My very first best friend died in an accident when I was very young, young enough that I couldn’t remember much, except asking my parents and grandparents why we needed to die while it was the school intramurals. I didn’t attend the funeral because my mom wouldn’t let me. My class still went to perform the obligatory dance number as usual, because who doesn’t like seeing small kids dancing?

When my grandfather on my mother’s side died, I was already morbidly fascinated by the idea of death. I remember that too. But I didn’t have any close friends after that until late in elementary, as we moved a lot. In that time my lust for escapism cultivated, books, television, video games, Disney movies, and maybe the occasional Power Rangers now and again were my friends. One ending of Power Rangers really made a mark on me. There was a love triangle, but one guy conceded and he accepted the other’s invitation to attend the wedding. There was an accident when the guy bought flowers and he was bleeding. He still attended the wedding, hiding the fact that he was dying, putting on the best smile he could muster. He couldn’t get up for the formal photograph, and he died when everybody left.

It served as a model for my future imaginings, to die with a smile on your face, knowing you’ll be remembered well. I realize now that’s a pretty stupid ending for a children’s show, but whatever.

I got really close to my cousins in the mother’s side when I was staying over. I stayed over a lot, see. We played role-playing games with dragons and knights, built blanket forts, played with shadow puppets. I actually had a pretty normal childhood because of them. But they left. One by one, their families went abroad, to England, America, Australia, Canada, and I said goodbye to each of them, knowing I probably won’t see them anymore. My childhood friends, gone over to greener pastures. The last I heard, one of them, the one same aged as me, gave birth to a baby boy a few months ago.

When I entered elementary I found myself in a circle of friends for the first time, due to a new game we all liked called DotA or something. I had this really good friend then. We liked the same things, we liked the same girls. It was fun. He was the first ever person to read my prose. It was erotica. Yes, erotica was the second thing I learned to write and I’m not embarrassed. The first was Scooby Doo fan fiction. Anyway, it was that time that I realized I pretty much had something going for my writing skills. I actually was selected to go for a Regional Journalism tourney.

During that tourney, my good friend suddenly decided it was time to go straight up douchebag on me and forced people to say he died in a car accident. He did this because word got out that the girl we both liked had a crush on me. We were kids, so I can forgive him for that; it was a big deal. The tourney lasted a week so I had days believing that he did die, crying before I fell asleep, trying to call people to ask for details. Of course, when I came back I found out he lied. I didn’t talk to him for a month after that, I think? Needless to say, things weren’t the same.

I found another friend in the small transition from elementary to high school. It was the a girl who shared the same enthusiasm for writing as me, Joycel, and we became really close after that. But she liked me, and I couldn’t reciprocate because I liked another girl. It didn’t end well. I tried to fall in love with her, and I really thought I did, but it was too late. It took a long time before things returned to the way they were. Quite recently, actually.

I found out it was easier for me to make friends with girls. That didn’t end well too, as my “friends” were falling for me, even people from the same circle of friends, so in a way, I tore at their friendship. It was all unintentional, I swear, but that made it worse. High school drama.

So in the middle of second year, I was pretty friendless again, showing really bad signs of depression (I sent someone to the hospital because of a “fight”). Then I met Rizza.

We fell in love. But as I said, I had no idea how love worked, what I was supposed to say or do. She fell out of it in time. She fell in love with another guy. It wouldn’t have hurt me so bad if the guy was at the time one of the most notorious douches in the batch. He actually cheated on her while he was courting her, in the most liberal sense of the word “cheat”.

They’re still together. I try to think that he changed for the better, but hey, I was the loser.

Around that time, my uncle and grandmother died, just about a month in between. The people I’ve spent most of my childhood with. What I considered my second mother. She was already frail and was getting weaker with the passing of the years, but it happened unexpectedly. On her funeral, I was near-demented. I still remember that insane hobo who walked next to us while she was being lowered and pissed on the ground. If it weren’t for my dad and uncles, I would have speared through that son of a bitch with an umbrella.

