The Gift of Grief

Act I: Breaker 

"The warning was imminent from shattered clouds
  Violent skies aligning to take us down

  The poison water will reap all it wants
  Wretchedness stench of dying dripping off the walls

  The shelled house where you grew is now gone
  What was here is filled with dread ever changing form"

Oh, beloved beast. How much I had to pay to integrate you into my life. How deep I had to cut just to find your core, the soul of your want. You, who came into my life in times long since gone. You, who borrowed your skin to me so that I could turn fear and grief into anger and want; to break through the walls built by my mind with red-hot fists and teeth made of steel. Beloved Breaker: your horns scared me so much and for so long. Every time you rose inside me, whispered your soft song of violence into my ear: how much I feared and desired it. Under your long arms and sharp fangs, all those things which scared and hurt me would be broken, would be replaced with pure want. To be set free, to retaliate, to take what I needed and ignore the consequences. Your mind, sharp as a blade and hot like melting iron, would fill mine, taking over. 

And how I feared you. How bone-deep I dreaded the fact that you existed, that you lived deep in my marrow and in my psyche. The whispers of you were unbearable: they did not align with how I wanted to see myself, wanted to not see the parts of myself I hated so much. The violence I wrought, either against others or against myself - because that was preferable to hurting someone else. If there must be pain, let me suffer it, I reasoned. A fallacy: in the end, someone got hurt. And just because you direct the violence inwards, does not make it any less violent. 

So I hoped to shackle you, hoped to bind you down. With words and deeds, with self-harm and with medication I tried to break you in turn, tried to remove you out of my life. Another fallacy: the more you try to cut out your own shadow, the more it will grow. Violence will feed violence. But still, I tried. The knife of my mind was constantly busy, constantly bloody. I would ram it into my flesh again and again, trying to remove these parts. And no matter how much I tried: when all was said and done and I left myself bleeding on the ground: you, beloved Breaker, would come to pick up the parts. You would take all of the pain and feed it inside, back into you. And you would rest for another day or two, until my self-hate would grow too strong again.

Act II: The Kid 

"The wind she wore reared its head
  The howling blow left us for dead

  The last act of love we can give to those we hold
  Where there's deepened grief there was great love

  We don't get over this, can we grow around?
  No distorted ego when we're given grace"

Oh, beloved Kid. The part of me I lost so many years ago, when the flames licked along my body without erasing me. How many times I have wished that they would have instead of leaving me alive. Then I would not have suffered all this, suffered the split of you, beloved Kid. You are the part of my soul I lost that day, that part of me which embodies innocence. Burned and hurting, you did the only thing left to you: to hide deep, to bury yourself in that dark room behind a grey steel door. An empty place, save you and the mattress. There you would hide to keep yourself safe. After all, when skin tries to regrow and scars are being formed, every touch hurts. And I had to be touched so much to make sure that healing could happen. I know this now: it was not only the fire which split you away from me, but the caring hands of others as well. Healing hurts. Care hurts. In isolation, you have to suffer neither.

And so, in this small room without light, you lay surrounded by the smell of the hospital. Even though it is dark, you lay on your stomach on the mattress, facing away from the door. You did not grow, you did not change. Small wonder why: this place, this dark room with its grey steel door, kept you safe in stasis. And so you stayed in there, with me not even knowing how deep you were hidden. With me not even knowing that you were there at all.

Deep, utter grief filled me when I opened that room for the first time in so many years. How could I leave you like this? How could I be so blind to not even recognize your existence? When my therapist spoke about you for the first time, my initial reaction was anger: if there was a kid in me, it should better shut up and not be so demanding. I answered fear and pain with violence again. Forgive me, beloved child: I have been a terrible carrier of yours. I do not know how to fix it. All I can offer is to sit with you, perceive you. And to read you the same stories I loved so much as a child. I see you laying there, finally facing me. Big, dark eyes resting upon me, upon the images in the books. Your face and body are still, hands covering your mouth. But your eyes are open again. And for the fist time since you hid here, the steel door is open, barred from closing again. Fresh air from the outside seeps in, pushing out the smell of disinfectant and iodine.

Act III: The Swamp 

"Now we stand in the ruins 
  And the morning is cold
  There's nobody home anymore

  The wind she wore reared its head
  The howling blow left us for dead

  The passion and lusts we engaged
  Once touched your soul
  Now sadness crashes in relentless waves"

Oh, beloved grief. Once I stood accused that you are so loud - too loud for the environment I was in. You were not accepted, you were not wanted. Neither by them nor by me. I did not want to see you, did not want to accept you. I thought if I run hard enough, fast enough, I could outpace you. Your grey miasma, the smell of the swamp in your winds - they would reach me again and again, pulling me back into the peat at your center. How dark my mind was for so many years. You drank my blood and traded it for rest. Beneath your waters, there was calm. I wished I could stay there forever: that you would turn into the Lethe and take me with you. Granting me oblivion, granting me final destruction. Your deep peat sang to me. 

How much violence I had to enact upon myself to keep walking. How much strength it took just to stand back up again and again, to escape your icy waters. I struggled so hard to escape you, and yet, you were all around me. And finally, I could not struggle anymore. So I looked down, looked straight into the ice and bog. And let myself fall to see what was hidden beneath it. And there it was: a flowery field, a sign of childhood. The innocence and beauty of my past, long hidden and forgotten. When was the last time I fell face-first into the bloom of spring? The last time I enjoyed trusting the earth to catch me, to surround myself with warmth and beauty? 

The books I have read in the last months speak about trauma, and how to overcome it. And they keep talking of how only true grief can guide us a path forward and through the swamp called depression. Only by accepting the hurt of loss, of drinking the cup of past pain to the fullest, we can weep and be freed. True healing needs a proper assessment of the wound first before the treatment can start. Else, you will only treat the symptoms, never the cause. And my last months were full of grief and loss. Once more, the knife of my mind was active. But also the needle and thread of healing, of friendship and community. And now I stand again, in the ruins of a former life. 

Act III: Kindness

"We don't get over this, can we grow around?
  No distorted ego when we're given grace

  Now we stand in the ruins
  And the morning is cold
  There's nobody home anymore"

But there is true hope, now. That one day, I will have emptied out this ruin, cleaned the foundation and saved what can be used for reconstruction. "Built your house, habibi" adorns my office wall - high enough that I can look at it easily whilst working. Small images of painted art begin filling the walls of my home, my safe harbour. They speak of hope and of joy. That one day, all of this will have passed. That Breaker, the Kid and the Swamp will live in harmony inside of me. I do not want to cut them out anymore, do not want to miss them from my life anymore. Because they are part of me. The horns of Breaker, the eyes of the Kid and the peat of the Swamp - all talk of beauty, of acceptance. That even in pain and in grief, there is a path forward. That kindness towards myself, granting myself the same grace I hand out to others so willingly, can lead me back to the intended path.

I have been thinking about "Seek heaven through violence" lately. I think I have to change it a bit. Not by replacing it, but by adding to it.

Seek heaven through violence - reach it through kindness. 

All quotes from: Mastodon: In The Ruins (2026)