How the World Made Me Split, and Why I’m Gluing Myself Back Together Out Loud

— For Every Piece I Left Behind to Survive.

I’ve been loyal.

To the map.

To the mask.

To the version of me that made my mother clap,

and made my spirit bite its task.

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I played calm in clinics.

Played clever in storms.

Smiled while splitting.

Nodded while torn.

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They called it strength.

I called it form.

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I get my power from the other room—

not their glass halls,

but the corner fumed,

where smoke stitches prayers in the mirror’s bloom.

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“You still here.

After all that fear.”

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They look at me odd,

but I don’t break stare—

I’m back in my rhythm,

breath disguised as prayer.

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I swallowed their answers—

white coats, white lies,

treating the symptom,

forgetting the cries.

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I took their Panadol,

no mechanism of action inside,

just faith that something

might hush the commotion,

trade the ache for borrowed motion.

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But now—

I want the quake under the ache,

the old songs my marrow can’t fake.

I want to listen before I numb.

I want to feel the beat before it’s dumb.

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Still I ask—

Will you call me when I stop shining?

Will you name me when I’m not climbing?

Will you need me when I ain’t gold?

Will you hold me when I’m just soul?

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Everybody wants to be somebody.

What if I just want to be whole?

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So I return.

That’s part of success too—

not the firework,

but the fuse,

the soft walk back into my ribs,

after years of folding my truths.

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Do you recall not long ago?

We were young gods,

fists full of go,

before rent and reasons made us slow.

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Yeah, I want legacy—

but not the kind that folds into ledgers.

The kind that lingers in laughter.

The kind that heals the beggars

they buried as lesser.

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So I glue myself back together

out loud.

With mirrors, with scrolls, with half-lit vows.

No glue. Just grace.

No silence. Just sound.

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And when the spotlight comes—

I don’t bow.

I go deeper.

Not to perform—

but to remember:

Maybe that’s what healing sounds like,

when it stops asking how—

when healing breaks modernised tradition,

when healing don’t beg permission.

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The world made me split.

But I carve the meaning now—

what wholeness is,

without a barcode on the vow.