Personally, now I speak less and have become more silent than before. Although I want to share the grief and deep sorrow I am feeling with somebody, I don’t know who to tell. My wife is hardly surviving on her own so I don’t want to give her more anxiety.
When I was depressed, everything seemed to be wrong. I was sensitive to every little thing. I even cursed my beloved partner and hit her. I broke precious things. Life became unstable and so was the future. I could not predict what the future would hold.
Sometimes I fall asleep all day without doing anything. When I sleep, I forget everything. When I wake up, I still have to live. So I decided to escape from an environment that doesn't value me. I started to come back to myself.
I can probably talk to anyone about how horrible the situation in our country is, how innocent citizens are suffering from atrocities, how badly I am worried for my family or all about the problems with my marriage. But I have not told anyone about the guilt I feel for getting you into that bad situation, just because of me.
How does it feel to be scared? How does it feel to be nervous or sad? Even when people cry out something horrible that has happened in front of me, I find myself standing still and feeling numb.
Unfortunately, I had my depression and menstruation at the same time, and it was very difficult for me to control my feelings. Unintentionally, I cut off my hair that I loved so much.
I could not breathe well when I heard the gunshots. When the military vehicles patrolled the neighborhood at night, the lights had to be turned off and we kept silent.
No matter how hard I tried, even if I fell asleep it would just be for a short moment. Every so often, I woke up from dreams hearing sounds and seeing things. I saw red stains everywhere. I heard crying all the time. Even though I tried my best to have a routine everyday, I could no longer feel normal.
That was the only time I ever felt so small. I never knew the meaning of that phrase before, “I feel so small...”
Everything in the world seems so big that it might fall upon me and hurt me. Everything seems scary and suffocates me, but I cannot even find a place to hide. I don’t have any self-confidence anymore or self esteem.
So, there was the Saturday Market happening yesterday early in the morning, in the small town that I live in. I was having Chai and a delicious pretzel with a friend. Then, there was a Dutch guy who was maybe in his mid 40s - we had met elsewhere before, but never talked until he came to our table. We chatted for a bit, but then I needed to join a work Zoom call, so I politely asked if it was ok for me to join the call whilst still having our tea as we had originally planned. They said it was okay.
As a single female traveler, I was riding a motorbike up in a remote mountain landscape sprinkled with farms and villages. I ended up on a road under construction, which was terrible. It was close to dusk and there was no reasonable option other than to push through, even if my anxiety was growing exponentially. There was a guy driving in front of me who recognized my dilemma and signed that I should follow his lead.
I have been body shamed since I was young, even when people were not using that term yet. Maybe people didn’t know better. But my youth was destroyed by words - the words that people said to me without even knowing themselves.
Ko Maung Maung’s wife, Ma Seinn, sends the girl from his office something to eat almost twice a week. She does this not only to build a good relationship with them, but also to check on what her husband, Ko Mg Mg, is doing or is planning to do. They usually talk on the phone too.
Childhood trauma is something I think many LGBT+ people have experienced. Some people experience more wounds, and some people experience less.
As far as I can remember, I was in the third or fourth grade, around the age when we started going to tuition.
I just finished high school. Feeling so free, independent, and thirsting to experience everything the world had to offer me. This was the summer of experiencing new things, of saying yes and seeing where life takes me. I spent the summer traveling, reconnecting with myself and my body after years of depression and self-harm.
I didn’t know anything about darkness until I was 6.
I remember that our family moved to a new place when I was 6. I remember there were many children in my neighborhood. I remember there were two older guys who organized everything for children to play, they were like “the leaders” of this gang of children.
My very sad vagina!
By Ma Pann Nee
I am from Lin Ke.. I moved to Thailand to work around my 17 after getting married.
When we got here, my husband’s friend always visit our home to drink. He is a Chinese but can speak a little of Myanmar. My husband always invite him because he always pay for the drinks but I was always felt not right about him.
Chita is a girl. She is 8 years old. She lives in a small village in the Northern part of Chiang Mai.
She lives with her grandparents, father, and younger brother. Her mother broke up with her father when she was young and her brother was just only a newborn.
Clang! I heard the noise of something flew by and crashed. Dive fast or the flying objects might smash my head. I wish it was my head instead of mom’s. And the sound came from my dad sitting on the couch and reaching for drinking glasses to throw at my mom from the table of our living room. My dad would hit my mom with the same cane my mom used to hit us while cursing incessantly. That’s how adults expressed anger I learnt.