Chestnuts Roasting and So am I

Had a happy Christmas followed by these thoughts two days later:

"It is truly better to be a servant in one's own country than to be a princess imprisoned in someone else's castle."

Raw, Naked, and Honest

I crave for freedom, even a teeny bit like letting my hair down, uncovered in front of other people.

Waking up in darkness as emotions rush out of me in the form of tears almost turning into blood. Is this what happens when someone is squeezed inside a life-size shaker for a long time?
Forced or compelled to be who she is not...

I crave for freedom, even just to go to a grocery to choose goods i want for my pantry, diaper brands i want for my boys.

If everything happens for a reason, this eventful non-event in this kind of life is still groping for definitions for its being.

Take away someone from a zone of discomfort and put her inside this shell, see if she survives scarless and unwanting that place she once deemed painful. She will be scathed and surely long for air no matter how stale, as long as it is air.

I crave for freedom, even just to be myself - outgoing, routine-and order-freak with regular lazy days - without being judged.

Stuck in a rut twenty four-seven; post post-partum blues or plain mood swings? Whatever these are, anybody "refined" this way will feel worse and might even kill.

Am i really being refined in this fire? Am i resisting change? How can i not when i am regressing and not progressing?
Perhaps i cannot see the progress yet?
Or perhaps this kind of "refiner's fire" is telling me to run and not endure?
I may be made of another kind of gem but not gold...

I crave for freedom, even to talk freely, express myself - in my own language without trying hard to be understood and to understand a response.
I crave for time, a few hours a day to learn something new, without interruptions or worrying about my boys.

I crave freedom, even for my boys...
the freedom to run around under the sun, in an open field or a lawn...to explore, to trip, fall and stand up on their own even with a harmless cut on a knee.

I crave for a safe and happy place for them, to see them regularly spend quality time with their grand parents - no screams and shouts, just gentle touches, laughter, horsey-rides, cookie treats, or simple conversations - real attention given to them.

I crave to see them play with their cousins without hitting or being hit or pushed, without falling off tv sets or tables...i want them to play with toys, to be amused, to be curious, to learn...

I crave to give my boys the best of me - a mom they can be proud of...and even just for now, a mom who is strong and free enough even to take them out by herself.

My boys may be my home, but this is not my country.
This is not my kind of country, not entirely my kind of culture, not entirely my kind of beliefs and practices.
I want to be where i can be who i want as well as who others want.

I crave for freedom, to laugh shamelessly even like a hyena, to sit, walk, talk, and smile a certain way i find comfortable, to talk or joke about anything concerning my past or future and still be loved.

I crave to be around people who really know me inside-out.

You wake up in the morning tired, you sleep at night exhausted. You only have one kind of hope and that is Home. Where you are human, where women may not be amazons but know the value of time and people. Where you see the sun, the trees, the sky, the seas...where you can chase dreams unceasingly...where you can plan and fulfill even just a quarter of it...where you can contain all your loves in your heart and in your life.
Where you have all the time and time has all of you.

Life is short, one should not live like this.
Oh have i almost come in full circle, now am suspended, sliced into a half-moon, half-lunatic.
Is this what happens when Wondering Wander Woman is caged for a long time?
The unspoken social norms here have made me build an invisible prison around myself.

I crave for them here to see me as i am so i can go in peace for i know they will never understand nor can they accept that person.

I crave for something i cannot give myself.
Freedom will have to wait.

I long for someone to satisfy these cravings. Apparently, there is only one person who can give me this. If he does, i am pretty sure that the girl he adored the first time he laid his eyes on her will resurrect before his very eyes.

For now, i can but only write.
True Freedom will have to wait.

Response to a Response

Prozacs in half, Zolofts in full.
Oh he who breaks is such a fool.
Pardon my french, i mean no harm
Prozac Prince calls for alarm.

I know this is lame. But don't we need a break from all the old fashioned way of dealing with the blues?
I like your line, though. "Break...The...Prozacs...In Half!"

I responded with this poem to a response to a post in poetry form in Mylot. Below is my reply to the discussion starter who seemed to reflect his depression in his poem:

Just keep on writing. It's good you are letting it all out. It does save us from falling off the edge. It keeps us sane. Darkness is not forever. After the night, morning breaks free. Joy will come prancing along. Open your eyes. Open your heart. Look at you inside. Beautiful being. Your mind is in a deadly place, but your heart is somewhere glorious. Sweet soul that you are. Pain is because you love. Death is because you fear. Embrace pain. Live.

Just Sharing

It seethes through souls, squeezes, cuts, chokes.
Teardrops become ink, into pen, then kisses paper.
Pain grips the poet, then sets free
The hand that writes with heart, oh! love-maker.

Ever appreciated pain after you have written a poem and set yourself free? Now i can exhale...

