IT ALL had been a constant drowning.
The past semester, Kazzandra Ysabel Baysa navigated the extremes of her borderline personality disorder (BPD) and the grief of her grandfather’s death in December 2024.
Academics were sidelined, forming a pool of absences and breaking the streaks of flat unos she maintained throughout her college years. It came to a point where she received an incomplete grade for not taking one of her exams.
Aware of these lapses, Baysa’s goal was nothing more than to simply graduate. Being honored with such an award came as a shock, not just to her, but to her family and friends as well, since they knew what she was going through.
“I think light reached my eyes. I think, at that moment, I felt something akin to happiness,” Baysa said in her valedictory address, referring to the time she received the Rector’s Award e-mail.
Finishing with a 1.109 general weighted average, albeit lower than the GWAs of the past two years’ valedictorians, the Creative Writing major obtained the highest academic rating among the graduating class in AB.
“I’m coming from [a state of] depression,” Baysa told The Flame. Her tone stayed firm despite the vulnerable admission.
Baysa did not expect that tides could turn.
Borderlines
Through her 21 years of life, Baysa felt like a spectator in her own world. Shaped by others’ expectations, she only knew how to perform: as an academic achiever or an obedient unica hija (only child).
“For the longest time, I’ve been told that this is my personality, being an achiever,” she said.
Since her routine revolved around studying, there was no room to discover herself beyond her duties. Instead of passion for things, what she felt were attachments, having hyperfixations on activities or connections with another person.
A worry even gnaws inside her for coming off as an “irresponsible” student. Many of her papers were crammed just before the deadline. For her thesis, she pulled a week-long all-nighter, admitting to indulging in video games and crocheting while her batchmates steadily built their works in the months prior.
Insomnia or sleep paralysis would often haunt her nights, leaving her restless for important schedules. With one look at Baysa — at her laidback demeanor and body strengthened from working out — these struggles were unnoticeable, but internally, they persisted anyway.
It was only in July 2024 when she was diagnosed with BPD.
Baysa regularly deals with rapidly fluctuating mood swings, as the National Library of Medicine describes. She may experience a manic episode or a depressive mood. This bleeds into BPD’s other characteristics: a distorted sense of identity, impulsive behavior and difficulty regulating emotions and maintaining relationships.
“I have this belief that I can take over the world, climb Mount Everest, be the next president of the Philippines and end crisis in a fortnight,” Baysa admitted in her speech, in front of the graduating class.
“But some days, most days, really, I can’t even get out of bed.”
Angel Flores, her close friend, who also has BPD, shared similar sentiments.
“I’d say that the Kazz that people do not see is everything you would not expect from someone who achieved this much,” Flores told The Flame.
“Kumbaga it’s a race, and she had a broken leg.”
Built-in achiever
At an early age, Baysa had always been an exceptional student.
Growing up in Tañong, Malabon City, she learned how to read in both English and Filipino at the age of two and a half. Generally, children at this age are only starting to pick up words. Because of this, she started nursery, as her mother called it, a “saling pusa.” She finished kindergarten at the top of her class. Right after, she began first grade at just five years old.
In the classroom, Baysa helped classmates through readings and mouthed answers to questions they did not know. Teachers, having caught her, made her face the wall as punishment for coaching.
“She loved sharing what she had in her mind. ‘Yung mga nababasa niya, shine-share niya talaga (She really shared everything she read),” her mother, Rosario, said.
A collection of books, spanning novels, school textbooks and mandatory math booklets, started to pile up in every nook and cranny of their house. Not long after walking through the gates of Malabon National High School at age 11, her aunt Noemi, their student publication advisor at the time, introduced her to the world of campus journalism.
As a sports writer turned editor-in-chief, Baysa collected accolades left and right, including a monetary reward from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, among other entities.
“Doon ko yata nakuha ‘yung idea na (That’s where I got the idea that) I can do this for the rest of my life,” she said, referring to the prize money she won.
The Humanities and Social Sciences strand became the natural choice for furthering her writing career. This led to her pursuing Creative Writing in UST in 2021.
Throughout college, Baysa was a powerhouse in reciting. Her camera always stayed open during online classes, her winged eyeliner kept sharp as her cat snuggled beside her.
Baysa was either blunt with a relaxed tone, which made jokes and truths indistinguishable, or a “yapper,” as she liked to call herself. Usually, it was both. Her conviction was sometimes mistaken for arrogance.
“She can be very hard on you. She will tell you the truth as it is,” Roli Angelo Manuel, fellow Creative Writing senior and her boyfriend, said.
“Intense siyang tao,” Prof. Chuckberry Pascual, her thesis adviser, said.
“‘Pag may gusto siya, nakukuha niya ‘yun. Pinaghihirapan niya. (If there’s something she wants, she’ll get it. She’ll work hard for things),” Pascual added.
For her thesis, Baysa surprised Pascual by choosing a rarely explored genre and preparing prior research to defend her choice. She knew what she wanted to do. He found her to be “impressive” for it, believing she has potential.
