Trail Mix

(This was something I wrote as a final requirement for one of the most mind-opening classes I’ve had in college. It’s meant to be spoken out loud, but I don’t mind having it read.)

Trail Mix  

I walk. I walk and I walk until there’s nothing more in me that wants to keep moving forward – until I laugh at how I can’t move anymore. Until I don’t want to try any longer because trying leads to tiredness leads to mania leads to depression leads to nothing.

Nothing at all.

***

They say that ecstasy is the gateway drug for aspiring drug users. When you start using it, it’s like nothing can be strong enough, can be dangerous, silly, stupid, mature, immature, unbelievable, risky enough. So you try something more.

And then just a bit more.

Until a few tries later, you look at yourself in the mirror and you realize you have no idea who you’re staring it. You’re less than half the person you’re presenting. But you’re more than half the infection.   What they don’t know, though, is the fact that gateways don’t just apply to drugs.

In my case, and your story might not be the same, but I think mine started with anorexia.

***

I was in sophomore year. Thirteen year olds, stupid kids like myself started calling me fatty, Hagrid, tree trunks from which the kapre lives, fat enough to shoulder monsters – immediately thereafter these words became not just taunts but commentaries, because it was in the rolls of my fat that the monsters found their home – and so I stopped eating.

Cheese and crackers, and cheese, and crackers and cheese, and crackers were all I ate. When cheese and crackers tasted shit that day, I’d eat half an apple, and then I’ll sleep so I won’t have to feel hungry anymore, or not know if I do.

My vagina didn’t bleed the entire time.

My hair grew stiff; formerly luscious curls became nothing but straws not unlike haystacks. And if I didn’t get hospitalized, I probably wouldn’t have stopped. I was told I’d have to eat if I didn’t want to die.

I was 13, Jesus Christ. I didn’t want to die!

I just wanted to walk in a room and not cover the sun, step into a 10-man elevator, be the ninth, and still have enough breathable space for the tenth.

I just wanted to be noticed less. I wanted to be looked at and thought of as pleasant… But I had to eat, didn’t I?

So I did. I learned how to rearrange my food until it would seem as though I ate most of it. Then I did eat most of it. Then I threw them all up afterwards. Eat. Throw up. Repeat. Eat. Throw up. Repeat. Eat. Throw up. Repeat. Explain to dentist why teeth are broken. Eat. Throw up. Repeat. Get caught. Eat. Throw up. Repeat.   Lie through gritted teeth.

***

Now it’s mania and depression, according to my counselor, but not strong enough for it to be manic depressive disorder. There are times when I don’t remember to sleep, when I don’t want to—   When the world feels small enough that I can grasp it, if only I reach out when there are too many I can do, from writing stories to creating music; when dreams become balloons that do not have helium, which allows me to take full possession of them.   When I am offered a palette of brightly-coloured paint and allowed to ink the whole world.

Sometimes I don’t sleep.

Sometimes I go on for 24 hours, and then 30, and then 40… I haven’t slept a wink for 46 now. And I’m not sleepy, and I want to sleep. Pagod na ‘ko.

And I’ve tried lavender, and chamomile, and burying myself in hundreds of pillows, and brushing my fingers through my hair because that’s what my dad used to do before I grew up, but it doesn’t help even if I want it to – I can’t sleep.

But I’m only human. I think I’m tired.

In my mind I have plans after plans of what I want to do – letters of recommendation, military correspondences, list upon list upon list of potential events.

***

But then before I fully accomplish what I have to do, I begin to feel sleepy and then I give in to somnambulence, a temporary Hades, the reprieve from spending the day with Persephone’s mom.

And then there’s nothing I want to do anymore but sleep.   It’s hard to get up, smile, laugh, feel, do it everyday, and it gets frightening to be lonely – to feel like a diamond in the rough, but a diamond that has always showed itself to be strong, and so everyone’s decided to leave it alone.

Fuck that.

It’s a happy kind of sadness that involves no emotions: Like waiting for nothing in particular but wishing that something will arrive. Like knowing someone will pick you up but not knowing when, or how, or by whom. But you’re okay. You’re okay. Because sometimes, all there is is hope. When the Ritalin or the Valium no longer work.   Sometimes all there is is hope.

***

It’s trail mix, my journey. It’s a world where you have a bag of emotions at your disposal.

(Have you ever gone trekking?)

Because if you have, then you know there are nuts, and chocolates, and raisins, and dried mangoes. And their taste differs with how much you take How much you’re capable of grasping, How much you can shove into the canals of your mouth until you’re too full; until the only thing left to do is to throw up.

***

Sabi ni Bullet Dumas, ayaw daw sa ‘tin ng tadhana – siguro nga. Siguro nga.

***

This is my body, my trail mix

This is my politics – I can only get what’s presented And in a world where I have no ounce of control ever, I can at least control the emotions I feel, the weight I gain, and the destruction I’ll face eventually. Trail mix.

There’s really no knowing, but sometimes you can if you try.