This is my first time engaging with this community thanks to an invite from a good friend 
I feel like every self-aware adult man carries around his share of what draws us back to the past as if gravitating towards what we no longer have control over would fix the destruction left behind by what should be our lessons.
In this fact lies what we are made of and we often forget that. I will be the first to admit that I tend to disregard it all the time.
I was raised by an extremely religious and patriarchal generation. Growing up in such an environment came with a bunch of rules that my wild side never seemed to understand.
I remember the taboos that sexualized my purity and stained my girlhood with the oppression that took my voice away. I spent most of my days hiding behind the pages of a good book and luckily my grades favourably backed that lie.
Poetry befriended my soul in its teens long before I knew it was bringing me my freedom. It stirred my fresh wounds to brew the stories I desperately wanted to tell while allowing me to glimpse at some mysterious parts of my soul.
It was and has been my Gethsemane.
The ability to write has been trying to free me from the chains of years of emotional distress but it has taken time to peel away the layers of psychological torture and abuse and it might take some more.
Healing is not linear and so there are days the unhealed version of myself comes back only to leave a storm in her path. I seek out my past tendencies and invite regrets back here then continue to contradict myself.
Whatever has been blocked or left unresolved resurfaces per the mayhem my triggers can unearth. Then when I let my creative energy engage with them, my craft effortlessly gives every experience a different life.
It is the power of prose that always dials back the doubts and the fear that come with dealing with my emotional baggage. This and good music feed me in my sleep. It is like every word I carve out with my invisible pen mends every rip that my soul's brokenness has embodied.
To summarize, I owe my mental health to this ability to see through ink.
...wambuku w.
