Fix My Cracks

This time with gold

Every single experience we have during the time we spend living our life, somehow creates room for a new version of us to be born, while a part of us dies. While that may sound dramatic, it’s the bittersweet truth we all have to deal with at almost any phase of life we find ourselves in.

They say change is the only one thing that’s constant, and the only thing that’s promised to us in this lifetime, is that it surely comes to an end. Everything else in between are games of chance, fate and hoping that everything aligns according to our desires. Do you remember growing up, being excited to become an adult? Every child had a dream, and while that child still lives inside of us, life ended up molding us into people who somehow suppressed their dreams to make ends meet, survive and exist in what we call society.

During various transitions, we witness little fragments of our dreams, which ultimately tie to who we are, die bit by bit. If you were not one of the people who life stalled or stole their dreams, I’m truly envious of you, and I wish you the best, but maybe you can stop reading around here. Now for the rest of us, who feel utterly wronged and stolen from, let’s continue, shall we?

Picture this, you were once 16 years old and your ambitions were over the moon, you believed it only took you applying yourself to the things you believed in, for you to actually achieve the goals you had always set for yourself. Somewhere down the line, a parent probably left, or passed on, somehow you figured out that you had to fight to survive, to struggle to put a meal on the table for just yourself, and then you slowly started to lose the zeal that kept you going. All that started to matter in your world, was being able to provide the basics, and for some of us, we also had to worry about our immediate family’s needs, and being there for them while we bonded over our shared trauma and debacles. As crazy as it may sound, there might have still been a glimmer of hope left in you at the time, but as the years went on and you stepped into your 20s, you began pushing your dream behind the stage, and putting survival at the forefront.

I was once a girl who believed my words and voice could reach through hearts across the world, and when I had the opportunities and freedom to explore my creativity, it showed me a world of possibilities, that I believed had a spot saved for me. Unfortunately when my father decided the next best thing to do was to abandon my mother and I high and dry, my life suddenly shifted from a promising young girl with big dreams, to becoming a woman overnight who ABOSOLUTELY had to ensure things were okay with her and at home.

That shift does something to you, and when you begin to limit yourself and your aspirations, you begin to box yourself in. You say to yourself, “Maybe next year I’ll start writing my anthology. Maybe next year I’ll find a way to to record some music. Maybe next year I’ll save up enough to buy better equipment for visual storytelling.” The maybe’s pile up somewhere in your closet, and never get ticked off your excel spreadsheet. You create multiple mood boards every January, but the haunting questions like, “How will I pay rent this year? How will I ensure I can get to work tomorrow on my meagre salary”, start to overshadow any expectation to become more.

Tragic. I know. But now at 31, I can comfortably tell you that it took me almost a decade to regain just a hint of what my spark used to be. I shrunk myself so much in the face of a series of unfortunate events, including heartbreak and loss, before it hit me again. I AM A CREATIVE, WHY MUST MY DREAM DIE ? Truth is, it shouldn’t, but it’s no lie that we die multiple deaths while still breathing every other day, and resurrection is harder than it seems. There’s a lot of pain that comes with the harsh reality of having to grow up suddenly, of having to suddenly make sense of things you shouldn’t have been dealing with as a teenager. That pain eats deeply into you and what it does, is that it takes and takes and takes. For me, it took away my aspirations, it took away my faith in God, and it took away the confidence I once had in myself, so much so that forgot I believed I could do almost anything I put my mind to. It took a day for my world to turn upside down and lead me on a journey where the decisions I made barely benefited me, however, it took over a decade to rediscover myself and the little girl within me who still wants to shine.

The stage that lit up with lights in my head became a destitute ground where everything happened to die, and losing my faith meant having no hope at all in anything around me. I questioned everyone and everything, so I chose to sprint away from all things that seemed to bring me back to the light, until one last thunderous event clouded my world. My father died. The man who crushed my heart into pieces and caused my first real heartbreak, the man who forgot I was his princess and left me to live like a pauper, he died. After 13 years of uncertainty and not seeing him, he left this Earth and I never got the opportunity to have any form of closure with him. I remember crying my eyes out for days, drowning my sorrows bottle after bottle and still I felt like my chest had been split in to two by a sword. I swam deeply into the ocean of depression, alcoholism and despair. Yet somehow in my darkest moments, a single community became my saving grace. And that community happens to be a church (but we will get to the Lord’s word soon, relax).

If you never had to live life, like the weight of every burden was placed on your shoulders, you might never understand the courage it took me to write this piece. This is me pouring out the wailing in my heart that has existed for years, but it also comes with a beautiful sunrise. The sun finally rose in my world once again, and somehow I’m traveling back to the past to pick up the pieces of me, and now I'm trying to glue them back together. The Japanese have something they call kintsugi. Basically when an object is broken, it’s sealed back together by fixing the cracks with gold. I am kintsugi. An embodiment of something so shattered, yet being fixed slowly, not with glue, but with gold. My cracks will always show, but the gold reminds me that every single tear I shed, and every single time I fell apart, it created something beautiful that has shaped me into this woman I am today. A woman with pain, but that pain is slowly fading away, and I am being restructured with something more solid than mere hope. I’m gradually morphing into who I was always meant to be.

I’d like to end this here, because there’s still more to share.

^{Japanese Kintsugi photo taken off Google. I own no license to this photograph, and it’s being used just for demonstration purposes.}