If you want to find out about someone’s character you ask them how do they gauge truth, or how do they know something is true?

Most will say because so and so said so, some variant of outsourced knowledge. Some "Religion." Some "Scientist." Some "Dr." Some "Guru." Some "Parent." Some "Mother." Some "Father." Some "Thought triggered by someone else." Some “Theory.”

Rare people will say they don’t know, they’re a bit more evolved because they see the conditioning. They see the confusion.

The rarer people will say they know because they’ve observed for themselves, not blindly, but with purity enough to observe correctly.

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I have often wondered why it is that I exist, why, even after prolonged pleas to **** me in my sleep – you allow me to wake to a barrage of thoughts.

I don’t really know my purpose for being here. Why all the pain exists. Why I was born to my parents, my own race. I do not know much. Sometimes I feel myself going mad from not knowing anything.

I guess I yearn to know so much because I fear this uncertainty, this lack of safety I’ve always seem to have felt in this world.

I wish I knew. I wish that you would talk to me sometimes. I guess what I wish for is some comfort – that somehow, there is a meaning to this madness, a meaning for my life, a purpose for existing.

I can’t seem to fool myself into believing anything transient for too long. When I cling onto something unreal, unstable – it gets taken away from me, and all I am left with is, nothing. Intense pain soon arises.

Sometimes you know I feel so depressed. So out of touch with you – as Osho would say.

My heart yearns so much to know itself; but it constantly breaks out of confusion and disconnection.

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?

I saw myself sitting on my knees, hunched over, clinging to a pile of rugs beneath me. Precisely three. Each rug was much like the other; slightly different in shape, but all of the same tone and texture. 


One by one, each was pulled away from underneath me…


My dad came and stole the first rug. I hardly expected it to have been snatched away. In my innocence, I thought I could somehow seek comfort there. Somehow I thought, I could feel it’s warmth for the remainder of my life not knowing much of the past, nor the future. With its displacement soon arose great fear. My mind started to alarmingly ring. What if all my other rugs are taken too? What if I have nothing soft left to lie on anymore? And what if all I feel is the bare emptiness of the ground below me? An emptiness, in which I am nothing? Inherently nothing…?

I clung to each rug that followed in dire fear of unanswered questions. In dire fear of all unknown. 


A few years thereafter, another rug I had grasped was snatched from underneath my base by T–. He did so in such an insidious way, I hardly expected it to have happened either. He had such invisibly cold hands that he told me were warm – a series of lies masquerading as truth. When T—’s rug went missing, I fell in much the same way as when my first rug was taken. Except this time, I fell to a position I had already felt so keenly, and so now, fell much more intensely. Doubly hunched over and in pain. A feeling of dejection and despair so intense from having already carried a previous stain; a previous memory. 


The next rug I encountered, I thought to be real. Actually, I thought it to be the most genuine I had ever encountered in the universe. It had seemingly inexhaustible warmth. I could hardly help but cling in ecstasy, though also in hidden agony, in cognizance of how transient all my other rugs had been. Finally, perhaps I had a home for me to lay my head upon? A home which would grant me stable rest? But here too, I was mistaken. Like each rug that came before, this rug was indeed transitory and full of uncertainty. Perhaps more soft, perhaps more real, perhaps more warm and embracing – but he too had to go. After all, he was another rug I had clung to; an attachment like all the rest.

–

When this particular rug was pulled, I was so terrified of soon touching the ground below me, that my body contracted in a frenzied, desperate agony. I tried so hard to make whatever warmth remain; strenuously clenching with all my might to staple it down in place. However, as hard as I did pull to hang on, an unknown force pulled away at a greater intensity. I found myself in a tug of war I could not win and sooner or later, the weight of my frustrations gave in. Mournfully, I failed to control its inevitable movement. My last remaining rug, yes, he too, went away.

And so I had nothing left beneath me… 


The cold floor exposed bare was the hard reality with which existence presented me. In the past, I had tried to search for other rugs to hide in. I thought to myself that other rugs would do, that perhaps I just needed a different few. I clung to some alternate variations; some made of others’ skin; half-hearted relations or validations, some of money, others of drugs or work or pastimes and pleasure. Despite all my attempts however, I could not evade the emptiness of the floor beneath me. I had felt it repeatedly with my own body. Its coldness had visibly scraped and scarred me. And I knew; each rug I had clung to was a cover-up so transient. Despite their initial warmth; each stood porous now – exposing the cold, and digging holes in any of my attempts not to feel what lied beneath.

Upon these realisations, the floor which held me and my previous rugs soon started collapsing. With its fall, I was taken into an empty, dark abyss; seemingly endless and all-enclosing. Seemingly perpetual.

Mid-fall I was so catastrophically uncertain, I wanted to close my eyes and no longer wake. I berated myself for continuing to be conscious and pleaded for existence to **** me in my sleep. How dare I still be alive while falling in such suffering and sadness, I lamented.


