_4tAo91ijizj49zRg-s95sM40/?igshid=hyfeqpjy1cd5

[misguidedmonarch]

at Ayala Triangle Gardens https://www.instagram.com/p/B2sxI1LAQ3WjSYUAcyjCJ39HgyVoGV_2Bs8kdk0/?igshid=16v3vjb8yjbbj

[misguidedmonarch]

“Morality informs experience, not the reverse. I am my history, yet in my moral desire to understand my past, to be fully self-conscious I become precisely what my history demonstrates that I am not—free.”

Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963, Susan Sontag

[misguidedmonarch]

Please Hear What I'm Not Saying

- Charles C. Finn, September 1966

Don't be fooled by me.

Don't be fooled by the face I wear

For I wear a mask, a thousand masks,

Masks that I'm afraid to take off,

and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,

But don't be fooled,

For God's sake don't be fooled.

I give you the impression that I'm secure,

That all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without,

That confidence is my name and coolness my game,

That the water's calm and I'm in command

And that I need no one,

But don't believe me.

My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,

Ever-varying and ever-concealing.

Beneath lies no complacence.

Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.

But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.

That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,

A nonchalant sophisticated facade,

To help me pretend,

To shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,

And I know it.

That is, if it's followed by acceptance,

If it's followed by love.

It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,

From my own self-built prison walls,

From the barriers I so painstakingly erect.

It's the only thing that will assure me

Of what I can't assure myself,

That I'm really worth something.

But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.

I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,

Will not be followed by love.

I'm afraid you'll think less of me,

That you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.

I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing

And that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,

With a facade of assurance without

And a trembling child within.

So, begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,

And my life becomes a front.

I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.

I tell you everything that's really nothing,

And nothing of what's everything,

Of what's crying within me.

So when I'm going through my routine

Do not be fooled by what I'm saying.

Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,

What I'd like to be able to say,

What for survival I need to say,

But what I can't say.

I don't like hiding.

I don't like playing superficial phony games.

I want to stop playing them.

I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me

But you've got to help me.

You've got to hold out your hand

Even when that's the last thing I seem to want.

Only you can wipe away from my eyes

The blank stare of the breathing dead.

Only you can call me into aliveness.

Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,

Each time you try to understand because you really care,

My heart begins to grow wings--

Very small wings,

Very feeble wings,

But wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling

You can breathe life into me.

I want you to know that.

I want you to know how important you are to me,

How you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--

Of the person that is me

If you choose to.

You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,

You alone can remove my mask,

You alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,

From my lonely prison,

If you choose to.

Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.

It will not be easy for you.

A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.

The nearer you approach to me the blinder I may strike back.

It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man

Often I am irrational.

I fight against the very thing I cry out for.

But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls

And in this lies my hope.

Please try to beat down those walls

With firm hands but with gentle hands

For a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?

I am someone you know very well.

For I am every man you meet

And I am every woman you meet.

[misguidedmonarch]

Transition Phase

I got hired.

Finally.

After nearly three months of "job hunting", one out of more than twenty companies found me suitable as their employee—seventeen of them said I was either "not suitable" or "too good", I have no idea why the latter was even a problem. It had been a year since I graduated—since I received that precious diploma—two months since I passed the licensure exam, and a month since I received my license.

Time finally began to flow in me...sort of. I really cannot tell. Everything still felt unsettling.

You see, when I was in college, getting over things felt like the easiest way out. Getting over the lessons, getting over the exams, the deadlines, the stress. The faster you deal with things, the better. Pass or fail, just move forward. Whatever happened in the past can no longer be changed kind of situation. If I pass, then I continue, and if I fail, I work twice as hard. It was an adaptation actually—a change in my belief—because, unlike in high school, being the best does not matter in college. Because being the best was nothing more but a consolation of perseverance in college. You get the attention and approval, but being a student leader, for example, can place you in the same pedestal. That belief had been beaten in my head, almost everyday until I felt stupid. But that was over now. I overcame that limbo. I may have lost myself in the process, but perhaps it would no longer matter.

Maybe I just became desensitized.

Living a life that had been programmed by people who had better knowledge on my situation made me uneasy. During those five years, I was prepared and honed to survive academic challenges in hopes that one day, perhaps I may use that knowledge in my work place, and that was it. Nothing else followed. The ideology that passing the board exam after graduation was supposed to be our ultimate vindication. Though not explicitly stated, we were forced to form that thinking that, for the sense of a shorter narrative, you are not an engineer unless you earn that license through a standardized test. Nothing else would matter after that. Of course we never knew how wrong we were until it was over.

Two months in my review last year, my anxiety attacks started to become more frequent. Three months in, and I suffered almost everyday. Palpitations, irregular breaths, waking up, and feeling completely overwhelmed by the nerve wracking thoughts inside my mind. However, upon further reflection, I realized that it was not the exam that was making me anxious, nor the notion of passing. I was anxious for what would come after. Job hunting, the disappointment of being rejected by the companies, the realization that once I start working would be the end of me. I was concerned and perturbed by the idea that I never even truly lived. With my anxiety getting worse, I decided not to take the November exam. I felt like escaping would be my best option to further delay my judgement. Back then, I thought I would have subdued my mind into feeding itself with unnecessary thoughts.

