I am made of contradictions.
I can be genuinely offended
by a cup of coffee
because the sugar was less
than I wanted.
A grown woman,
with grown-woman problems,
standing there thinking,
who did this to me?
And yet I can carry
the death of someone I loved
quietly inside me,
like a stone
I have learnt to live with.
I can stand beside someone
in the middle of their greatest tragedy
and tell them,
you will get through this.
Then lose my mind
because the last blob of shampoo
slips from my hand,
bounces once,
and disappears
down the drain.
I watch it go
with the grief
of someone who has just lost
something irreplaceable.
It was shampoo.
I know.
But it was my shampoo.
Some nights
I lie awake
thinking about everything
I could not make happen.
The doors I never opened.
The dreams I left behind.
The things I thought
I would have achieved by now.
And some nights
I am laughing with a friend
until my stomach hurts.
She is half asleep,
Yawn!!
saying things that make no sense,
and suddenly
her sleepy eyes,
her crooked nose,
the ridiculous little expressions
her face makes when she is falling asleep,
everything is hilarious.
This is the same heart,
that knows grief
and still makes room for laughter.
The same heart
that comforts someone
sits alone on a cold night
fails to comfort itself.
There is a child in me
who still wants to be held.
A woman
who has learnt to survive.
A broken human being
who remembers where it hurt.
Someone who misses her past.
Someone who mourns
the people she has lost.
And someone who sometimes looks back
at everything she has survived
and thinks,
God!!
I am strong.
Sometimes I am so proud
of how far I have come.
And sometimes
I am still afraid.
Both can be true.
Perhaps that is what
a human heart is.
A collage of contradictions.
Pain beside laughter.
Grief beside gratitude.
Fear beside courage.
Foolishness beside wisdom.
A child.
A strong woman.
A grieving daughter.
A person who misses yesterday.
Someone who celebrates today.
Someone who is still becoming.
We do not have to choose
which version of ourselves
deserves to exist.
We can make room
for all of them.
For the heart
that breaks.
The heart that heals.
The heart that laughs
at a friend's sleepy face.
The heart that cries
over bad coffee.
The heart that mourns
and the heart that celebrates.
The incredibly resilient heart!
The heart that keeps going.
These are not different people.
They are our different shades.
And perhaps being human
is simply learning
to love the whole collage!!
even the ridiculous parts,
even the painful ones,
even the parts
we are still learning
to understand.