I can feel you my sadness;

In the crevices of this spine;

In the clench of this body;

The continual stinging of my eyes.

I can feel you my sadness;

A back, bent forward;

Reluctant to life;

You weep of old memories;

Etched privately in recoil.

I can hear you now my child;

Every tear, every gesture,

Every whisper;

Every silence accumulated in stone.

My enclosed heart —

Know, you remain as memory;

A shadow overlapping each day and night.

I’ve been treating myself like there is something very wrong with me, particularly my emotions. Every emotion I get (most often, my “negative” ones), I’ve been monitoring and trying to control, when all I simply needed to do was to allow for their expression and not do anything. For a long, long time I’ve considered myself to be someone ill and in need of healing; what a difference a label makes. To be “ill”, in essence requires that someone “do” something to fix themselves as a “problem”. The very nature of thinking yourself “ill” promotes action and effort. I’m glad I don’t go to a dr, can you imagine how many other disorders and syndromes I would have to “fight” and contend with.

A lot of the time when someone gets traumatised, or undergoes some sort of negative event, they always look to the happy part of themselves as the “real” them, or at least the part of them deemed to be acceptable enough to be “real”. They lament losing the “real” them. But who are people really? Are they only who they are when they’re happy? Does the extent of one’s being only pertain to their happiness? What if a part of me is in despair, what if a part of me is in intense fear and anxiety — aren’t these parts of me also real and equally valid as happiness? Particularly if they’re perfectly natural reactions to intense suffering and pain. These parts of me scream for catharsis after having been invalidated for a long time and instead of allowing them, I've condemned myself as being ill for feeling them. This is why society is in part sick; repression is healthy and expression is deemed ill. We drug away “negative” emotions for fear we are somehow damaged for harbouring them.

From now on, I am no longer “ill” — what a difference such a perception makes in how you treat yourself. Whatever you do is acceptable, whatever you do is allowed and expression is an inevitability. My intense sadness is not a problem, my intense pain is not a problem, my intense fear is not a problem — do you know how freeing such an attitude towards self is?

Let it caress your bracing self,

Shrinking stones, held in recoil.

Let it travel up your slouching spine,

Tell all resistance it’s safe from harm.

Let it mend your perpetually clenched heart,

Open and expand, finally united with warmth.

Let it fill you with sight,

Sense the stirring of sadness and fright.

Let it all, let it go,

Feel in all entirety, safe from harm.

Let it go, let it all,

Unwept tears, contracted cries.

Let them in, let them all,

Your past and present,

Ups and declines.

Let it all, let it in,

Pleasure of life, the sense of the sane.

Inhale, exhale...

Self-uncontracted, existence begins.

I love you to the moon and back, yet on earth, I hate you back and forth.

I am happy with a suppressed sense of agony. So ecstatically vibrant, yet miserably tormented.

I live day to day, walking and “maturing”, yet move no further than beyond the grave of a past, long dead and gone.

I’m awake, don’t you see?

When I wake, I open my eyes in a helpless sleep. Outside my tiny being, I see nothing but me.

I call myself a mother, or a father, but never gave birth to a daughter.

We call ourselves a “family”, but exist so disconnected — wavering and dislodged, apart and separated. Smiling resentfully, painfully, excruciatingly.

All for the cameras of course.

I am respectful — to be respected! I shower in lies, and cover you too, so I need not see any offensive residue.

I am a strong person, cowering and contracted to the slightest sight of error.

No vulnerability.

I’m brave, don’t you see? A plastic rock, standing impervious to the sea.

I love you, I love you, I love you. But I don’t see you, nor hear you, don’t know you.

I understand you, of course, “I understand everything!!!!” But I don’t see you, nor hear you, don’t know you.

I know you, I know you, I know you. Yet I don’t see you, nor hear you, don’t know you.

You’re crazy, poor child! Why can’t you lie like we do!?

Why can’t you NOT feel like we do!?

Why can’t you NOT see as we do!?

Why can’t you just “forgive” and “accept”? Take it all, all our objects in their entirety and forget the emptiness of your soul. Sacrifice yourself, for you need not forget, we gave it ALL.

Don’t you know yet? This world is OURS to own. A “truth” to be known.

Your perception; a mere fallacy to be shown.

Don’t you know yet?

Everyone agrees.

We stand before an army of validation, against your small speck of reality.

All memory, all harmony, all said and done -- buried beneath.

We are the bringers of truth, the proclaimers of wisdom and sound guidance. And you, our poor child, just a little voice to be silenced.

A lost soul, drifting outside the “right” path.

Reach for our direction.

You’ll travel upon a dusty, well-trodden track, and with feet now imprinted with scars. Rest assured though, for we travelled there too; feet too ***** to bear and too numb to care.

Take our confident hands, our dearest child. We’ll lead you through a clear path with tainted feet.

You’ll fall and we’ll rise in disbelief.

You’ll scream and it’ll only echo our fears.

In this perfect silence of a home

I can hear the voice within

Protected from the murmur of the outside

I can hear the voice within

In this perfect silence of a home

Safe from tormented winds

She whispers…

I am I, and they are they

In this perfect silence of a home

I can finally speak, hear, listen…

See

Safe from strangers…

I am I, and they are they

I am I...

They are they...

In this perfect silence of a home

A stillness reverberates from within

Yes, I Am I, now left alone

Such a perfect silence to call home

My heart has carried a great deal;

chains of causation, a thousand lies and countless sufferings.

Day by day, it continues to clench like a fist;

enclosed to all outside trappings, protected to the cold of winter.

At night and day, I hardly feel the outside;

only mere semblances and traces of feeling, touch and bliss.

I yearn for the days when I used to feel —

used to see how it was to breathe in all entirety —

flow with the grace of my body.

I yearn so much.

Yet in all my yearning, my heart closes itself to all it does not want --

pain, suffering, resistance, anger, agony, sadness.

How do I yearn and yet stay open?

Feel without enclosing?

Experience without succumbing?

My own body keeps its secrets hidden; even from myself when I refuse to listen.

It screams and screams for attention and when I refuse to hear; it numbs itself in alignment with my wishes.

My body can dictate how much of life I wish to experience — how much I seek to feel. Whether it be dull or feeling.

When I refuse to feel, it closes like the gates of a prison. Inside, I feel numb to any vestiges of emotion; lacking life and freedom.

My body is an imprint of either acceptance or resistance, of condemnation or allowance, of love and care or distrust.

The body is a mirror; blame it not for sadness, anger, worry, nor a self reflected -- False or Aesthetic.