The Dawn Chorus…

Sometimes, it takes a lot of getting lost before you can find yourself exactly where you are supposed to be.

Growing up, I always felt out of place. Like, somehow, in spite of Its all-seeing all-knowing eye, the Universe had made a mistake and planted my soul in the wrong time & place.

Some nights, I still stay up with a lump in my throat while these wild stories play in my mind.

My soul was created a long, long time ago and by the time, it was released by the Universe, it was already out of fashion. So, when I started breathing, and long after that, my existence was but a careless act of roaming through this dense darkness.

It was lonely. It was painful. It made it easy to be fooled.

Demons held out their caring hands, tricked me into a dance, and convinced me they were my friends.

They made sure I stayed put when the storms hit, so I could take the right amount of damage to create the perfect shaped hole in my mind where they would forever nest.

Sometimes when I think about it, I think, maybe they were friends since in the end they always lead me to where I was supposed to go. Or maybe that was all me ?

Every breath was a sharp stab to my heart. It still is.

Nothing ever came easy, yet I made it through a billion storms; no matter how bad they got, I remained, either standing or crawling, but always moving forward.

For too long, existing felt only like surviving and surviving eventually felt more like a cruel type of death, oh so slow. I thought it would never end, until that day, when I heard a call through the darkness…

A voice that sounded much like my own. It reached out through the dense shadows that had swallowed me, and it showed me the light. It showed me a fire that was burning inside me this whole time, silently, waiting patiently. And, it showed me all the little sparks of light that were always around; it taught me how to seek them, how to let them in, how to feed this fire…

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Sometimes, it takes a lot of getting lost before you can be found. But more often than not, once you reach a point where you think you have it all figured out, where you think that it’s all laid out in front of you, you will be proven wrong…

The truth is that life isn’t something that needs figuring out. It is not a mystery that needs to be solved, but a story waiting to be told. We are all born to roam and live and love and grieve. Getting lost is how we move forward.

At times, the darkness engulfs me and I let myself sink so low. But whenever I think that I am finally close to reaching the bottom — _{the place where I will spend the rest of my days} — I find that I am somehow already halfway back up?

Maybe the whole time that I thought I was sinking, I was actually subconsciously swimming up. Or maybe I was never really sinking. It’s hard to tell.

I couldn’t give up even if I tried — even when I try.

Every time that I fall into a black hole or a cruel storm lashes out on me, I remember all the previous ones. I remember all those dark days that I thought were kicking my ass, but really, I was the only one kicking ass. I remind myself that this is not my first war and that there isn’t a war that I cannot win, for I am the fire, and I am my own hero.

^{I am the fire, I control the darkness, not the other way around.}

I always seem to go around in circles. Once again, I find myself at a crossroads, a very familiar one. I have always taken the wrong turn. It taught me a lot, and maybe it made me stronger, but it also made me weaker.

I realize now that the only way out of this limbo is through making a different choice this time, the right one. I know all the signs point the other way, but I have already been there and seen all there was to see.

That is why I have always been so lost and miserable. But now that I have truly heard my calling, it is the only voice that I will follow, and there is no stopping me.

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I survived the darkest of days and the hardest of heartbreaks. I got through it all because there was always this little spark glowing on the horizon, a tiny drop of hope for me to hang on tight to.

Now that I’ve gotten a taste of what being fully alive and happy feels like, how could I let it go? How could I let go of this light and jump back into a bitter ocean of sadness that melts me to the core like acid? I will not return to a life of misery, chasing after a dull spark while every single one of my bones is ground to a fine powder every day.

I have already walked barefoot and backwards through shattered glass and embers. I don’t want to do it again, and no one can convince me that this suffering is necessary nor mandatory.

I refuse to believe that I was put on this Earth only to suffer and chase after a carrot on a rotten stick until my dying days. If I die tomorrow, I want to be leaving a legacy behind that lasts, maybe not forever, but at least for a while.

I want to leave behind so many bright things and not just a few ephemeral stories of pain, sadness and a bitter abyss. I was made to create these melodies, all this art and to share it; and it’s all I want to be doing.

I want to burn bright, with every single breath that I have left, until I burst into flames and return to the Universe, leaving behind a sky full of stars.

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There was a time where I was lost but I’ve been found and found my fire.

And maybe I have already said this in a poem, but even with the Darkness of the world bleeding onto me, I will stubbornly keep my eyes on the Light and never let them take my fire again.

I exist to create and to bring light into people’s lives. My fire is precious and has suffered enough; I will do all it takes to protect it and let it burn wild.