Crashed out
Yet, for her, working for such feats is not a conscious effort to be the best. Instead, it was ingrained in her since childhood to live up to certain standards.
“I don’t have much [creative] influences . . . because I wasn’t allowed. I’m just supposed to study, focus on academics and stuff like that,” Baysa shared.
“Even now, when I achieve something, I don’t really celebrate these things because they are expected of me.”
Ever since nursery, a common sight was walking up the stage. Her grandparents and father took turns hooking the medals on her while her mother, who wanted them to share these moments with Baysa, stood behind to take pictures.
Growing up as a “lolo’s girl,” Baysa’s grandfather was a constant supporter, even accompanying her to the nearby terminal during her commutes to and from the University.
“Simula pa lang, siya na ‘yung nagsasabi na, ‘Ay, summa cum laude na.’ He’d tell me siya ang magpapa-tarpaulin,” Baysa said.
(Even in the beginning, he was the one saying that, ‘Ay, you’ll graduate summa cum laude.’ He’d tell me that he’ll be the one to make a tarpaulin of me.)
But on the 25th of December 2024, he passed away. Grief engulfed her in deep waters until the light no longer shone through from above.
The weight of the thesis colloquium was barely washed off. By then, she had not been able to get the chance to celebrate anything yet. It sank harder knowing that her birthday, the 31st, was only a few days away.
Baysa started to walk to the terminal alone.
“The thing with BPD is that you’re high for a very long time. I’ve been overperforming for a very, very long time since childhood. But when you crash, you crash,” she said.
Internal struggles rendered her unresponsive, making it difficult to carry out her tasks. She found herself withdrawing from her responsibilities — both as a student and as block president. Many mental health clearances had to be passed in order for her to continue her studies.
“Being [this] low is new to me, and I don’t like it,” Baysa admitted. “I hated — still hate — this version of me who struggles with simple things like essays or a summary of my thesis.”
Against the currents
Yet, sailing the storms of her mental illness was not an endeavor she had to brave alone. For Baysa, she felt lucky that Manuel was there. As the block vice president, he was ready to step up and substitute for her while she dealt with her lows.
“If you ask me how I survived, how I coped, I had good people,” Baysa said.
There were even times when Baysa, pushed to the edge, had attempted to take her own life. Manuel would have to pull her out of it “literally and figuratively,” she recalled. An instance occurred when he had to headlock her to stop her from pursuing an attempt.
“I feel like this journey, as much as it started na siya lang (with just her), she didn’t finish it alone,” Manuel said.
“I have to remind myself — and I still try to remind myself — that there are many things I didn’t do, but there are also many things that I did do,” Baysa said.
“At the end of the day, the greatest achievement I have is that I exist, and I am here.”
A lot of these experiences translate into her writing.
Her undergraduate thesis was written as autofiction, a genre that combines autobiography and fiction. Entitled “Border/Line,” she took her real-life experiences and trauma, then fictionalized them through metaphors.
When Baysa presented in front of her panelists, their words echoed within her. She said that one particular remark from Prof. Emerita Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, director of the Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies, stuck with her.
“Your writing is enough reason to keep going,” Pantoja-Hidalgo told Baysa.
It was there that she realized how many people actually surrounded and supported her. For her, this was the point of it all, “to be someone, to be with someone,” as she said in her speech.
“Our minds are very powerful. It’s very easy to believe we’re alone when we only hear our voice inside our heads, which is sometimes why we need to use our ears to hear the voices of other people,” Baysa said.
To be and to keep being
The light of the stage shone upon Baysa like the sun piercing through the water. She gazed upon the ocean of graduates that sat before her, using her voice to speak out about her experience and BPD.
“I am just a digit in a statistic, a number that barely comprehends each symptom that enslaves the body to the mind — and we are not even counted yet in this country,” Baysa said in her speech.
“But here I am, making sure we are remembered.”
Although the future is unpredictable, Baysa decides that she wants to live for something other than academics, since that was all she had ever known her entire life. Her next step forward, before entering the corporate world or obtaining a master’s degree, is returning to therapy to recollect herself.
“I want to rest, but also I want to make sure that I don’t stay stagnant, because you know what they say about still water? If it’s still water, it probably means it’s rotting with bacteria and amoeba, and I don’t want to be still water,” she said.
With the community she found within her classmates, professors, family, friends and Manuel, Baysa feels secure enough to try out new things and to branch out — and, along the way, continue to write.
“I lived enough, and it doesn’t always get better, you know? That’s OK. At the end of the day, there’s no good life, there’s no bad life. There’s just existing,” Baysa said.
“It’s so beautiful to exist, but it can be horrible and annoying. But also, I exist, ‘di ba (right)? I am here anyway, so I might as well make it count.” F
While reading through, the writer was able to
Convey the emotions of the subject as the main point, I felt like Baya was the one telling her story directly to me.