I stand at the edge of myself,
looking down into the cracks,
the fissures that split open years ago,
quietly, unnoticed at first.
Now, they gape wide,
jagged mouths swallowing my thoughts,
my dreams,
leaving only the sharpness
of the pieces I broke into.
I am divided,
two shadows wrestling in the dark,
each one pulling me apart
with hands, I don’t recognize.
My voice trembles,
caught between the shouts and whispers,
straining to rise above the noise
that lives inside my head,
but it is buried,
buried beneath layers of doubt
I built walls
around my own heart.
Who am I?
I ask,
but the answer changes each time,
like a reflection in water,
rippling, distorting,
never staying still long enough
for me to see clearly.
I stare,
but the surface shifts,
and I lose myself again.
I used to be whole,
didn’t I?
Once,
I knew the rhythm of my heartbeat,
the steady thrum that kept time
with the pace of my breath,
in and out,
in sync with the world around me.
But somewhere,
somehow,
I lost the beat,
lost the sense of who I was,
lost the path I was meant to follow.
Now, I am a tangle of contradictions,
a mess of tangled thoughts
and twisted desires,
pulling in opposite directions.
One part of me wants to stay,
to hold onto the familiar weight
of the chains, I forged myself.
The other part—
the one that trembles like a bird
against the bars of its cage—
wants to break free,
wants to soar,
wants to escape the prison
I made it out of my skin.
I wrestle with myself,
each breath a battle,
each step is a struggle
to move forward
while the past clings to my heels,
dragging me back into the pit
I’ve climbed out of
so many times before.
But I am tired of falling.
I am tired of sinking into the dark
only to claw my way back up again,
fingers bloodied,
heart bruised.
So I stop.
I stop fighting.
I stop running.
I turn and face the shadows,
the voices that have haunted me,
the fears that have whispered
in the dead of night,
telling me I’m not enough,
that I’ll never be enough.
I let them scream.
I let them tear at my mind,
let them rip open the scars
that never healed.
I let the pain wash over me,
drown me,
until there is nothing left
but silence.
And in that silence,
I find the quiet truth
I’ve been searching for.
The truth that has been buried
beneath the noise of my mind.
I am not broken.
I am not lost.
I am becoming.
Each crack,
each scar,
each tear
is not a wound,
but a doorway.
A doorway into something new,
something whole.
The pieces of me
that I thought were shattered
are not pieces at all.
They are fragments of a mosaic,
a puzzle that has no edge,
no defined shape,
because I am still forming,
still growing,
still learning who I am.
I breathe.
For the first time in years,
I breathe,
and it fills me,
fills the empty spaces inside me
that I thought were hollow,
but were only waiting.
I open my eyes,
and I see myself,
not as broken,
not as divided,
but as a whole,
as complete,
even in my imperfections.
I step forward,
not away from the shadows,
but through them,
into the light
that waits on the other side.
And I realize,
I have always been the light,
always been the one holding the key
to the cage I built.
I am free now.
Not because I have won the fight,
but because I have ended it.
I am whole.
