The Things I Left Behind

I have had the title in my head for about a week now and have written several opening paragraphs to several shorts stories. On paper, each disjointed paragraph felt too broken. Looking over them now, I ask myself if that's the point the voice(s) is(are) trying to make? Can the juxtaposition of sorts not be a guide in itself? For try as I might, I can never get past a few lines. Even as the paragraphs sit (in some cases) several pages apart seemingly disconnected from the other, one unifying idea remains in my head every time I take to this: The things I left behind.
Now, without trying to explain how this came about or questioning the compulsion pushing this on page at present, I share with you my first words in a many months:

‘I’m terribly proud of you’, Tee-Tee said to me yesterday. You’ve come a long way…
You have no idea I thought.
And the cost of sitting here today?
The loss of a few things, the addition of a few things, and the battle for balance that has since ensued.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I’m pitiful in soliloquy
Sometimes I’m reminded I am no island
Sometimes I feel like a bus stop
Sometimes I feel like an emotional vacuum
Sometimes I wish I were able to be truly free from the gloom
Sometimes I wish I were never born
Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child

Through the days when ideas swirl tortured compelling winds around me, I am caught in the cross fire of their hardened fights. As in a game of tag, I am prodded, challenged, pushed and sent searching to a destination point unknown. Through it all I am weighed down, wounded, hunted, made victim of, attacked, robbed and left in captivity of a concrete jungle. The winds change again and provide no opportunity for me to be anything but an unwilling participant in the games ahead.
I struggle to understand why the journey to self discovery must be so arduous. Why the challenges must be diverse and equally taxing. Confused, malnourished, suffocating and scared, I carry on.

In recent times I have de-scaled a little to better slither into obscurity.
With my own thoughts for company, I have managed to hold the fort down with what little inheritance will have me carry.

To my unborn child, I pray you find a safe home to go to and grow in for this womb cannot shelter you. These breasts shall not feed you. This hip’s ability to carry weight does not include child rearing. My heels once buoyant and eager to discover has over time been weathered dry. Cracked and scaly, they no longer absorb the shock that comes with each daily thump and thud. This body cannot support you.

To my future lovers, if only someday I won't despise you so. If only seeing your naked form will not make me have to dredge deep within to find a suitably civil expression to hang across my face besides the disgust that I feel.

To the love that will never be, may you find true love and never let it go. May you recognise the item to which you behold before you lose it or worst yet destroy it. To the love that will never be, why did you get so lost?

The journey from where I was when I wanted to be where I am now has been long. I shall not mourn the things I left behind
My identity:
My name, my virtue, my compassion, my hopes, my dreams, my drive, my beliefs, my false none judgmental, my ability to love, to share, my connection, my dependency, my intimacy, my purity, my childhood, my age, my birth right, my relation, my ancestors. My womb. My past. My future.


- I'd say this is about 4/5 months old as at the time I post this. This version written post listening to John Legend’s take on ‘Motherless Child’.