I spent a lot of time in churches and cemeteries then, thinking about life, love, and God. It was the time I started trying to become self-aware, and I made breakthroughs talking to Him. But whatever ideas I had in those churches couldn’t pull me out of the hole I was falling in.

I felt people were always leaving me. Whether it was their choice or not didn’t matter. I felt that I wasn’t enough of a reason to stay for. I felt that I wasn’t enough to remember. I chose to escape in fantasies outside this world, in writing, in music, in art. I fell in love with My Chemical Romance the second I listened to Cancer, how it fit my everything, my idea of dying, my idea of a life worth living. I fell in love with the Final Fantasy series so hard I tried making worlds patterned after them. I was absorbed enough in the fact that I could play music that it gave my depression a quick fix. I even made friends (I met one of my best friends because of this) because I wanted to get better at art and music.

But it didn’t matter. I still am very afraid of being forgotten, and I worry that my life would end without me doing anything remarkable enough to leave a mark. That I would just be another memory. That my life didn’t really mean anything.

Because that’s how it feels to lose someone. You feel that part of you has died. No, part of you was killed. Murdered so easily by the circumstances of this world that it happened before you knew it. Whatever you felt towards the person lost has been for nothing, because he or she is gone now, and nothing can bring him back. Your feelings, your love for them, will not bring them back. Ultimately, whatever it is you still feel for them now is pointless, no matter how much it hurts.

I’ll bring up John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars. It’s my undisclosed favorite book. If you want, you can read it for yourself to find out why, but I’ll just mention the startling idea the main character there points out. We want the universe to recognize us. Each of us, individually, not just part of some dominant race of mammals. But we can’t do anything about it. It will never care about us. What we can do is recognize the universe. To care for every waking moment we live in it. To marvel at the multiple infinities it presents us with.

Living isn’t something we should make a meaning for. Living in itself is a privilege. It’s meaningful in itself.

Like any relationship. If it ended, be glad it happened. Wasn’t it a privilege to know that person, to spend time with him or her? Wasn’t it meaningful enough that you had something, be it love or friendship, or even just time together? Wasn’t it a privilege to laugh with them, cry with them, and hurt for them? This is why regret is so agonizing, and so very useless. We only live for a small amount of time, and the universe is huge. It’s a waste of time regretting the past when you could be using whatever’s left of your time appreciating everything around you.

I know this now, and I’ll always try to live by it. It’s pretty amazing how meaningful that book, and all its circumstances, is to me. I might forget now and again the lessons it taught me, but the longing for recognition is a human trait and I can’t do anything about that.

I just know better this time around.

I’ll live.

I was supposed to write about something dramatic and heart-breaking in relation to my last post, but mood says I can’t. I’m feeling ways better, like my insides were in shackles all this time and now they’re free. I don’t know if it’s an exaggeration, but I breathe a little easier. For the first time, I really believe things can work out.

Strange how mere words can capture ideas, isn’t it? I’ve always known the things I’ve written here; the whispers that haunted me whenever it gets too quiet. But there’s some semblance to them now that they’ve been written down. With it, a conviction to change things for the better. I know where to start now, but I’m not done yet.

A friend reminded me of a pretty important phase of my life. The “MLM” phase, multilevel marketing, otherwise known as “networking” or “that modern pyramiding scam people keep tagging pictures of me on Facebook.”

Really, I’m not ashamed I fell into the practice. It’s not really so bad. It’s the people who made its image the way it is. I learned a lot from those seminars, about the long road on the way to achieving your dreams, about standing up to what you think is right, about how little you are in the grand scheme of things and how insignificant your troubles are, about inner strength, conviction and determination… I seriously can give examples all day. Probably most important of all I’ve learned is how easy it is to talk to people.

Obviously, my lack of self-esteem didn’t do much for my social skills. I’ve always considered myself below anyone else, like someone chest-deep in the muck of an inferiority complex. But during those times, those strangely free times, I’ve learned that there isn’t that much of a difference between any two people at all. Everyone has their own insecurities, passions, desires, and those things are hardly different. It’s the choices, experiences, the beliefs, and the ideals that make each of us unique, and in the bigger picture, every one of us is just trying to live a better life.

