what took you so long...

i originally posted this entry on May 19, 2008... but have decided to move the post date to a place in time between a major occurrence in my life. as a way to heal and to not bury these emotion but to link back to the genesis of when i felt things started to unravel.

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i should be asleep now, but something is compelling me to stay awake. too many things are running... no sprinting through my head. why has it taken me this long for certain things to "click"? i'm not even going to go into my artist rant or anything because quite frankly i'm tired of it. i'm tired of dreaming. i'm tired of being jealous. of being not good enough. not fitting in.

a couple of weeks ago i considered ending my life. to be honest, it was more like a couple of years in the making, but i didn't know about it. i HATE bringing up the deaths of one of my best friends and my father for the risk of having those momentous events of my then 34 years feel like an excuse for any potential harm i may do myself, but that time was really hard for me. i masked all these emotions so i could feel strong for others, but those feelings of being alone and wondering what my life had amounted to (nothing) had put in the back of my mind pretty "bad" thoughts. it took 3 years for what seemingly little things to slowly take over my life. i am a writer. and everything i was writing had to do with death in some shape or another.

- one of my first plays after their passing had to do with a guy wanting to jump off a cliff because his girlfriend had died and he was looking for a way out via a call to the suicide hotline.

- there was another play about how the boyfriend of a woman he's been physically and mentally abusing is killed by a stranger whose mother went through the same thing.

- another play was about a woman who was struggling with visiting her dying father after she had abandoned the family and ran away. and in my m. night shamalan "i see dead people" phase, the girl was already a ghost who had tragically been killed in a car accident on her way to mend those fences with her tatay. Room 812

- my two and a half year journey of writing a play called Garden of Dreams was about how a young man deals with the loss of his wife. funny story about this. may 10 and 11th were the dates that this was supposed to be put on. i was trying so hard for this play to get pushed through but something, which i'll get to in a minute, kept putting it off. but i remember telling someone that despite people telling me to postpone it, i wanted to put this play on because i had the feeling that i don't have much time left to see one of my dreams come true. of course, this person was taken aback (and yes, that was the person's exact word) by this statement. i needed to have this play put on to say that i did something with my life. that i was a somebody...

as you can see from the examples above, it hasn't been necessarily the pleasant road of writing escapism. but all these sub-consciously or not were written to help me deal with all the losses in my life, whether it be with their deaths, the loss of friendships, or the loss of who i am. i just didn't know how to deal. i pictured all the ways i wanted it to end. turn the corner, i'd get stabbed (which is how i've always imagined i would die, hence why i get apprehensive when i see a knife pointed at me), or get shot in a random drive by in my car... so many things were imagined in my car! having a blow out and flipping the car... running off a cliff... getting sideswiped by another car when crossing an intersection on green, with the problem that the other car thinking that he/she has a yellow and speeding to make it across, but neither of us would... to having a heart-attack while driving and crashing into a barrier. speaking of which, that's probably why i've gotten bigger lately because i was trying to induce bodily harm on myself the "natural" way by over-eating. as i said, my mind has been sub-consciously thinking about this for the last couple of years.

suicide felt like the only answer. and i had done a really good job of preparing myself. i was deep into deepak chopra by reading a book called LIFE AFTER DEATH which chronicled what happens to a spirit after it leaves the body. i was at peace with that. i was putting things in order by delegating which of my things can be given to friends and others to charity. i started to think about what notes to leave certain individuals when i did leave. i convinced myself that i'm done. i was done with this life. there was nothing left for me. single. check. no kids. check. lot of bills that would never get paid. check. i began to relive the parts of my life that were the greatest, like meeting all the people that have and will always have a special place in my soul. i started to thank people for the impact that they made on me. i've just been so blessed to have done everything that i thought i wanted to do. thank you. maraming salamat!

and then something happened. the blessing in disguise happened... my play never got produced or put on. the only thing i wanted in my life to this point. so many things went wrong... dates moved. noone showing up at an audition. couldn't find a director. car breaking down before a rehearsal. finding a person to play the lead then having that person back out. me wanting to play the role and having the opposite of me not being able to. me having to work the weekends when i could only do the rehearsals. just everything... everything that was a sign. something to delay what i wanted my inevitable to be.

after this, was my mom's retirement party where i got to meet up with my cousins and re-connect. spend time with my family, of whom i'll loosely call friends, because they are indeed family, and spending time with them in santa cruz. and then jumping into bindlestiff acting workshop where i get to work with some amazing artists. to this past weekend where things are beginning to click, and i'm writing again not for a way to heal, but now to express myself. if your are a true masochist like me and still reading, congratulations for making it this far in my ramblings, but i digress... i'm happy to be writing as me again.

this weekend has also been spent doing a lot of writing.... especially something not entirely focused on the negative aspect of dying... well i take that back, i still have death in my writing, but at least it's about hope.

- my latest play THE GIFT is about a girl who had a heart-transplant who meets the donor's mother. a surprise twist is involved for all the Heroes fans. Watch out for this play as a part of Bindlestiff's Stories High in late July, early August!

- and today i just came up with the outline for a story i'm writing for a shadow theater piece about Eternal Love which you'll see on stage in December!

and on that note about those two words.... eternal and love. i am here. God has something in store for me and He doesn't want me to be with Him yet. if there is anything i've learned from the music of my idol, it's that His love for all of us is eternal. that will NEVER change, but it's up to us to believe that. everything happens for a reason, if you choose to believe.

o sige. tulog na ako. paalam.