Like Vines Growing Relentlessly Around My Heart

Since I was very young, I have felt as though my skin soaks up everything, as if all my senses have collected fragments of everything around me—voices on the radio, people's expressions, and especially the moments when somebody cried. Like vines growing relentlessly around my heart, I seem to entangle myself in emotions that are not my own. Without being told, I could sense and see what someone felt as if it was leaking out from beneath them. Early on, I wondered, "Why do people hide?"

My memory is vivid. A light in me dims with others' darkness. Sometimes, it feels as though I carry the weight of the world upon my spine. At times, I am still drawn back to the conditioned way of viewing vulnerability as weakness—to be apathetic, to not ask, not reach out, not speak up, to change the channel, to turn and look the other way.

I try to remind myself that I know better, that empathy can be a source of bravery. My borderless nature as a child allowed me to observe this world through eyes of truth. My experiences with change and foreignness were met with trepidation; trauma with jagged edges, questions asked and answered without sugarcoating. In every creature, I have felt a fierce love and protectiveness; in nature and her storms, I have found solace. I love without hesitation, I care for the chaos in others' minds, I worry for the unheard. But I have begun to teach myself not to rush so much to heal. "Stop trying to fix this." "You can't heal everyone." "Aren't you tired?"

There is too much hurt—this I know. And still, in the face of injustice, loss, cruelty, and hopelessness—all that is none of my own, out of my reach, out of my understanding—a restless, twisting ache lingers in me.

Sometimes it is easier to play the game, to play apathy, to play blame, to play oblivious.

But I would rather kneel, open-handed, eyes wide, heart pounding—before the wounded, the lost. I feel shattered glass and mountains collapse when I scream until my lungs protest for air, until tears carve rivers down my stinging cheeks.

There is poetry in remaining soft in an often cast-iron world. For softness does not always mean compliance, but rather fluidity with change. Your compassion is your ammunition to fight and to rise. And though the darkness of others becomes your own, so too does their light. It is in our nature to feel—to feel everything. To embrace vulnerability so fully that our edges crumble, our walls come down, our weapons of self-defense are lowered. It may feel like a battle lost to let it all in, to allow the illusion of safe isolation to dissolve. But our hearts heal and reawaken when we surrender, when we unearth emotions we have buried for too long.

I have come to learn that this is how we expand, how we grow. I have come to realise that even when we howl into the suffocating darkness, we will still rise with the sun.

So much unfolds when we take time to look up from our glowing screens, to connect, to truly feel the constant surge of energy present in this solitary, fragile, ever-changing existence. I believe that, gradually, we can learn to gaze at our reflection not with critique, but with recognition of our capacity for unconditional avidity. To see that we are more soul than vessel. To be in awe of our collective uniqueness and to acknowledge that every line and every indent carries our story. And the more you see yourself in this light, the more it will feel as though you are seeing yourself for the very first time.

May you see purpose in place of flaws. May your reflection whisper, "You are not another. You are not that darkness." It does not define you. Because among the chaos of this world, amid your own unbearable struggles, you will find stillness. And in that stillness, you will know it is possible to feel the embrace of every present moment. To be free. To be dauntless. To let it all in. To scream it out. To feel, to create, to exist without pretence. To be soft against those jagged edges.