Ultimately, the whole idea of networking for me was the beginning of my attempts at trying to live the life I wanted. Never mind the money or the glories. It was the most enriching phase of my life, and I would never regret being a part of all that.

Of course, I’ve still got loads of work to do. Two weeks from now, I plan to join a YFC Summer Camp. I decided it would be nice to get myself involved again, and maybe, just maybe, find the bits of faith I’ve lost in my falls to depression. It would also be a great time for me to communicate with my family. They don’t know me as well as they should, why I get offended by the little things they do, or why it’s so hard for me to confide in them. It would be a good time to change that.

All the while, I’m trying to work out a business idea with some of my best friends. We barely know what we’re doing, but we’re capable of learning. It’s never too late to start studying.

Coincidentally, these are the friends whom I didn’t tell of my condition. I don’t have a good idea why, just that depression or not they’ll still stay with me to infinity and back. I’m ashamed to say I sometimes forget that. They are always there to support me in whatever sort of bullshit I land myself in, always cheerful, ambitious, determined. They are the people who I most admire for their strength. I love them. But I feel like telling them that everything would be equal to taking them for granted. They are brilliant, wonderful people, and if I tell them that I’m too lost in the dark to see my way it would feel like I forgot their light even existed. I don’t know.

Maybe I will tell them about all of this, in passing. They at least deserve to know. But I really, really hope they never speak of it. It’s just one very awkward moment waiting to happen.

I’m ready to take my future head-on, to live the life I’ve only dreamed about. With my friends, with my family. I don’t want to go back anymore. Maybe I’ll write in this blog one more time before leaving it, covering whatever shadow is left in my mind.

Just to be clear. I am not part of a broken family. I’m part of a family that was (or still is, I’m not sure) broken. A healing one, if nothing else.

True to what they say, how you grew up would shape you to be who you are right now. I spent the majority of my formative years away from my parents. I remember very few happy memories with them as a child. I don’t know if it’s my own fault that I had distorted my past to be devoid of any sense of belonging, but I definitely remember all of the bad times. Ever since I was young, I’ve always wanted to run away.

Actually, I kind of did. Thrice, when I was a kid.

It wasn’t always like that though. I remember a handful of blissful moments with my mom and dad. One was of us having a picnic somewhere, where I spilled my food on the ground and proceeded to scoop it up with my hands (I was a kid). Another of me riding my dad’s back, spinning until I became dizzy. Another was a declamation contest when I wore a cat costume. And that time when I became emcee of some event at school. Now that I think of it, I used to wear a lot of costumes back then. The rest of my childhood consisted of screaming, crying, being hit, hiding, and swearing beneath my breath every time I learned a new curse word.

The turning point was when my mom left my dad. I don’t know how it happened, or why. I’m guessing it was because of money because I remember us being poor, but one day I woke up to my dad crying behind my grandparent’s house and my relatives berating him for not acting like a man. The sight of him so vulnerable and so pitied scarred my image of him and my image of my mother. She didn’t make any effort to change that image until recently.

I remember her leaving for weeks at a time, leaving my dad weak and useless. When I did see her, she barely made any effort to take care of me, leaving me to canned food and TV. She would get mad at the slightest things, and I swore she hated me. I felt that I meant nothing to her, and oftentimes I found myself wishing I was invisible or that I can run away.

On a side note, I have her to thank for my good English. If not for all that television and books and games, I wouldn’t have gotten used to the language. Or I wouldn’t have taken to writing.

Anyway, I was left to my own devices most of the time. My father’s parents took care of me, and I grew to love them as if they were my parents. My grandfather, who was a teacher, taught me everything from mathematics to astronomy to poetry. He gave me books to read and I read all of them hungrily. My grandmother took care of everything else. She was an amazing cook. I miss her dishes. My aunts were there to play cards with me, and my cousins to play video games. I barely had friends the same age as me, the only ones being my cousins from my mother’s side, and being an introvert, that made me socially inept.

