Midnight Hour

I whisper it like an excuse, like if I say it softly enough the universe will mistake it for a prayer and grant me a different version of my life.

Outside my window, the day is sinking into evening with the slow, resigned grace of something that’s tired of trying. The sky turns the color of old bruises—lavender, then slate, then that deepened purple that looks almost beautiful if you don’t stare too long. Wind scrapes at the glass like it wants in. Like it wants to ask me what I’m doing with all this time I begged for when I was younger.

Back then, I thought choices were doors.

I didn’t understand they could be traps.

In the quiet, I can hear the smallest things: the refrigerator’s hum, the old pipes breathing, my own heartbeat trying to pretend it’s not exhausted. The room is neat in the way depression makes you—because if the outside is organized, maybe the inside will stop collapsing. I’ve stacked my regrets like books I’ll never finish. I’ve folded my sadness into clean corners. I’ve learned to make my life look livable from a distance.

But up close, everything is heavy.

I keep replaying the years like a film I can’t stop pausing at all the wrong scenes. The moments where I could have turned left instead of right. The conversations where I should have spoken up. The times I stayed when I should have left, or left when I should have stayed. The opportunities I let slip because I was afraid, because I didn’t think I deserved them, because I thought I had more time.

Time—what a liar.

It moved forward whether I was ready or not. It swallowed my best intentions and spat out the consequences. And now I’m here, sitting in the aftermath of myself, wondering how many of my current wounds have my own fingerprints on them.

The worst part is I can name them.

I can trace the shape of this depression back to choices I made while convincing myself I was doing my best. I can point to the year I stopped trying because failure became familiar. To the day I chose comfort over growth and called it “self-preservation.” To the months I ignored the small alarms in my body and mind because I didn’t want to admit I was falling apart.

I told myself I was fine.

I was not fine.

Sometimes I think about the person I used to be—before the heaviness set in like weather, before waking up felt like dragging an entire ocean behind me. I see them in my mind like a photograph left too long in the sun: their edges blurred, their smile faded, but still somehow there. They look at me like they’re waiting for an explanation.

And I don’t have one that doesn’t sound like an apology.

If I could undo it, I would.

I would go back to the moment I chose the wrong thing because it was easier. I would grab my own shoulders and shake some courage into my bones. I would tell myself to stop romanticizing suffering. To stop calling survival “living.” To stop waiting for someone else to save me from a life I keep actively building with my own fear.

But time doesn’t rewind. It doesn’t soften because you’ve learned your lesson. It just keeps going, like a train that doesn’t care if you missed your stop. And all I can do now is stare at the tracks behind me and wonder what it would have been like to arrive somewhere else.

There’s a specific kind of grief in regretting your own choices.

It doesn’t come from losing someone. It comes from losing yourself—bit by bit, decision by decision—until one day you realize you don’t recognize the person you’ve become. You wake up and think, How did I get here? and the answer is a long list of moments you can’t undo.

I try to do normal things, because normal things are supposed to anchor you. I brush my teeth. I answer texts hours later. I take showers that feel like rituals in a religion I don’t believe in. I eat because I know I’m supposed to, though food tastes like cardboard and guilt. I go outside sometimes and let the air touch my skin, hoping it will remind me I’m real.

But the depression follows me like my shadow—quiet, faithful, patient.

It sits beside me when I watch other people live their lives like it’s easy. It curls in my chest when I see someone succeed at something I abandoned. It crawls into my throat when I think about how I used to have dreams, and now I can’t even make plans without feeling the weight of failure already draped over them.

I wonder if I made the right choices—if I had been braver, wiser, less reckless with my own future—would I still be here?

Would I still feel like a ghost haunting my own life?

Would my mornings look different?

Would my mind be kinder?

The questions come in waves, and I never have answers, only that aching certainty that somewhere in an alternate timeline I am okay. Somewhere there’s a version of me who didn’t self-sabotage. Who didn’t choose the wrong people and the wrong habits and the wrong coping mechanisms. Who didn’t confuse numbness for peace.

Somewhere I am lighter.

And that thought is both comfort and cruelty—because it proves I can imagine a better life, I just can’t reach it.

Sometimes, late at night, I sit on the floor because it feels like the closest thing to surrender I can manage. The darkness wraps around me like a blanket that doesn’t ask questions. I hold my knees and press my forehead against them, as if I can fold myself small enough to disappear from the consequences of my own decisions.

I tell myself I should have known better.

But knowing better is a luxury you only get after.

