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Writer's pictureAlina Khan

The Shadow

It is on days like these, in the wee hours of the morning, when I see a crack starting to shape in my perfectly embellished life, one that I have carefully put together for myself. I see the walls around me starting to crumble. First, it’s the layers of paint that come off, the pretense, the built-up demeanor. And once the protective coating is all out, the scars, the marks that defined the foundation of the building start revealing themselves. You can now clearly see the marks where the walls were less cemented than the other portions, the underlying seepage that led to insufferable wreckage to the paint.



Isn’t this exactly how we, humans, fall apart? We hide our fears and agony in dark shadows and let them follow us for days on end unless the sun refuses to come out. The shadow disappears, takes a shape of its own and instead of following you around, the darkness now resides in your heart, swallowing the remaining goodness in you, bit by bit.


Never do the walls crumble all at once. There always is a backstory. Something that led to something else. A domino effect. The anger that you feel pulsing in your veins at the moment was instilled within your system ages ago, in a time when things did not go the way you planned, and instead of expressing your pain in words, you chose to repress it, push it down to the pit of your stomach and smile all the way.


But when the cuffs are finally off and the chains that once kept your darkness locked inside are broken, what happens? Do you stand up, speak about your pain and let the world know what you actually are made up of? That the demeanor once loved by everyone around you was nothing but a facade, to keep up with the ways of the world? Do you tell everybody your truth with pure honesty and await their criticism, which you know would eventually come your way? Or do you shatter everything around you in a swift move of your arm, breaking anything that comes within your reach? Do you yourself smash your safe haven into pieces so that no one else could wield the axe to destroy you?


The answer would vary for each one of you. As for me, I’m still trying to figure out the cause of the seepage, the reason behind the beginning of a foreseeable end.


As I sit here and see the walls crumbling around me, I wonder if I’d be able to brace the damage that looms above my head. If I’d be able to see the fragments of my broken being, spread across the room, the building, the society, the city, the country. If I’d be able to walk straight again, without worrying about invincible storms that threaten to shatter everything within their reach.


But if I ever do surpass the damage that currently puts my existence in jeopardy, I’ll ask myself to be brave, to be bold, to be everything you weren’t told to be. I’ll ask myself to laugh again, to smile at people, to be kind, caring, humble again, and to love again. To know that for every evil that exists in the world, there is some goodness ready to paint the cracked walls again. That there exist better paints, better people that will make you believe in yourself again. And again. And again. Until your system is no longer prone to seepage until your walls rebuild themselves in iron.


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