We live in a society that slowly decays. Refusing to acknowledge things that make us cry when numbness isn’t an option and avoiding those dear to us till we learn to pick up our mask and pretend for our own sake that the feeling of our chest tightening is just a trick of the brain. This instinct of ours; the need to hide, or pretend something that tore your heart didn’t affect you at all, It was something many of us unfortunately learned at a young age. We were forced to grow up too fast, forced to change in a society that only wanted something out of you or nothing. And you thought it was fine, it was fine to be this way. Because if you just avoided the pain, just ignored that throbbing feeling enough, you’d eventually get used to it.

That was your first fault.

Your first flaw was deciding it was okay to set aside something that happened to you and walk forward without looking back at it. Yet when you laid awake at night, and all your options to sleep had been exhausted, you were left with no option but to pause and take a glance back at that wound. Only to realize you hadn’t moved that far, if any distance at all. 

You were still there, and no matter how hard you tried, the shattered mirror you left behind taunted you to look into it. And there may have been nights where it was impossible to look- yet you did, even if just to see if it would hurt the same. And sometimes; it did. It hurt. Fuck did it hurt. The reflection you saw in the mirror split your face and showed you the reality of your decision. It showed you your resentment and pain. It showed you so much that you couldn’t help but shatter it further or crumble.

It wasn’t acknowledging the pain that was your fault. It was how you dealt with it. 

Your decision to throw it aside and refuse to acknowledge its existence; despite knowingly hindering you in being able to form relationships or take opportunities, that was your fault. To be self aware enough to understand these were your own actions that made you this way, yet refusing to face it head on. You willingly keep the shattered mirror and get angry when you look at yourself through it, yet refuse to ever look long enough to see past. Refuse to consider mending what is broken, or at the very least watch your own reflection past the emotion of pain and resentment to see what it is you actually feel.

“The odyssey of my life could be more than an oscillation.”

A very beautiful line written by illneas. It means to hope that your life’s journey could be more than an endless cycle of going back and forth between the same decisions, emotions or mistakes. This is where your potential becomes most unrealized. And it’s not because you lacked the ability, nor because you were incapable of being someone better, but because you spent so long staring into the broken mirror you failed to recognize you still had a life capable of being rebuilt.

How many decisions of yours that were guided purely from an instinct to avoid the same pain you felt. Opportunities turned away because you were afraid. People you could bond and develop genuine relationships with merely because they could hurt you? Too many, yet enough to understand that at one point you stopped wearing your heart on your sleeves and decided to allow the shattered person inside of you to walk instead. At the time; it was a coping mechanism perhaps, but slowly morphed into another identity of yours. Someone who had the same face as your, wore the same clothes, yet walked a road that went in circles. And there was comfort in that. Knowing all the cracks in the pavement, knowing every turn, every place where you had fallen before. Familiarity can often disguise itself as safety.  Yet the comfort can be deceptive, as the road can feel safe simply because you already know where it hurts.

The shattered mirror did not stop reflecting you. You merely let it become the only thing you looked at and decided it was better than trying to face it. Face that things happened, regardless if you could control the situation or not. The cruellest part of a wound that was never given the chance to heal, is not merely the reminder of what you went through, but the mental torment of convincing yourself there is nothing left to gain. That looking back will only hurt and forever hurt. It is human instinct to want to avoid that emotion after all. 

The mirror that lays shattered will never truly ever be fully mended, and that is alright. That is something that only time can assist in blurring. But what matters is picking up the large parts and putting them back in place, facing the shattered person inside and validating them for existing; but never allowing them to take over you. It will be painful, and you might fail more than once to come out of these self reflections better; but you will find a bold attempt is half success. 

The potential you have, it doesn’t disappear whenever something hurts you. There is peace to be found in that. For as long as you are capable of getting out of bed in the morning and able to breathe, you are a person, one whose story has not reached its end.