Back then, I was just trying to make it through the day. I was just trying to choose something—anything—that didn’t hurt too much in the moment. I didn’t realize some choices are slow poison. I didn’t realize “later” arrives with receipts.

And now, I wake up and I pay for everything.

I pay with exhaustion. With emptiness. With the constant sense that I am behind, that I am late to my own life, that everyone else got a map and I somehow missed the distribution.

I pay with the way my mind talks to me—sharp, relentless, unforgiving.

Look what you did.

Look where you are.

Look at what you ruined.

I wish I could offer myself tenderness the way I offer it to everyone else. I wish I could be gentle about the fact that I was human, that I made choices with the information and pain I had at the time. But depression is not gentle. Depression is a narrator that edits your entire life into a tragedy and calls it truth.

Still…

Even in this, there are moments that feel like a thin thread of light. A song that makes my chest loosen for three minutes. A stranger’s laugh in a grocery aisle. The way the sky keeps changing its colors, as if it hasn’t given up on beauty.

And sometimes, when I’m brave enough, I admit something else, something quieter and harder:

Maybe I can’t undo what I chose.

Maybe I can’t go back and become the version of me that made all the right decisions.

But maybe I can stop making the same ones.

That thought scares me more than sadness sometimes, because it means responsibility. It means the future is still mine to touch. It means I can’t blame the past forever, even if the past is heavy and familiar and easier to hold than hope.

I look at my hands in the dim light. They don’t look like hands that can build a new life.

But they are the only ones I have.

So I return to the sentence I started with, the one that keeps circling me like a moth around a dying bulb:

Maybe perhaps someday we’ll look back.

Someday this won’t feel like a prison, just a chapter. Someday I will forgive the person I was for trying to survive the only way they knew how. Someday I will stop living in “what if” and start living in “what now.”

But tonight, I am still here—tired, aching, full of regrets that weigh more than my own body.

And I don’t know how to undo my life.

I only know how to sit with it.

To breathe through it.

To keep existing in the aftermath of my choices, even when existing feels like a kind of punishment.

And in the quiet, with the sky bruising into night, I let myself say the truth without flinching:

I wish I had made different decisions.

I wish I had saved myself sooner.

I wish I wasn’t here.

We spend years searching and learning what love truly means in our entire existence, searching and looking in all the places we could possibly find to fill the gap in one’s self. The seeping cracks of the heart and the deepest depths of our core. What is love, we ask? Is love the moment our hearts collide with another’s soul, filling the void that we so desperately searched for and needed, only to be broken once more when the love vanishes from the deep.

Love does not come from the other who stands by our side. For love comes from within to fill the cracks of our own soul. Love is given by our own beating heart when we were never showed what it means to love. Love is not the twisted fairytales we read in stories nor the person we were bound to meet by destiny and fate. For love has to begin from within and not from beyond.

How can we love another for if we do not love ourselves before? How can we love when the concept of love within our core bares no meaning to ourselves, let alone to those who wishes to share our love with their own? Could we give love and reserve love enough for another and fully for ourselves? Could we stand by and watch our own reserves of love seep into another’s crack, leaving them with all that we have and to break alone when we are left without love for ourselves?

We search for the infinite moments in the brightest lights, gazing up at the stars with the shine in our very eyes, always searching, never settling. Always moving through the days in the hunt for the love we desire when all we had to do was fill the gaps of our own core before resurfacing from the ocean waves that we constantly sink under. The weight of the world drowning our broken bodies as we fight to keep our heads afloat.

The brightest star in the galaxy is the part of us that has already been there from the start. The smile that we once shared in the mirror has always been there. Let it in. Let it in once more and find peace with the love that is waiting to reunite within our core. Let that love for you… guide you to the shores of peace. To the shores of beauty… the shores of love as our soulmates await our very arms.

The soulmate of our own heart. The soulmate that reflects us. The soulmate that looks at us from the mirror.

Because we never walked away. We chose to stay. Despite the good and the bad. Be it our romantic lovers, our friends, or our family. We stayed because we believed in the goodness of their hearts. And we bleed in silence as trust is broken. We cry in silence because one day they decided you weren’t worthy or good enough to be with them.

But know this in that silence of your aching heart, it’s not your fault that those you cherished and loved weren’t there anymore. Because those who have come to pass will forever remain in your heart with the same tenderness and love.

They will continue to be loved in the memories you held dearly every single day. And will continue to be loved in the future as you walk through those doors into a new dawn.

How do you know when soulmates meet?

