Hu-mans : A Return to "Origin"
If I could return to that moment, to the day my parents met, I might understand life’s symphony a little better, might catch the threads of fate woven so tightly into their first glance, their first words. How many philosophers have sought to capture the vastness of human connection? Kant called it sociable insociability—the push and pull of our souls, both drawn to and repelled by others. We yearn for closeness, yet we shroud ourselves in solitude, wrapped in the very walls we long to escape.
In the quiet hours, I hear the voices of my ancestors murmur: Descendant of Adam, fated to toil in a world of illusions, where truth hides itself like a shadow fleeing the light. Life, they seem to say, was crafted to bewilder us, to tempt us with beauty and wound us with loss. Somewhere in these illusions lies a purpose, though I know many have not yet touched its edges.
I used to think my sorrow was a curse, an affliction, that I had been singled out to feel the world’s weight pressing down on my chest. But now I wonder if pain is simply the inheritance of being human, each of us handed a unique burden that shapes us, carves us into our truest forms. Trauma, perhaps, is a language written in our bones, a vocabulary of experience that only we can fully translate.
There are memories I carry like stones in my pockets—deceptions endured, betrayals sharp as glass, the unspeakable grief of witnessing tragic loss, of watching loved ones slip away. I remember the battles fought beside a sibling lost in the haze of psychosis, the silent wars of self-image, self-harm, assaults ,abuse... All these scars, these imprints of suffering, have marked me, yet somehow also gifted me with something unnameable, a strange wisdom carved from sorrow.
And in my darkest moments, when despair feels like an old friend, I think of the elephants who tremble at the sight of a mouse, creatures of immense strength brought to their knees by the smallest fears. I think of my grandmother’s voice, her accent a soft melody that wraps me in history; my mother’s perfume, lingering like a warm spirit; my father’s restrained anger, softened by an undying love for his children—a love I glimpse in my own eyes -the ones he gave me-whenever I look in the mirror. I am the child of these memories, their whispered hopes and unspoken regrets, a mosaic of what they were and what they feared to become.
Tonight, under a sky thick with unseen stars, I strip off my clothes , shed my armor, and stand bare beneath the gaze of the moon. The cold bites at my skin, and I feel alive, raw, as if each shiver brings me closer to something profound, something true. I wrap myself in the blanket of unspoken words—the curses that die on my lips, the I love you’s I am too afraid to say to my father, the darkness that visits me in moments of silence, engulfing itself around me like a shroud. I feel the pink glitter I swallowed as a child shimmering in my lungs, a reminder of dreams I once held, now buried beneath layers of time and self-doubt.
There are moments I want to scratch free of myself, to shed this skin and escape the hands that have shaped me. The one's that salute me late at night but never seem to stay . Loneliness has become both my sanctuary and my curse, a ghost I crafted from the emptiness left behind by those who came before. I used to believe it was a punishment, this isolation, but now I wonder if it was forged into me, engraved by a society that teaches us to crave connection while pushing us ever deeper into ourselves.
And here I stand, suspended between the lives that shaped me and the life I have yet to create, lost in the unspoken weight of both. I am haunted by their love, by their fears, by their dreams—and yet, some nights I feel so profoundly alone. I am not merely their legacy, but something fragmented, a ghost of what they maybe hoped I would be, walking a path they never dared to tread. And in this space, I find no solace—only an aching stillness, a melancholic peace that devours me whole .
Perhaps I will always carry these burdens, these memories, like old songs that refuse to fade, echoing in the quiet corners of my mind, repeating their sorrowful refrain. And yet, I can finally shake the feeling that I am moving forward — not circling anymore , free from the perpetual dance with the past that I never thought I'll escape.
Even in the shadows, there is a flicker—a tremor of something more. It whispers softly, just beyond the reach of pain. In the very essence of these burdens, there is something waiting to be understood, something that can be transformed into strength, like iron forged in the fire. I realize now that even this melancholy is a part of me—woven into the fabric of who I am—and time, it ends up turning into something else.
I used to search for meaning in the wreckage, not to escape it, but to see the shape it holds, like a fractured mosaic waiting to reveal its pattern. The fire inside me still flickers, uncertain but persistent, and in this uncertain flame, there is possibility. Even as the world feels too large, too cold, and my heart feels too small to contain it all, I learned to warm myself by it.
And so, the song remains unfinished, a melody hanging in the air, and though it may never reach its final note, I can now hum it. It stirred in the spaces between the silence, where hope hid like a seed beneath the soil, waiting for the right moment to grow. Still in some moments , I am not surprised by its jazzy free notes, I am moving toward it—toward something, that is mine.
In the end, I am left with only this—a whisper of connection , a pair of beautiful eyes -that hold everything holy and all that is sin- , a trace of something so ethereal and unfinished. But even in this quiet, in this fragile tranquility, there is a strength I didn’t know I had. And tonight, for just a moment, that feels like enough.