Once again, I was wrong.

On the day of my Oath taking, right after leaving the premises of the Plenary Hall, I asked myself on what was the point of everything that had happened. In the following weeks, each time I send a job application, and ultimately get rejected days later, it dawned unto me, I wasted a year studying for something that was absolutely superficial. Absolutely. Companies never truly place your license into consideration. With or without that piece of plastic, you may get hired. I can even count on one hand the true functions it served me. A valid ID.

Five years in engineering school, five years of stress, anxiety and severe mental breakdowns, five years of shared belief that a license would make me an engineer. Everything else was for naught. Have you ever felt scammed? That was what I felt. Swindled both literally and figuratively.

Maybe even my own alma mater lied to me. Passing rates, top notchers, they were all just bragging rights to stir the institution's ego. Do I have any grudge against my professors? Of course I do not. They became significant in honing me into the engineer that I am today. However, I do hate the system, the ideology that the university itself had conditioned us to follow. Board exam was not the absolute vindication that any of us needed, it never was. Passing or failing would never equate to those five years of struggle we have faced just to earn our degrees, nor to the great memories we shared with the friends we met along the way. For me, it was something not to look forward to actually, nor give exceeding glorification that it has today. Because at the end of the day, your license will never determine your performance or work ethics. The title of being an engineer was never exclusive to those who passed a standardized exam. If you can uphold the values, and proper judgment then maybe you can do better things than those who have the ID card inside their pockets.

But of course I passed, there was actually no point in ranting anymore. Right now, I feel like drifting in oblivion. My work starts tomorrow, yet my anxiety would still not shut up. To be honest , I am not even sure if I am even ready to enter this new phase—this new chapter. For the first time, I ran out of ideas, I can no longer see what lies ahead. I do not even have an escape plan. I might be stuck in this new cycle until I die.

Maybe I would grow. Maybe I would do great. Who knows? No one does. Perhaps I would just have to do things impromptu from now on. Maybe life would be best celebrated with random decisions and spontaneity. Perhaps that would be a truth about life; random things and surprises.

[misguidedmonarch]

lat·i·bule

/latə’byo͞ol/

noun

a hiding place; a place of safety or comfort.

[misguidedmonarch]

“I am so busy. I am practicing my new hobby of watching me become someone else. There is so much violence in reconstruction. Every minute is grisly, but I have to participate. I am building what I cannot break.”

— Jennifer Willoughby, The Sun is Still a Part of Me

[misguidedmonarch]

“We all have souls of different ages.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald // The Beautiful and Damned

[misguidedmonarch]

Tell me it’s okay to be happy now because I’m happy now 🎶😌

[misguidedmonarch]

Pride

Remembering that time three years ago. We were in hiatus, walang office (tinanggalan, pinagkaitan, kahit pilit na pinaglaban), walang pondo, walang interested mag-apply as new staff dahil distraction lang daw, and engineering students should focus on their studies daw. Yet here we are. We managed to reestablish everything from scrap. It's fascinating how a bunch of engineering students, who constantly dealt with exams, plates and other school works, managed to give time to do something out of passion, and excel in it. Truly, words cannot express how proud I am.

[misguidedmonarch]

Sleeping in Oblivion

I feel empty.

No, I do not.

Perhaps because I can no longer feel at all, or maybe I do. I am not really certain naymore. Often times I laugh, I smile, let out a chuckle, but honestly...I can never truly say if my happiness was genuine. If everything around me was even real. I felt trapped. Endlessly looping in a cycle of lies and deception. Are you even my friend? Do I really have one? I can no longer say.

My thoughts on death, sadness or endings were quite the same. I lost my fire. I lost my passion. I may have turned into an empty husk, soulless, drifting in still waters, waiting, wishing that somehow, someway, everything would begin to flow again. I wear a mask, I have thousands of them, to conceal myself. To create an illusion, to those around me, even to myself. This is tiring.

Until when must I be the same floating husk? Perhaps my anxiety would give me a the closest thing to thrill. Inducing the fear that may be able to make me feel human again. Maybe. Although I am not looking forward to it.

Just let me sleep for now. Let me indulge myself in slumber for the next couple of hours. I am nothing, yet I feel the need to rest my mind, my soul, although an enigma I cannot truly fathom. Someday, maybe I will

Help me.

[misguidedmonarch]

Random

Have you ever experienced an instance similar to mine? Like one day, you woke up, excited, and dressed early. Your bags packed, filled with necessities, and you are ready to leave in a few hours. You have waited almost forever for this vacation, being thrilled would be an understatement.

What's on your list?

Oh, you will see the northern lights, and all the wonders of Atlantic. You are curious, all of us would be.

But sometimes I wonder, do the locals feel the same energy? Knowing that they can see the phenomenon almost everyday, would that make the beauty fade away? Maybe they take things for granted know. Just like we do with all the wonders around us. They have snowy cold weathers, while at home we have the sun and occasional thunderstorms.

Are we not surrounded by the glory of God's creative hands? We are surrounded my trees, plantlife, over the horizon there are mountains blurred by the distant fog. Have we ceased to be amazed? Probably.

If you can see the auroras on a daily basis, will you cease to be amazed?