family
Family can be our support system. Or they can be part of the problem. All about the complicated, loving, and difficult relationship with us and the ones who love us.
A Million Tiny Diamonds. Runner-Up in The Metamorphosis of the Mind Challenge.
There are always moments that define you as a person. We have been conditioned to never admit to weakness because, in the shame of bad judgement, the metaphorical fingernails of others can get a hold on you from the chink you've exposed by sharing your confession. You can then be prised open, your vulnerability there for all to see, to be poked and prodded mercilessly by a metaphorical stick held and being controlled by the will of another. And what would be the result of that poking? It would let the shame out, the dampener and the twister of all emotions which transforms people into ogres, which we try and subdue, putting it into the darkest corners of ourselves.
By Rachel Deeming2 years ago in Psyche
Things I Wish I Told My Parents—But Couldn’t at the Time. AI-Generated.
There are things I never said growing up—not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how. Because I was afraid. Because the words felt too big, or I felt too small. Because our hearts beat with love, but not always with understanding.
By PrimeHorizon2 years ago in Psyche
Unspoken Goodbyes: The People I Still Carry With Me. AI-Generated.
Not every goodbye comes with closure. Some happen in the middle of a conversation. Some after a slow drifting apart. And some—well, some are never said at all. Just sudden silences where voices used to be, laughter that lives only in memory.
By PrimeHorizon2 years ago in Psyche
When My World Paused for a Stranger - Austin Shivaji Kumar
I remember the exact platform. Dadar station. The financial and chaos capital of Mumbai. The kind of place where the air feels thick with movement, where a thousand footsteps stomp through your silence. You don’t get a second to think. Or feel.
By Austin Shivaji Kumar2 years ago in Psyche
The Metamorphosis of the Mind
The mind is a house with infinite rooms. Some are sunlit and warm, echoing with laughter and lavender breezes. Others are locked, cobwebbed, and cold. But the most dangerous are the ones we forget exist—until they open on their own. It began on a Thursday. Nothing remarkable about the day. The air was the same tired gray it had been all week, and the coffee I brewed was its usual bitter disappointment. But something inside me was crumbling, quietly, like an ancient wall finally surrendering to time. A hairline fracture had formed in the foundation of my sanity, and I didn’t see it until I was falling through. I was brushing my teeth when it happened. My reflection blinked, but I didn’t. My hand froze mid-stroke. The room warped. It was subtle at first—the light dimmed, the mirror seemed deeper, like it could swallow me. Then the silence roared. A pressure built in my skull, not pain exactly, but presence. Like something had crawled into my mind and started rearranging furniture. I stumbled back, the toothpaste foaming in my mouth like a rabid confession, and fell to the floor. When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in my bathroom anymore. I stood in a corridor with no walls. Just doors. Endless doors, floating in a vacuum of ink. The floor beneath me was made of memories—each tile a flicker from my past. My eighth birthday. My first heartbreak. The day I realized my parents were just broken children in adult bodies. I stepped carefully, each tile lighting up then vanishing beneath my feet. The first door opened before I touched it. Inside was a classroom. I was twelve. My teacher was laughing as I stuttered through an answer. My classmates' eyes were knives. My throat burned with shame. I wanted to run, but I was rooted. My child-self looked at me. “You never forgave me,” he whispered. The door slammed shut. Another opened. A hospital bed. My father, pale and shrinking. Beeping machines. The smell of antiseptic and impending grief. I reached for his hand, but my fingers passed through. A nurse walked through me like smoke. I screamed. No sound came out. Door after door. Memory after memory. Pain layered like sediment. I was being buried in myself. At the hundredth door, I stopped counting. My feet were bleeding, but the tiles kept appearing. My mind was collapsing, room by room, like a building detonated from within. Then came the door with no handle. It pulsed like a heartbeat. Made of bone and shadow. A whisper curled from its edges: "This is the room you never dared to enter." I touched it. The world dissolved. --- I stood in a version of my childhood home, but it was decayed, as if grief had lived in it too long. The wallpaper peeled like sunburned skin. The photos on the walls were all blank. The air was thick with mourning. In the center sat a small child. Me. Maybe five. He was building towers from broken glass. “Why do you keep coming back here?” he asked without looking up. “I didn’t mean to.” He laughed. It was a sharp, cruel sound. “You never mean to. But you always do." I knelt beside him. “What is this place?” “This is where you buried the parts of yourself that didn’t fit. The parts you thought made you weak.” He picked up a shard of glass, held it to my face. I saw not myself, but all the masks I had worn. The overachiever. The caretaker. The chameleon. “You can’t heal what you pretend doesn’t hurt,” he said. My