Reads
Ebb + Flow
3:33 PMToday, I want to talk about mental illness.
Depression, anxiety, I'm sure that most of you may know that these two go hand in hand.
The hands that have sunk their grip deep into yours,
Your hand in its hands.
The hands that have sunk their grip deep into yours,
the hands that lead you through the dark and keep pulling you further through,
even when you are stumbling.
Stumbling, struggling,
as you try to make out a scrap of truth
as to where you are or why you are even there.
Stumbling.
The hands of time holding you, cradling you
sometimes into the past,
sometimes into a version of your life that has yet to happen,
or ever happen.
Holding you
in an embrace against its chest so tight that
as it breathes and breathes,
all you can do is breathe less.
Sometimes, all these hands leave for you
are these shallow sips of life,
of feeling alive.
But when those times come,
they are a blessing.
All you can do is let yourself feel,
give into what you're afraid of.
Some days, some times,
some moments,
There will be a second,
Fleeting, at best
Where you can relax your hands,
lower your shoulders,
breathe, even...
and just let go.
Let go of the hands that fed you
this darkness and
held your eyes closed
when all you wanted to see was this light
at the end of the tunnel that everybody speaks of.
Speaking,
unsolicited words of kindness, comfort, compassion,
words of ignorant solidarity,
words only sung to force your eyes open.
Only for you to open them to a light you can't even see,
or believe that it even exists.
As desperately as you want these God-given eyes to work,
they don't.
Not until you make the choice
to just let go.
6 weeks ago, someone who once held a place in my heart decided he couldn't carry on any further.
I didn't know how to feel at first.
At first, I felt nothing.
Nothing.
Was this shock? Why didn't I feel sad?
How do you mourn the loss of someone who hurt you,
badly?
Who kissed your skin with their choices
that left scars deep enough to let your light spill out
run to nothing, leaving broken mirrors of two empty shells of what once were two kids in love.
Each other's sharp edges only used
to cut each other deeper, deep scars,
different directions
Each trying to help the other
see the light we were each seeing
When all along the lights
we were each seeing
the lights leading us
were on entirely different frequencies,
Unable to see,
and questioning our own self worth because of it.
After hearing the news, I had started to doubt the
growth I had created for myself these past 2 years,
as far as I could, as fast as I could,
from the shell I once was.
This whole time, had I been this cold-hearted person that I was afraid of becoming?
I had so many questions.
Why didn't I feel anything? Why couldn't I feel anything?
What does this mean for who I am?
I thought I had left this in the past... confusion... uncertainty.
Unsafe.
On a Wednesday night, 22 days later, your dad reached out to me to tell me the news himself.
"Anak, my son passed."
It took me 22 days to cry.
Your death left me chasing memories, tangible and otherwise,
lost in time.
Doubting the growth I had worked so hard for,
Looking for answers in these memories,
lost in time.
I didn't realize that my mind had literally blocked you from my memory.
I wish it didn't take your death for me to remember that I still care.
2 years spent in denial of holding a heavy grudge.
I still wanted you to come out on top, I still wanted you to pull through, I still wanted the best for you.
I was on your side, even if from afar.
I had to leave, I had to choose myself before I sank too.
Part of me wishes I realized these things sooner.
The old photos and videos of us that everyone keeps sending to me,
The condolences and sentiments, sending to me,
tempting me into the poisonous what-if's.
But I know that I couldn't have changed anything, and I couldn't have saved you.
I pray that you are at peace now.
I've been spending these past 6 weeks looking for the lesson in this all.
Poetic.
Even after your death, you are still teaching me things about myself.
You taught me the value of life, of forgiveness
of energy, of where you put it.
You taught me the value in choosing yourself,
of knowing when to draw the line,
even when you love someone so much that it hurts.
You taught me that you truly never know when you will lose someone,
and when things will be left unsaid.
They say that you are the average of the people that you spend the most time with.
And if we're going by that, then I was fucking toxic.
This manifested as a fear of my own failures
taking it out on those around me, supporting me.
But I've grown.
I've succeeded.
I am whole, I am loved, I love.
I am strong, I am a fighter.
I am light.
I would never go back to those times or go back to who I was with you
but I would also never change a single thing that happened.
Energy is finite, and it's what you do with it that gives you
the power to literally create the world that you want.
Life comes and goes in waves of beauty and pain.
These trials, tribulations, grievances, heartbreak,
new levels of heartbreak,
the confusion
the uncertainty
the fleeting moments of pure peace
stillness on the surface of chaos,
disturbed by another drop of happiness.
This is life.
It is change, it is growth, it is transformation
even when you cannot see it.
Feel it.
Believe it.
Live it.
Give yourself permission to heal,
to face your past mistakes, to forgive yourself,
To let go.
To heal.
I'm always going to have moments where I doubt myself.
Am I on the right path?
Am I doing things well enough?
Am I good enough?
But make the choice to open your heart
and you'll start to find the universe's whispers
reminding you that you are guided.
Let your energy
be a product of your heart
and not your environment.
Choose light.
Let go.
Feel.
Give in.
Maybe it's the sun from this morning,
its reach tilting your chin up for a kiss,
sunkissed, breathing.
Maybe it's the weightlessness that
you can only find when you wade out into the ocean,
just deep enough to lose the sand beneath.
Maybe it's that stupid unfiltered laugh that you only make when something really hits.
You know the one.
Maybe it's the smell of rain
that brings you back to that one summer you loved
or how cold the water felt on your skin
when you didn't want to run inside yet
Or maybe it's the stillness
and the silence
the type that only reveals itself when you're driving really,
really late at night... (or really early morning)
in these empty streets.
The stillness that gives your soul the silence it needs
to remind you that
you are alive.
It may not seem like much, but even if just for a moment,
this is it.
This is all we get in this life, and these are the moments we need to hold onto.
If anything, in this messy, "fucked up" life of ours,
If anything, these are the moments that make life worth living.
The chaos will come, and it will go,
and it will carry you further out
whether you like it or not.
You can choose to acknowledge it, embrace it,
ground yourself enough to flow with it.
Set your intention for
this blank canvas
where mistakes don't exist
expect the unexpected
accept the uncontrollable
and feel.
There is an ebb and flow to this life. What is your intention?
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