When I ran away, it was my grandfather who always found me. My grandfather who always escorted me to and from school. My grandfather who never got mad at me for asking too many questions. He knew my favorite spot near the bakery where it was cool and shadowy. I didn’t bother to find a better hiding spot after the first time. All I wanted when I ran away was for someone to look for me.

It was then that I used to think of death and dying. What it meant. What I hoped people would do when I’m gone. What I wanted to happen to me so that people would care.

The fact was that I really wished my parents cared more about me. I never felt that they loved me, and I guess that grew into a feeling of worthlessness. I used to be an honor student, but I never reached the top. I was always second-best. I felt they were disappointed in everything I did. I know I must be exaggerating, but it happened enough times to make an impression. When we lived in a house of our own, my dad was always out working, and my mom was always either not living with us or asleep. I remember coming home from school on my birthday, hoping to find something, to a house that was completely empty. I remember many, many nights alone, when the TV is the only thing keeping me away from total silence.

I blamed my brother for it. I was jealous. My mother took him with her whenever she left us. It was clear to me then that I was second-best again in her eyes and I despised him for it. I don’t know. Maybe I was too estranged with her for her to do anything anymore, so I never tried to warm up to her again.

One day my brother and I were left alone together. I was eating while he was playing near a cabinet with glass doors. I don’t know what happened, but the next thing I knew one of the doors was broken and his leg was bleeding profusely. I didn’t know what to do then, and I couldn’t do anything. It was a good thing we lived so close to our relatives that he was taken immediately to a hospital. The scar is still there on his leg right now.

It was one more thing to make me feel worse about myself. I was worthless to my brother when he needed me. And I was worthless to my mother when she entrusted him to me.

Needless to say, my relationship with my brother worsened. Whenever we were playing with my cousins, I’d always leave him behind when choosing teams. I’d join my cousins bullying him. Sometimes I even beat him when I was angry. I made his childhood hell because I blamed him for mine.

He still doesn’t know how sorry I am for everything I’ve done. I don’t know how to talk to him still. I don’t even know if I had even forgiven myself for it.

When my sister came, things became more quiet. Mom never left again. The damage was done, but things were looking okay. Ever since high school, when I first showed signs of depression, and violence, my parents have tried to work things out peacefully. I still need to stop thinking of my father as weak and vulnerable, and my mother as an emotionally-violent, well, bitch; but I guess everything is as okay as it can be.

It’s my brother I’m worried about now. He’s been getting more and more violent, and I can’t help but think it’s my fault.

My childhood of silence and disappointment made me who I am today. Always second-best, so now I lust for recognition to the point of athazagoraphobia, yet I never believed in my own worth; the same reason I don’t try anymore when it comes to academics. Insecurity and a fear of disappointment. Quiet, socially awkward because most of the social interaction I got was from people way older than me. Starved of love, so I still don’t know how love works.

I shudder to think what years of abuse leads my brother to become.

Oh, and I think I remember telling Keisha one time about my mother leaving in the middle of the night. I was so scared then. I didn’t tell her why. Well, now you know.

There are always things to be genuinely sad about. Things you can’t change. People you’ve lost, for example.

Things can be replaced. Good memories can be renewed. Bad ones forgotten. But people… Once you lose someone, and you know you’re never going to get them back, that’s it.

They will haunt you. The things you never did or said. The things you could do or say, if you were given more time. The places you still haven’t seen together. The occasions you still had to celebrate. The things you haven’t done yet. The things you could have been.

And all this while trying to hold on to all the good times you’ve had as they slowly fade away into oblivion.

I’m sorry. Yesterday was a good day I spent with very good friends. But I still regret the things I could have done with the two of you last night if things were the same as back then.

The worst thing is that every time I look in the mirror, I see the reason why things ended up like this. There’s a mirror beside the computer I’m writing on, see.

Even if I manage to forgive myself for everything, which is still a long way, I still have to live with seeing everything I’ve said, done, and didn’t do play over and over in my head for the rest of my life. I still had hurt two very amazing, very awesome people. It’s still because of me.

I really miss you. I love you.

