flashes of brilliance

in a wounded soul

when i was young , i was going through a hard time. i dropped out of high school , i made choices that were undeniably horrible for my mental sanity and for the mental sanity of others. i was indiscriminate and pained and would enact and exact my powerful rage on anybody and everybody. rage filled every crack in my bones , my ribs come undone at the seams with grief , and my suffering calcifies into apathy and soon enough i’d turned into someone i couldn’t recognise anymore. it hurt to hold my own gaze in the mirror , and it hurt in every sense of the word.

even at my most wounded , i remember the first person who told me “the key is you”

i remember the first person who told me “ i know you’re a horrible person but you do display some flashes of brilliance that make me believe in your capacity for change and improvement”.

i remember every single person who believed in me when i couldn’t even if they’d speak ill of me behind my back because their gaze said everything.

how my pain was impacting not just me but them too , and they were begging for mercy - they didn’t want to witness someone they loved write themselves off and run themselves to the ground.

my rage was electric - i could fire up universes , bring them life with the cosmic power that moved through me in monstrous ways.

but behind that cosmic rage , was a softer cataclysmic grief which was too hard to sit with - it’s easier to feel wronged , than sit with the grief of you being too naive , too weak , too prideful for your own good.

so for a while i moved through the world , as if i could do no wrong and be nowhere else but where i was , all of my rage was justified in the face of what happened to me , my entitlement , my desires , my rage , my self pedestalisation , the ways in which my tongue cut deep wounds into warm scathing hearts. the way i haunted every place before i could walk on it’s holy grounds. my body , this life , this existence was inhospitable , unsustainable , unnatural and uncanny.

in 2022 , at the wake of my rockiest bottom - i began the descent into a journey so maddening the light took me with every bit of its fervor and i had to hold my gaze in the mirror. i had to lay awake at nights spilling tears , praying the rosary , asking the oracle for redemption , mercy , salvation whatever came with judgement day so my suffering would become justice for the pain i inflicted on others.

and i wrote myself off , as beyond repair , beyond saving and beyond the mercy of God .

from believing that my rage was justified , that I could even hold all the benevolent forces of universe accountable , i turned into the person who begged for mercy from the same universe I wished to hold dominion over.

these egoic machinations , the pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other led me to experience monstrosities , intensities , divinity from either end of the spectrum and every thing in between - with an undercurrent of pain - avoiding pain and doing everything in my power to isolate myself from society, because of course i could never belong in this land of monsters , because i’m an even bigger monster.

my soul has shed and decayed parts of itself over the years , changed and evolved through so many egoic layers of being - i’ve reached now , an equilibrium .…transcendant self acceptance of whichever flawed stage of human functioning i’m at right now.

this apathy , this calcification although can be problematic at times - like i don’t have enough incentive to grow - i can just accept that i’m flawed and don’t have to be perfect because i’m human or burnt out from the self help industrial complex feeding me wellness strategies.

but on the other hand , the nuance in this is the relief of accepting one self as flawed and being authentic and acting in the way you’re feeling even if it changes from moment to moment , second to second or day by day.

i find this a much more sustainable and comfortable way to live.

i no longer avoid sitting with my grief. i no longer avoid sitting with the cynic or the lover girl in me. i can hold nuance , complexities & polarities. two truths can co-exist. i can be hurting and healing all at once. and leaning into whatever i feel , the everchanging force of me moment to moment , helps me be true to what I feel and honor what i do with a self trust i feel is much more comfortable for the kind of person I am.

in this way , i can no longer pretend what hurt me doesn’t hurt me any longer - it does. and maybe it won’t in the future . maybe it always hurt. maybe it never did. maybe it mattered and maybe i never cared.

all this chaos and confusion to conclude , i cannot make sense of myself - i cannot reach an understanding of myself just as i cannot reach an understanding of the cosmos. i am the universe experiencing itself. i am devoted to truths.

i will keep discovering myself and the universe and the absurdity of this existence in a way that feels true for me forever- it doesn’t have to make sense. not to anyone. not even me. i am a student of life and that will always be my anointed path.

i am a vessel - that does show flashes of brilliance even at my lowest .

i am a vessel that does show the darkness and runs toward it even when the light could so easily be tempting .

I am a vessel for truth. I am here to , either compassionately or neutrally make people face to face with the truth of their being through my voice. It’s not meant to be intentionally inflammatory. The truths depend on who the mirror in front of me is. There is no malice behind it. Just necessity. Just highlighting the shadow attributes for what needs to heal and needs to be stimulated to then let go of and be released.

It is the receiver’s capacity to digest the truths whole , or reject them which are not in my control. I’ve often capped my ability to be seen and heard because I often feel responsible for how the other person behaves once they have received the truth. But from the perspective of what serves their long term good , I am a catalyst for change and nothing more , no matter how many projections people may put on me. I just reflect their shadows and their loveliness back. I am nothing and everything - a mirror of what people tell me they are.

• an excerpt from my journal

i am the manifestation of the divine , expressed in this human vessel to anchor in a new frequency i’m meant to embody. a life devoted to my truth. a life devoted to the unseen magic that surrounds us. a life of self gazing .

and god help whoever tells me who i am not knowing who i can be.

• the alchemist