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TOPIC: Teenage Struggles

Lullabies that keep you awake.
By: Jhaelo Czar Angara
(Date)
The mischievous moonlight naughtily seeped through the thin blue fabric of my
room’s curtain, painting my room’s insides with pale blue hues. I locked eyes with the ceiling
and waited for the will to sleep to push my eyelids down, but it never came. I lay
uncomfortably in my bed as I listened to the uneven and unsatisfying sound of the open
faucet in the backyard. I lay there wide awake, sharing the eve’s silence with the ringing
chirps of tiny nocturnal creatures. It’s time like this, with my eyes wide open and my mind
wide awake, when the melodies of horror start playing, like lullabies sung to an infant as
maternal love rocks her to sleep, except this one keeps me awake.
People have always associated the night sky with peaceful rest; a time to surrender all
your burdens upon the comfort of your pillow and the warmth of your blanket. But for some,
nighttime doesn’t always bring forth silence and peace but rather a thunderous storm of
things worse than monsters under the bed. When the lights are out, and darkness conquers the
room, something appears deadlier than the sharpest blade to ever exist, ready to take lives and
cut breath after breath. This crippling melody is a horrible nightmare before wide-open eyes,
like a burning touch to such fragile skin and you are forced to feel every shred of pain while
wide awake. It’s a song with a surge of self-pity and discouragement playing as it painfully
drains the life out of everyone who listens. It’s a record of all the wrong steps and failed leaps
you have made, sung repeatedly as it carves itself onto your bleeding skin. It’s a lullaby being
suffered on different rooms and beds but with the same melody and torture. Every night,
when some of us are out to our daydreams, most of us are awake with the nightmare of reality
as the moon bears witness to our silent battles.
One out of ten teenagers suffer on the hands of depression and anxiety; alone and
drowning in the sea of their own thoughts and emotions. Every night, behind the closed
curtains are these cruel battles against voices and dark lullabies amplified by the still silence
of the night sky. But we are clueless of these hidden fights and wars that had commenced
inside someone’s room because the wounds from these kinds of battle are invisible to the
naked eye. It’s easy to hide the marks of restlessness under our eyes and to paint our faces
with deceitful emotions that don’t reflect our minds. These battles can leave the most
devastating aftermath to someone, yet the traces of their ruins are easy to miss. If one were
unable to catch the unusual sighs between series of laughter, or the one millisecond frown
upon the brightest of smiles, then one could never know. Mental health are oftentimes
overlooked and undervalued; and to exist in a world where people constantly invalidate what
you feel can be a draining and heavy experience.
It’s funny how it’s so easy to feel alone and empty on such a crowded and
overpopulated planet. With over 8 billion people existing right now, it’s easy to feel
insignificant, unheard, and unseen. As you lay there bathed in the gloom of the moon, it’s
easy to feel like you are the only one awake to experience these haunting lullabies, alone in
the abyss of your overflowing emotions. In a world full of screaming voices and painful
lullabies, it’s a struggle to seek the voices that are worth listening to. The soft whispers of a
mother, a gentle melody from a friend, or the delicate words of a sibling, these sounds are the
ones that greet us when the sunshine comes, the sounds that really matter. Because these
people don’t just talk, they listen; and these people are ready to be all ears and hear all about
the lullabies that keep you awake.