I lacked the courage to feel the thud of my final landing and its location.

From past experience, I was almost certain that what lied beneath was infinite pain; dark abandonment of course, for miles without end.


–

To be continued (as I learn how)…

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.

It was hard for me not to make a home in you
In trust your arms would stay
It was hard, I say —
For me to not mould my body to yours
In relief, that its warmth would not stray

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.

The soul without a home feels so lonely
She wanders around mazes that do not end
And people who never bend
Frozen in time and space
In an inevitable predictability
Again and again
The same phrases and words,
Habits and hopes,
Wishes and whims,
And the self left repressed
...predictably unexpressed
Same old, same old
Both young and then old
Old and reborn…

I have this voice inside of me which drives me to despair;
Even after every effort made — it still berates beyond repair.

I have this voice inside of me, it screams, it kicks, it yells;
Even as I lay in perfect silence, it commands from tortured hells.

I have this voice inside of me, it has multiplied beyond belief;
I see it lies in all I’ve met — proceeds in everyone — without relief.

I have this voice inside of me, one which came from you;
All the lies you ever told me — they grew, they grew, they grew...

I have a mind inside of me, it haunts me through and through;
If I should ever die by my own hand, it spoke to me, through you.

...

I know of parts inside of me, at first I couldn’t distinguish the two;
One from me and one from you, one was false and another, true.

...

Another part inside of me, seeks to end your reign;
Perhaps by then, I will be governed by silence, perhaps by then, it won’t have to be feigned.

Another part inside of me, pleads for a higher path,
It pleads for me to surface, all in the wake of your aftermath.

...

I feel a beating within me, which yearns to live and grow,
*Even in the screams and contractions, a substance beneath me flows.

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.* — Franz Kafka

—

After some time on this earth, we come to be encased in a robotic shell; the same kind our parents were encased in and all who surround us are encased in. There’s a feeling of being trapped, of living a “semi-life”, of simply living yet not existing.

Gradually, you get dropped and dropped by the world. Parts of the shell start to disappear; you see parts of what lie underneath, yet remain encased by what you’ve come to assume. You see some lies, but at the same time, you cannot breathe in all that you see.

You get dropped and dropped some more. Your body reacts in all that has been taught; in hurts. The stabs and contractions scare it out of confrontation. The more you shield yourself, the more the shell seems to cling. You come to resist all that you once felt. And so long as you refuse, the falling will never cease. Till one day you fall so hard into the ground, shell encased, never found.

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.

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?

Appeal to their projections

Be a figment of their imagination

Fill the voids they can’t seem to fill in themselves

Fulfill their unconscious unmet needs

Give them the worth they crave from within

All of this, while being physically attractive too —

So attractive in fact, the projections get lost in lust and rationalisations

Lately the poetry is not coming to me,

I feel pain too intensely.

I feel myself enclosed within tight spaces,

I can hardly feel a flow of words, spill out, unwaveringly.

Lately, I’ve been too lost in thought,

I am too much in rumination to get a burst of feeling,

So intense, I resort to written expression.

Lately, I’ve been scared of many things;

Of living and of death;

Of my own and my only friend.

Lately, lately, I await, until the words come again…

Once a stranger, now a "mother" had given birth to *a daughter —
A daughter, unknown, untouched like a stranger —
A stranger to the world and all that was known —
All that was known was duplicated thereafter —
Thereafter, duplicated by all those she encountered —
Encountered by all those who had been duplicated —
Duplicated in a world full of knowledge —
Knowledge, that had been corrupted —
Corrupted by those who had pretended in fear —
Fear planted by the world and, mother and father —
Father was so-and-so —
So now, let’s be so-and-so —
And so, on-and-on; the chain continues —
Continues until another mother gives birth to a daughter —
A daughter, gives birth to another daughter —
Another daughter gives birth to another —
Another, unknown, once a stranger —

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

I don’t know if I’ve really let all the sadness seep through my pores;

Every inch,

Till

it

cascades

down

in

all

its

wept

glory.

I'm ready to part with this piece of you I've hold onto so tight

Imprints on my hand that have comforted and held me for years

Deep etchings carved over time, where once sat care, now filled with scars

You were carved so deep, I thought you'd remain

I loved you as much as I could

As much as I could carry and was capable of

As much as my cold hands could keep the warmth between them

I thought I knew you when we cried between the sheets

Two lonely halves, somehow forming a whole

A love, I had not felt before

I thought I knew you

You and I, I and you

We came together, I thought I knew...

You used to feel like home

Like a soft bed, I could sink into, without remorse

But now, I know, there's no other way

I cannot cling nor stay,

For two lonely parts, never make a whole

And two lonely parts, fail to make a home

You and I, I and you

Forever, we remain, separate, just as we met

Strangers, torn into two

Still lonely, and lost, unknowing, and new.

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 came to you with a half-open heart
That you poured yourself into

I let you in with my half-open arms
I opened them up a little just for you

My parents visited again --
In you, with pain and not much more

I feel so many more rocks in my heart --
My family and now you, I know!