But it won’t change what I had done. Even if we all move on, regret is regret. And that’s still something to be sad about.

I guess I should start with my name.

Ever since I’ve started writing, ever since I’ve been on the internet, I’ve used fake identities, in writing poetry for school, in games, in my online accounts, in my notebooks. This was even after I’ve reached the age where it didn’t seem cool anymore. At least until I started Facebook, which was back in high school. It’s funny how it all fits, doesn’t it? That was the time I felt like I belonged somewhere, where I thought I was starting to know myself.

And I didn’t do this because I felt like it. No, in my mind, I had a perfectly good reason for the anonymity. I may have said before that each name I made for myself corresponded to a different facet of my personality; who I wanted to be (escapist - Dylan Artemis), who I knew I wasn’t (insecurities - Seth), who I thought I was (self-worth - the Solitary Fatalist), who I knew I could be (tiny shreds of optimism and my grand ambitions - Rencca). But in its simplest, deep inside the cracks of those masks, I created those names because I hated my real name.

My story starts with that. Hatred. But that’s not the point of this post.

Rencca Brandte is an anagram, mostly. Cancer is my zodiac sign. One of the things I loved studying ever since I was a kid was astronomy and astrology. My grandfather (my father’s father) was a great teacher, and his passion for teaching only fueled my desire for learning. Cancer, is also one of the diseases in which my uncle (my father’s brother) and grandmother (my father’s mother) died from. It is also a disease in which I used to wish I had, because I was a pretty morbid yet naive kid. I didn’t understand why other people had to suffer diseases when a healthy boy like me existed.

I wished I suffered for the sake of other people. I still kind of do. It would give my life meaning if I could save at least one life in exchange for my own.

And I find leukemia poetic. Cancer of the blood. The water that gives life is the water that ends it. Astrologically, Cancer’s element is water.

Is that self-hatred too? Or simply a desire to live a purposeful life? They work together, those two. But back then, I just didn’t think of myself worth much. I’ve always thought so little of myself…

Keeping that strangely dark part of me in mind, I made Rencca to try to be the best I could be (In a strange but not completely unrelated twist, that was around the same time I started liking the color white). So in a way, Rencca was an attempt at a black and white character, a name of both extremes in my personality. It was a name in which I wanted to be honest with myself for once. Even though that I was still hiding behind a name.

That’s also the reason for the name of this blog. Black and white cowards.

Rain cancer? Well, I like the rain. And when you put the two words together, it sounds like Rencca at the beginning. Corny. Yeah.

But when you think about it, it was a forewarning. The rain that surrounds me has been with me since childhood. Everywhere I go, it goes with me. People were bound to get wet, no matter how hard I tried protecting them from it. It was destroying me as well, like a cancer, until I was forced to do something about it.

That’s why I’m writing this, isn’t it?

I don’t think all of this makes sense to you, but I hope that as I go on, it will. I’m sorry.

Oh, Brandte? That was a bold move. It’s an anagram of my family name, with one letter changed. I guess it was a passive try at being more honest.

They say that unexplained aches and pains are symptoms of depression too. I don’t want to believe it. I’ve been having chronic headaches and nausea since forever. I don’t think they’re connected.

Anyway, mine are getting worse, to the point that I have to lie down every few hours.

I wonder, though, if I get out of this slump I’m in, will the headaches go away?

It’s pathetic. Wanting to cure myself isn’t enough to fill the crippling void I feel inside my chest. It’s like I’m climbing up a perpetual slope. I can see the light at the top, but the earth beneath my feet keeps crumbling.

All I can do is write. My only catharsis.

But I can’t write like this. Bedridden. Pathetic.

Hi.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it, on account of me actively avoiding you in school? I apologize for that. I guess I just couldn’t help but feel ashamed for all that happened. And besides, I didn’t know what else I could say to you at the time. You got everything right in your letter, and right down to the part where we should have been honest from the start. Except maybe for one thing, but I’ll get to that later. I don’t want this letter to be another one of those things that annoy you, but some things in me are harder to change than others.