chest cracked open. No blood. Just light. Blinding, holy, agonizing. The little boy stepped inside it and disappeared. I wept. When I opened my eyes, I was back in my bathroom, collapsed on the tiles, sobbing into the grout. My reflection met my gaze. It no longer blinked without me. We were finally synchronized. --- The days that followed weren’t easy. Healing rarely is. But something fundamental had shifted. I no longer ran from silence. I no longer feared the rooms inside me. I started therapy. I called my mother. I wrote letters I never sent. I learned the difference between peace and numbness. The mind, I realized, is not a prison. It is a chrysalis. What feels like madness is often metamorphosis. And I had wings now. Not perfect. Not whole. But strong enough to carry me into the light. --- But the story didn’t end there. Metamorphosis, I discovered, isn’t a single transformation. It’s recursive. Cyclical. Each season of stillness eventually stirs. One night, weeks later, I dreamt of the corridor again. Only this time, it was flooded. The doors were half-submerged. The memory tiles beneath me were slippery, shifting. I moved slower, wary of what new depth I might plunge into. A door opened and sucked me in like a vacuum. This time, I found myself in an office. Mine, from my first job. I was standing behind my younger self as he was humiliated by a manager, accused of failure over something he didn’t do. The younger me didn’t speak. He just smiled politely, swallowed it, and nodded. I reached out and touched his shoulder. He turned, startled, and broke into tears. “Why didn’t you protect me?” he asked. I didn’t have an answer. But I sat beside him, and for the first time, we grieved together. Back in waking life, I began to change how I held myself. I apologized to the parts of me I had punished for being soft. I began to listen when I felt the old panic rise, not to run, but to sit still and ask, “What are you trying to tell me?” One morning, journaling by the window, I watched a moth circle a lamp. It beat its wings furiously, drawn to a light it didn’t understand. And I realized: that was me, once. All motion, no direction. Confusing the ache for transcendence. Mistaking self-erasure for survival. But not anymore. --- Now, when I enter my mind’s corridor, it greets me with quiet. The doors are still there. Some remain closed, their contents not yet ready to be revisited. That’s okay. Healing is not a conquest. It’s a companionship with your shadow. Sometimes I visit the child. He’s older now, maybe ten. He builds towers of light instead of glass. We don’t speak much. We don’t need to. And sometimes I stand in front of the mirror with wet eyes and whisper, “Thank you for surviving.” The metamorphosis of the mind is not marked by the day you break down. It is marked by the day you choose not to run from the wreckage—but to build something sacred from it. And in the cathedral of all I have endured, I now know this: I was never broken. Only buried. And now, I bloom.
By Qismat ullah wazir 2 years ago in Psyche
The Forgotten Language of Touch: How Physical Contact Shapes Our Emotional Well-being
In a world dominated by screens and digital expressions, we have learned to communicate through messages, emojis, and reactions. We connect in online meetings, express love with virtual hearts, and offer condolences through comment sections. Yet, in our reliance on words and technology, we’ve drifted away from one of the oldest and most profound forms of communication—physical touch.
By Mysteries with Professor Jahani2 years ago in Psyche
The Invisible Weight: Living with the Emotional Baggage We Don’t Talk About
The Backpack No One Sees When my friend Julia died suddenly in a car accident, her husband, Mark, showed up to her funeral wearing a crisp suit and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He shook hands, accepted casseroles, and thanked everyone for their support. Two years later, at a dinner party, he casually mentioned he still sets a place for her at the table. The room fell silent. No one knew what to say—not because they didn’t care, but because grief, like so much of our emotional baggage, lives in the shadows.
By Mysteries with Professor Jahani2 years ago in Psyche
How Small Acts of Kindness Changed My Perspective on the World
The Day a Stranger’s Umbrella Taught Me About Humanity It was a gray, drizzly afternoon in Kyoto when I first grasped the quiet power of kindness. I stood outside a train station, drenched and frustrated, silently berating myself for forgetting my umbrella. Out of nowhere, a woman in her sixties—her silver hair peeking beneath a sunhat despite the rain—paused beside me. Without speaking, she opened her bright red umbrella and held it over both of us. We walked in silence for two blocks until she nodded toward my destination: a tucked-away tea shop. When I thanked her, she smiled and said, “The rain feels lighter when shared.” Her words lingered long after the clouds parted.
By Mysteries with Professor Jahani2 years ago in Psyche
Migraines and Medication. Content Warning.
CW: References to severe chronic pain, dismissal by doctors, and drug addiction. This is a trauma dump in some ways. It’s not really something you can understand unless you’ve lived it. So right now, for a few minutes, I invite you to live it with me: the dread and confusion of being a medical-mystery child.
By Brynne Nelson2 years ago in Psyche