---

I walked away from you with a half-closed heart
I walked away with pain and more

Every part that was hurt and cemented
I walked away with more, no few

Every part of my father you supposedly hated
I saw again and again in you

---

Now, I’m left to fill my half-closed heart
In hopes that I never turn into you

Now I’m left to mend myself
Because I never wanted to be neither of you

*Daddy, Mommy...
You *******, I’m finally through.

I don’t know you yet,
But my hands grasps yours,
And my heart sits,
In silent knowing of your embrace.

I don’t know you yet,
But I imagine you in bed;
Arms folded over against me;
A warm caress to soothe my soul.

I don’t know you yet; my friend,
My lover,
So I lie here lonely,
Trying to sit in comfort with my aloneness.

I don’t know you yet,
And you don’t know of me,
But surely, we know each other,
Somewhere in the dreams of our unconscious.

The hopes of our future.
The unmet needs of our past.  
The paths of our present.

I don’t know you yet,
Yet, I wish you knew of me.

I wish you knew how much it hurts to not have you here sometimes; all the sorrow that I hold.

I wish you knew of my past; of all I’ve lived and endured and be in awe.

I wish for your stories; a life lived before me and what you came to know.

I wish for your heart, as it unfolds; throughout the ups and downs of this life, till death brings us apart.

I wish, I wish so much; you were here sometimes.

I try to be strong on my own; but deep down, there’s always a yearning,
for another, to love and hold.

For connection and kinship.

A solace, a home.

For poetry, life, laughs, aliveness.

Love.

When he left,
All I thought of was you.

My past has paved a way to you.

I know I don’t know you yet,
But deep down, I feel, I already do.

I stay alive in thoughts of you.

If you’re sad; let it tell you what you lack, what you yearn for but are disconnected from.

If you’re afraid; let it tell you what you evade, what you need to confront and forgive yourself for.

If you’re mad; let it tell you what boundaries in you have been crossed, what aspects of you have been left invalidated.

If you’re happy; let it tell you who you are — outside the blockages of time and space.

And if you feel a burst of sensitivity; express it in art.

*Express it in art.

My past is like a stain that paints each new place, and face.

A mind which seeks release and an essence that continues to cease.

'Tis a burden resting within my body, disallowing any newfound story.

"Dusty dialogues, foggy monologues."

Sentences strewn about and borrowed, without much doubt.

Quotations so seemingly true, I resort to attaching myself to more than a few.

Spirals in which I continue; imprisoned words I need to see through.

There is a part of me buried within

Waiting for warmth and water

Awareness and sense.

She has remained hidden for some time

Waiting for my acknowledgement.

Others pass by with indifference

Stare all around but not within

Deposit dirt and dust from without.

I’ve found her much harder to see

The her that waits in silence, settled in peace.

When I come to know though, I see

That still, I am still here!

Still here;

In need of warmth and water

Still here;

With more sense and awareness.

And behind the dirt and dust

There lies a seed needing love to bloom.

There lies her needing my own to bloom.

Atnight I shrink to my father and fear…with closedeyes…my thoughts appear and disappear….in perpetualfog…oneminute, I am ugly…another, lazy…then, an unworthy, helpless, hopeless, heap…hunchedover…and in pain…with arms poised to protect…body contorted to distort…but whatever I clingto…and all I resist..u-n-f-o-l-d-s  i-n  d-a-y,  w-h-e-n  m-y  e-y-e-s  t-h-a-­t  s-t-r-a-i-n  s-e-a-m-l-e-s-s-l-y  o----p----e----n

The sun is slowly starting to seep into my hardened veins

Bringing with it a message of hope;

Of life, arising from the once hopelessly dead.

I hear the tides whisper of change;

Washing the old and known, and carrying the new.

I feel a new warmth caress my impoverished skin;

The real home of the child I once knew.

I’m starting to hear the songs of the birds outside,

Feel my own embrace,

See the beauty of each bloom;

A space for gratitude, where once was despair.

I’m starting to feel an eternal value;

Something not said, but felt;

Of being wanted, of being loved, supported although lost.

A sense of safety once unknown.

The sun it seeps;

And I allow it.

Existence comes calling;

And I embrace it.

A self once lost;

Now somehow returning.

Let the suffering grow your heart.

Let it grow your compassion.

Let it help you understand.

Let it help you forgive.

Let it help you to see the circumstances of the unfortunate,

and to feel their sadnesses deep within.

Let it help you to cry, wholeheartedly.

Let it give you depth.

Let it give you meaning; purpose.

Let it roll over you like a welcome wave;

A shower that cleanses you; inside, out.

Let it make you feel.

Let it make you sensitive.

Let it allow you to listen.

Let it teach;

find parts of yourself you once lost, now known;

A coming back to self.

Let it refine you.

Evolve you.

Let it give you poetry,

A heart,

Art.

Let it be,

Let it be.