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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Monday, October 30, 2006

entry arrow10:46 PM | A Confession

"Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.
(Maybe someday you will rejoice to recall
even this.)"
-- Aeneas, in The Aeneid Book 1


Only three people know about this: I broke down last month under the weight of sheer depression, it incapacitated me. I have what you can call a mild form of manic depression, nothing too clinical to certify me a nut, but I have managed for most of my life to put it under some control. But after August -- given the whirlwind of expectations and recriminations my life constantly harvests -- I broke.

It lasted a full month, ending only when I finally told a friend -- a psychologist -- what was going on with me. I told Mark, too, and there was one night when I just walked out of my apartment, and walked half the city in a daze. I can't tell you what happened next, but it was bad.

For the longest time, I've felt that I've taken this slowburning vacation from my life -- a gradual descent that has me flummoxed, bewildered, disoriented. Sometimes, when I take a shower especially, I get this shiver of recognition about what a sorry state this existence has turned out to be so far. Involuntarily, I'd curse out a prayer, always an "Oh, Jesus, I need your help." It would be cute if I didn't do that like twenty-four times a day, always after being bitten by this shadowy rebuke, this sense of failure.

But I have always been my own worst critic, and to my mind, I have yet to reach my full potential. And it pains me no end to realize that I have fallen short of my expectations. Sometimes, my own prayers seem to reach only deaf divinity.

Let's hope I'm wrong.

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