Wrote this three months ago, starting a discussion under Poetry in MyLot.com.

Sprinkling Thoughts

Spills from a spinning wheel
seemingly endless
splatters here and there
screams in my head...

Still trying to find calm amidst clutters,
clarity in confusion,
serenity within shock persisting to stay.
I search, wait, and pray.

My Fixes

Coffee and old fashion style of journal writing. The former is to energize my sick brain while the latter is a temporary replacement of a PC under repair.

March Seven Too Oh Oh Ate

My first birthday here...beginning of the end of me. I remember writing something for my Psychology 1 paper back in college about atrophy and entrophy: "We begin to die the moment we are born."

Whenever I tell my love story people always tell me it would be a good movie material. I just smile and shrug. My story is not some kind of a romantic comedy meant to entertain people. It is a true-to-life experience of the most classic of all agonies. I actually share my story for selfish reasons. I wanted to relieve myself of the sad parts, which comprise about 65 percent of the plot, comforting myself that it is all over and there is no point of grieving. Thus it is not really a comedy but a tragedy. A series of broken hearts, broken affairs, broken leg (accident caused by running after a boyfriend), broken promises, broken windows of a Mustang Firebird, broken hymen, and...well, everything in my twenty something single life seemed to have been broken. When i turned thirty, I thought i was the most tragic of all single woman in my town. So I kept re-telling my story, even to friends who amazingly still find it so interesting. Perhaps it is because some of them are in the story, or perhaps the show of amusement in their face is for the purpose of comforting me. I knew it was a tad bit pathetic, but i did it with class, well most of the time i guess - masking my sadness. I was sad because my story was all about the "six times i got engaged," and i was telling it while still unattached, recently disengaged (as if he was some sort of a rifle) from my latest and apparently last "ex-soon-to-be-husband."
In those times i managed to keep a Plan B: Book to replace a Boy-man. Other than dreams of having a happy family and world peace, i was also conceiving a book idea during that period. And i was mid-way into the labor of having it published. All the signs were there during writing - mood swings, cravings (for the presence of certain exes), nausea (travelling through time) and insomnia. I was also vomitting, considering the fact that my subject was about the life of a 30-something getting over one great love and searching for meaning and purpose in a sub-corporate world, one memo/fling/party after another. Only now did i realize that wasn't any form of literature after all. I would call it a flip-lit instead of a chick lit. Thank goodness it was almost published. A succesful abortion when the book was already in full-term-complete-with-cover design-intro-bibliography-period (imagine that) was all i needed in order to achieve my first dream: a happy family. I had to give up that book because of a sudden twist in my life. I got married. Finally. I did it.

Just filling a Sheet

I am loosing it again. Do i need to gulp down another cup of coffee just to get it back?
And later on sink in the pits of black, painfully bubbling the throbs caused by an anxiety attack?
I become happy for a moment of spilling mess and blood,
then for the rest of the day I am in darkness
thirsting for joy.

Spillings

Spoilage foliage of a morning dull. Caffeine fixes, stitches cracks. Then when i write, i could not find the beautifully composed lines of yesterday. I failed to box them, they all flew like manuscripts blown by the wind and into the sea. Ink smudged, washed away. It was water based. My mind was and still is water based. Better to just spill, and let paper drink on until it is drenched, then perhaps later I could dry the words out and see if mosaic has been formed. If it is art, or trash.

As it Was

They used to call me "Prozac Princess" . I popped pills like candy. They melt inside my system as fast as Alka Zeltzer in water. But unlike the Alka's effect on a hangover, it stays for a while like bubbles floating so high in slow motion, unreachable, until one by one they fade. That's when night comes and it is time for some sleep, and ''pop'!" goes the pill into my mouth. It was life, it sucked, it is full of poop.
That was me before. Now i live a good life, or so they say. It is far from perfect, but i guess that's what makes this nice. I never stopped trying, and striving so hard to reach this place, and along the way i have coped in so many ways with this and with that. Call them heartaches, heart breakers, soul smashers - anything that shakes, stirs, and sickens us. I have met people who caused me to grow, and a few fed me with bitter pills- some to help me heal and some to spite me on purpose. I have also been to places i have only seen before in both my dreams and nightmares. And i was blessed to escape the latter and cursed to depart from the former.
My purpose of this blog is to rediscover the beauty of the life i once lived, to revisit people and places that inspired me, and to revive my dreams that once shone in luster and with hope. Somewhere along the trail i left must be some path i failed to tread on. Going back could be one key that would open the door to understanding all these now. My life is an abstract work. I may be a wife and a mother now, but there seems to be something more than being this. I must have left "her" somewhere. She could probably be that woman trapped in the mundane dailiness of the cliche she once thought of as a dream. That probably explains my recurrent flashbacks and temporary in-a-daze state.
I need to go now. I must go there again.