When her lips don’t speak,

When her eyes don’t peek,

But her heart sings like the universe of galaxies,

Her heart weeps from the sorrows full of realities,

She stands in the dark,

Hiding in the shadows of the barely lit park,

Her smile still so bright,

Her hands so soft but full of might,

She never fails to love,

Even when love leaves her her in the dark,

Even when the rain falls on her tanned olive skin,

She still smiles with the pouring rain,

She’s afraid to love once again,

But still tries to open her heart without pretense,

And there she stands smiling,

Looking into the eyes of a former stranger,

The stranger turned into a lover from across the sand,

Who kissed a mermaid wishing for her chance,

Dreaming of love just as she had,

Wanting and waiting for the rain to join them hand in hand,

Just as the mermaid promised,

Two strangers brought together to become lovers of the night,

Her eyes so bright,

Her smile so beautiful and wide,

Her heart is pure,

And her soul so full of life,

Wishing she would look her way,

As she stars at her from 1st and Broadway,

Just a glance,

So our eyes could meet by chance,

Her lips taste like strawberries,

Her touch so soft like morning glories,

The curves of her body,

So elegant just like an hourglass,

She wishes she could see her

And utter those word’s she longed to hear,

The sweetness of her voice,

Is all that lays her to rest at night,

But she’s no longer mine,

The apple in someone else’s eyes,

For she’s moved on,

And she’s the one still holding on…

Wishing upon stars,

And dreaming on hopeless scars,

The only wish she’s had,

Was for one last chance to say goodbye,

She walks along the coast,

Singing her heart out for the sirens and ghosts,

Wishing once more,

For a mermaid to take her home,

One last kiss,

From a mermaids lips,

Granting her true love,

Lips coated in red,

She screamed and wept,

As a red petal fell into her lap,

Her chest heaves with every breath,

Sobs and chokes full of anguish,

Another petal falls,

Cutting off all air,

Memories of love and light,

Drowning in the chaos of her own mind,

The memory of his blue eyes,

All but faded inside,

Vines criss cross inside her chest,

Flowers blooming without no rest,

The man she loved with honesty and care,

Never once returned the love which was unfair,

Blood pooled from her stained lips,

Hands gripping her chest with limited air,

She cries out once more,

Knowing her end was approaching evermore,

Dragging herself across the boards,

She calls for the creature swimming below,

A mermaid of the deep,

Who could hear the sounds of her own heartbeat,

It’s tail so blue,

It’s eyes full of hue,

She wept before the creatures feet,

Begging for it to end her pleas,

She chokes up a flower bud,

Rosés blending in with the color of her blood,

The vines in her chest grow thicker,

A ticking time bomb as the light flickers,

She closes her eyes,

The Mermaid singing with all its might,

She releases one last breath,

A memory of her love vanished at last…”

That our life was a story built for the world and those around to see… that we wrote our steps and actions as a character of a movie or a book. Some rooting for us while others hindered us. That the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. How movies shaped our hearts to become the characters of our own story….

That the books and words that passes through our minds and eyes were meant to heal the broken pieces of our soul and the empty void that filled our hearts when someone comes and goes from your life. When things and belongings bought brand new and faded into dust and ashes was part of our feet into the future…

But at the end of the day… does the nightmares ever fade away? Does the healing of our hearts and souls ease the pain that once stood on the hills of our highs and the mud on our lows? Do we still carry that hurt and pain through our life that will eventually fade with time? Or do we simply box them up and walk with our bare feets from one thing to the next? Through the heat, through the cold, through the dust and the wetness of the grey colored pavement?

Do we simply try to heal and forget? Do we try to heal and create something new even when the nightmares still plague our minds night after night? Do we carry on with time as life brings on more death and suffering to the point of destruction within our minds?

Bleed and bled she wept all night, wishing and cutting, hoping to end her life. She was just a child, only 9 when she bled all night. The kids in her class made fun of her skin, made fun of her voice and laughed at her eyes. Her eyes were nothing but shame of her families life. Her father was white, and her mother was local… the little gurl wept as the blood cascaded down her eye.

Again they threw rocks, cutting her cheeks along with a black eye, the blood was all she had, as she told the teachers why. No one believed her, as her teachers punished her, berated her for having a family who’s mother was claimed a gold digger. Her father was away when they calles the home phone, no one answered and no one came. Alone she walked, when the kids came along.

