Kintsugi

Sometimes i feel like i’m just a collection of broken pieces.

I walk around pretending to be a functioning human being.

I have interactions and conversations but i’m only half there because i’m lost in the maze of traumas past.

I’m trying, I’m fighting my very hardest. that you can’t hear my battle cries or see all the blood stuns me

those closest to me suffer through my fucked up reactions to everything

changes in plans that are nothing to everyone else hit me like an avalanche. it is an emergency, a threat, and I come up swinging, panicking, running for my life.

gods forbid someone startles me,

no telling what you will get

anything from falling to the floor crumpled in fear,

to a roar of rage-fueled ready to fight,

or maybe I detach, float in the fuzzy space that is nowhere, cold and safe

watching like an unconcerned, alien observer.

just the smell of the wrong aftershave and I am 5 years old

terrified, nauseated, scrambling to get away, screaming in my head for a mother I didn’t have

the one that would have stood between me and danger,

the one that would have seen,

would have known,

would have prevented me from shattering to pieces

But that isn’t how things happened.

This is what I have.

The child inside of me is defended now

when my inner 5 year old screams

the maelstrom rises to defend her

flaming swords and vicious bloody curses that rend the dark and all the dark things lurking there

but the monsters are all gone

bladed words hit those I would die to protect

in this safe new world

I am still made of broken shards

I keep gluing

and I keep breaking

I’m fighting as hard as I can

battle weary and covered in gore

but making a stand atop the hill

where I drew a line

feet planted

every day finding

there is still fight left in me.

Banner credit: “169/365” by drubuntu is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0