How have you been? How are you now? You don’t know how long I’ve been meaning to ask you those simple, inane questions. I heard you’re still going to The Maine’s concert? That’s awesome. I’d probably still go too, except that we seem to have the same problem. I have no one to go with, and I don’t know The Maine enough to go alone. I really hope you enjoy yourself.

I’ve been fine, mostly. I attended another party last night. It surprises me how much alcohol I can take, and I don’t even drink that often. And you were right. I do kind of function better with it. Maybe I should become an alcoholic?

I’ve been improving my guitar-playing. It’s getting really fun, especially since I found out that a few Queen songs were quite simple. I plan to join MusiKat next year with a friend of mine from CFAD. She’s my best friend’s (ex) girlfriend. Yeah, they broke up. After all I’ve told you about how I think I never could have met any two people who couldn’t be more perfect for each other. It’s kind of500 Days of Summer-like, isn’t it, how I’m beginning to doubt true love when I used to be so sure. Anyway, she has a band, and I’ve persuaded her to join me audition for the org. I have nothing but hope.

Okay, that’s a lie. Not the audition thing. It’s a lie that I can tell you that I’ve been fine. Maybe it’s half-true, but on the other side of that spectrum, I’ve probably had the worst bouts of depression I’ve ever had. No, it’s not about you. Your letter cleared everything up for me, and even if everyone else thinks I’m a rotten douche-slash-scumbag, the fact that you still believe in me is more than I could ask for.

No, mostly, it’s about me. I didn’t want to forgive myself for what I’d done. I kept lashing out at innocent people, and I was irate. I envied the support Jao and Dom had when they had problems, so I pushed them away. I couldn’t talk to anyone at home properly. And all the while, I’ve been constantly dragging Karen down with me. I couldn’t do anything about it.

Add to the fire the fact that the company that handled my tuition went bankrupt, and the fact that my grandparents seem to be making the hospital their homes. Now Karen and I aren’t talking anymore. I went too far, and I’ve managed to hurt the one person who was keeping me up.

I keep crying, when I didn’t used to cry at all. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I couldn’t write anything anymore. I had to force myself to even finish the requirements for school. I even thought of consulting a professional.

Bottom line, it was and is bad. Probably the opposite of what you were hoping for in that letter.

But I’m trying. I really am trying to get up and move. What happened with Karen woke me up. Everything that has happened is because of me, because of the hatred I have for myself. But now I’m willing to change that. I want to change.

And the thing is, why I wrote this letter isn’t just because I missed you or talking to you. I wrote this to ask for help. Not the hold-my-hand type of support that fed you and Karen up. I’m not even asking for your friendship. That’s way too much to ask. I just need you to understand why I’ve become like this. Maybe some sympathy.

Because you know, I didn’t want you to become just a lesson for me. I loved you. I still do. And maybe you’re right to say that I may just be in love with the idea of an us, but the fact is, I still felt something worthwhile. It was a privilege.

I’m just asking you to try to understand. I’ll be writing about my past, and everything, in the next few days, and maybe you’ll read them? Be patient if I don’t post every day. If you can tell them, maybe Eudes or Florabel can read them too. Or Trish. The more people who understand, the better. All a writer ever asks is to be understood, right? After I finish opening up, I’ll probably start a more professional blog, leave this one behind. Maybe I can write again. To finally leave my past, and start working on my present.

But even if no one else understands, I’ll be fine knowing you tried. I’m just asking you to read, and maybe let me know that you’ve read them. I hope that’s not too much.

I know it may be melodramatic or teenager stupid, but I need to do something about my depression, and this is the most natural thing I can think of. I just want to let it all go. And I need to tell the people I trust the most. I hope Karen reads them too, but it’s her choice.

Listen to Taylor Swift. The song “Stay Beautiful,” heard of it?

You’re beautiful, every little piece love. Don’t you know, you’re really going to be someone. Ask anyone. And if you find everything you’re looking for, I hope your life will lead you back to my door. But if you don’t, stay beautiful~~

It’s a nice, catchy song.

Anyway, I hope you consider it. I wish you nothing but the best.