Again they threw rocks, and laughed in her face. She was just a child, who wanted to die. And 19 years later, she stood in her bathroom… analyzing every scar on her face… wishing that little girl was happy as can be…

Unable to feel even when the casket is buried 6 feet underground… you walk amongst those whose hearts are bleeding at the loss of a daughter, the loss of a cousin or friend… the loss of a mother whose child had been buried with… who do you blame for these circumstances that is out of our control?

Do we blame ourselves for the wasted moments you chose not to call because of your schedule? Do we blame ourselves for failing to be a better friend, knowing their last moments was yesterday… today… or tomorrow…? Do we blame ourselves when we choose to ignore those messages once sent of their beautiful child whom you have not seen ever with your own eyes?

Yet somehow they still treasured you as a friend, someone they cared and wished you success in the path you have chosen. Whose number one priority was their child yet chose to make you a priority when life hits you hard… extending a hand to pull you out of the chaos you drove yourself into…

Yet, here I sit… ashamed and conflicted, drowning in blame and pity for the actions I myself had chosen as an individual… perhaps a phone call a week would have sufficed. Perhaps a text to acknowledge that friendship you shared, letting them know how much you treasured them would have sufficed.

A hypocrite I am for believing I was not selfish… yet I was selfish for not being able to take a minute of the day to say hello and how are you could have made the difference before a life was lost…

I was punishing myself for something I had no control over. Punishing myself for believing that the love I once shared had been for nought. Punishing myself into believing I was unable to love and be loved as I should be. Continuously throwing myself into the same cycle over and over because of fear and rejection. Fear of what others might think and believe.

All I had to do was look into the mirror and love the reflection staring back into my eyes. My best friend, my lover, my soulmate. The one who has been there since my very own eyes was first able to see. Was first able to understand. The one who never failed to stay by my sode through good and bad. The one whose intuition was there living deep within my own twisted heart.

Myself…

I burnout… drove myself deep into the ground. Struggling to breathe when all I had to do was trust my own soul, my own reflection, myself. To take care of myself when all I did was give for other’s. Days I wished to be alone, to feel myself once more never breached the storming seas, and there I was drowning myself again once more.

It is easy to forget that we ourselves are human. That we too are in need of love and tenderness. Draining our energy to those around, to those that require our love and care… but we give away too much. Too much to that we ourselves drown in our own sorrows, unable to receive the same love and energy we crave for ourselves.

Your mind tells you that rest should be the option… but the heart says another. Some live comfortably without the fear of losing the roof above their heads. Some of us weep knowing we live paycheck to paycheck, struggling to make ends meet despite carrying the weight of not one, not two… but three jobs that never seem to end. Some of us carry multiple degrees on our shoulders, some of us barely have a diploma.

Yet, both sides of the spectrum suffer the same fate as the other, skills of abundance yet truly unable to stand at the end of the line in a grocery store, wondering which items are needed most than the other. Wondering if the half full basket will be enough to feed the ones we love… wondering if your children would be able to eat at school the day after tomorrow…

How do we as humanity live? How do we as humanity breathe? How do we hold back the tears as we watch those who walk away with a basket full of food to feed while others walk away with barely a few items that might not ever be enough? But most of all, the kindness in hearts has long but faded, turning into ashes and dust, words full of malice and hate.

But did i forget? Or did I simply choose to forget? Letting myself be clouded in judgement, hate and anger, I forgot what it means to truly feel alive. Floating in the ocean, knowing the unknown beneath the surface could eithe be safe, or perhaps even dangerous. That’s what life truly meant.

We take things for granted, always assuming the worst of choices, the worst of consequences, the worst of everything that has yet to happen or arrive…. We shut ourselves out, choosing to drown in our own sorrows, our own darkness, that we failed to hear the whispers of words from our inner self. Our soulmate. Our dear soulmate who stares back at you in the mirror.

The one who has truly been there all your life. And I lost my soulmate in the depths of my own despair, my own suffering and blight. Perhaps had I chosen to accept my soulmate, we would have been whole. Accepting, loving and kind. Appreciative and understanding towards each other. Loved….

Life may be unfair, unjust and cruel. But life has so much more to offer once I realized the person in the mirror means well and not tragedy. Life can be hard, but it is not hard to love your soulmate. Your soul. Others may come and go, hurting and loving all at the same time. But pure love is only formed and created in the heart and soul. In the eyes of the one staring back at you in the mirror.

Money comes and goes, relationships come and go, day’s and nights come and go. But when the darkness of the night comes into play, I sit on the roof and wonder what and where did I go wrong… what have I done in this life to create the problems that are thrown my way. Self reflection and self acceptance seems like a long road ahead. Perhaps I’ve been mean to some, and kind to others.

