Kintsugi

Imagine a warrior clad in heavy armor

Picked apart by his enemy

One heavy chunk of metal at a time,

One portion of flesh left open to attack

Easily torn to shreds by piercing fury

the human mind is very similar,easily susceptible to attack,

Picked apart by it’s thoughts, collapsing within itself like jelly,

These thoughts are birthed by emotional trauma

And these thoughts birth insecurities that we have to live with for the rest of our lives,

These insecurities create voids in the soul

That make us humans feel empty or devoid

We try to fill these voids with love and companionship

But sometimes the human mind is too fragile to adjust to social situations

It’s too cautious, it’s afraid

And in this fear births loneliness

To compensate for that loneliness we love too hard, or too little, we

drink too much , we smoke too much, we snort, we inject,we cut ourselves,

Anything that makes us feel closer to death, makes us feel closer to life,

It’s a strange feeling, but it is one that addicts identify with

Overcompensating, self loathing, lack of ambition

Aimlessly going through the motions of existence

No drive, nothing,

Just nothing

Not even after sex, when you’re in the arms of a loved one

Or a stranger, inability to enjoy any achievements,

We feel like we don’t deserve the light

We feel like we can no longer fight

We feel like we’d rather die,

There will be people that will tell you that suicide is selfish

That the outside world is beautiful

One full of lush meadows, lofty peaks, the saltwater of the seven seas,

beautiful women, bronzed men, lots and lots of shade from trees, cool summer breeze,

But the outside world is just a tiny aspect of the situation

No matter how beautiful or desolate,

The mind hinges on it’s insecurities and it’s fears

That men and women like us fight our demons everyday

In every waking moment,in every dream sequence

We fight to breathe

We fight to live

And our armour is rusted or broken or picked apart

We are left open to attack

Attack after attack

And these people will never understand how it feels to live with perpetual siege mentality

How survival instincts work in the emotionally repressed

How we fear getting attached to things

How we fear the next depressive bout right after beating the current one,

How we are hanging by a thread of positivity or over feeling guilty,

That there are others hanging beside us, just the same

And a hellish inferno beneath us of brothers and sister fallen to their premature graves,

That there is no feeling of safety, or groundedness,

We are always ready to take flight or to fight

Whether we fight the outside world, or we fight ourselves, that’s a different plight,

Do not listen to these people, they don’t know what you’re going through,

They don’t know the darkness, they don’t hear the voices you hear

Or the things you see when you sleep - of the death of your loved ones,of your future suffering,

They don’t know it, but they’re the first to call you selfish,

If you have to be selfish, understand that even the samurai have taken their own lives through Harakiri - honorable suicide

But you have fought for a long time,

You’ve succeeded in keeping these monsters at bay

You’ve managed to keep people around even when you’re not functioning a 100 per cent yet emotionally,

You’ve lived this long, this lonely,without telling another soul why you wander the lonely streets alone at night drunk, why you have so few words to describe happy moments in your life, why you can’t exactly plan your future without wondering if you’d be alive?

You’ve been silent about it, all this while

Keeping it from people who might use it against you

Who might birth more thoughts, more insecurities

More fears and more tendencies to self harm,

And you think that’s fine,

But you’ve also kept it from the people who matter

You’ve also kept your cherished memories locked away

You’ve also given into these tendencies, cause you feel it’s easier this way,that people might not understand, and you might be right

Most won’t,

But there are ones that do,

That push you closer and closer to the light

Not that bullshit white light at the end of the tunnel,

That push you towards a golden light, that shines through you

Brighter and brighter everyday

There are people that hear those voices with you,

That laugh them off with you, louder and louder each day

Drowning those hellish beasts in the oceanic abyss that they’d keep you in,

There are those that hold you close, tighter and tighter

Smothering your demons, one fight at a time, keeping you away from the long night,

You can be selfish and kill yourself in the lonesome of the night

But you will miss out on this, my friend,

This is the beautiful struggle of life,

We’ve suffered together, we needn’t suffer alone,

There will be darkness up ahead, but you won’t be walking towards it alone.

Just as the Japanese have Harakiri, they have Kintsugi-

The art of fixing broken things with golden embroidery,

Things that are fixed without care for symmetry,

Broken things that are celebrated for their brokenness

Physical and mental scars that can serve as anecdotes in therapy or to bond with people in society,

The warrior needs companions to fight the war

He needs armour that might not necessarily fit him properly after each fight

There are parts that might not be the same

There are parts of you, with which you might estrange,

And that’s fine

You’ll get a chance to keep up with the times,

Remember, you are not alone in this fight

You never have been,

There are millions of us that struggle everyday,

All you need to do is tell someone you feel this way

they’ll teach you how to get a place in life

Where no matter how much darkness comes your way,

There will be light, golden light , no matter how little, maybe just enough,

There will be light.

Maulik is a writer, poet and meme enthusiast whose raw and frank writing style connects us readers with our often repressed dark side, enabling us to face our demons head on, breaking down our doors of denial one poem at a time