How I can only fault myself for the situations I lay my head to rest in. But sometimes I wonder, would anything be different if I had known what life would have been like had Id been someone better? Had the lessons learned now been beneficial when i was but a mere child? To be able to make the mistakes I made back then and emerge on the other side of the woods?

Wishing solely on shooting stars and full moons to ease the pain I now only feel. To be heard and understood. To be seen and not invisible. But am I the only one out there who feels just as much? Or am I simply part of the line that extends out into the world where others have stood before me?

If only i was as good as finding those just like me, for looking out the window wishing to be a part of someone else’s life story even just for a second would be life changing. But here I stay, locked away in a home I wish could be so much more. A home where never being left alone or understood is beyond the dark void. A home where nothing is ever good enough in the eyes of those that live there.

Yet, I fail to look at my own self in the mirror. There was a time I was naive to the world. Young and free, selfless and kind. But all I see in the mirror is the ghosts that haunt my soul. I claim to be self righteous, I claim to be kind and innocent. But I’m not better than those who believe they’re better than others. How my words are spiteful, how my anger towards others could hurt another.

I am no saint. I am no angel. Just an empty shell hurting others unintentionally with my choices and vile words. I may be honest and clear cut, saying things as truth but often times forgetting to show kindness within those words. And therefore I am a hypocrite. Never taking faults of myself, but finding them in others who walk the same line. Jealousy at those who step ahead, while lingering in the shadows of failure.

Unwanting to leave the pit I myself had plunged neck deep down. Being someone who smiles and congratulates other’s success, but unhappy behind closed doors that I was left behind. While others have it easy, and my anger for bleeding and crawling to achieve what others have is no fair game.

I am no saint. I am no angel. That I admit. To ask forgiveness of others is easy, but deep down inside, a knife to the back. I am but a hypocrite. And I am no better than those I truly hate. I am just the same as those whose evil lingers inside. And for that I remain sorrowful for my own actions.

It was my favorite quote. Growing up watching Moulin Rouge, believing in stories and fantasies that I thought to be true. Yet, somehow as time changed, as fears and chaos came along, those words began to dwindle away. Nights spent dreaming of the love I’ve always wanted in fairytales and movies turned to ashes and dust.

To see the truth of reality and the pain that enters. For I was the book writer who wanted to love. Who wanted to be loved in return. To have believed so much that the poor writer fell in love with the star courtesan. Who persuaded to take a chance at love and just live and breathe on love.

How harshly wrong was I… to hear words that love wasn’t enough, that nothing truly was ever enough even when the star courtesan of my heart finally faded away into the dark. How dreams and hopes came crashing down like the waves of a storm. And here I sit, looking at the sky wondering how all my faults and all my choices lead to that downfall.

Perhaps maybe I was just a child. Young and naive. Failing to see the redness of the flags that pass me by, yet, always reminding myself to overlook them as they passed by. Perhaps maybe my heart wanted to give love, and continued to give until there was none left for myself. Perhaps I was ashamed.

Or simply that I believed that maybe love was just enough… and still I shed tears. Wondering about the woulds, shoulds, coulds, and everything that filters through to these undying thoughts. And every day when the sun rises, the same unfiltered thoughts rumage through my head…

“Who hurt you till you turned so emotionally cold?”

And that question burned in my very soul. I’m afraid to love, afraid to feel that love with someone else. Afraid to make a commitment again. Afraid that if i gave my heart away, I’d lose more than I had already given before. Afraid that I would lose myself, my sanity, my love for myself.

Many times I’ve never returned messages to new dates, afraid to take the leap of faith in fear that i would lose myself again. In fear of losing the remaining broken pieces of my heart. It’s not that I’m cold… I’m just too afraid to be broken once more. For someone you loved before so much, to find the truth that the one you used to love had chosen the worse ways to walk away without saying a word.

And the thoughts come at night, making you wonder where it all went wrong. Of all the choices you made, what have I done to cause such actions? To pretend to die, just so you could walk away? To question myself on what I had done so badly… And to feel myself losing my own mind, always thinking about the one you loved so much.

The words of a friend still haunts me today… “From the time I’ve known you, your mind is always on your sweetheart. Yet, not once have I seen you happy. When will you ever be happy?”

Had I chosen to love and love, to give and keep giving that I lost all of who I am? And now that it haunts me, I’ve never stopped wondering, never stopped thinking perhaps I’ve never lived for me but lived for someone who was so willing to give us up. To walk away from all that was built. To never being fought for.