Fragments of the Quiet Mind

They said it like scripture, soft and rehearsed. "Things will grow if you just believe. Just stay. Just wait." So I did. I stayed. I bled into the dirt. I broke skin for something that never sprouted. The sun never came. And the soil? The soil was already full— of bones. Of memories with teeth. Of things I was never meant to uncover, but did anyway. They didn’t plant flowers. They planted ghosts. Carefully. Aesthetic. Like trauma could be arranged in rows and called design. They built a graveyard and named it “opportunity.” Hung fairy lights over decay and dared to call it “safe.” And I—I knelt like a fool, watering phantoms, thinking it was love.  Thinking it was growth. It was rot. Ritualized. Systematic. Here’s the truth no one wants to speak out loud: The worst betrayals don’t scream. They whisper. They wear your tone, echo your values, mirror your hopes until you’re too far in to crawl back. It wasn't an accident. They knew this place was hollow. They han...

There is a dangerous comfort in the allure of light—an intoxicating promise that the path is clearer, the way easier, if only we stay within its warmth. But light can deceive.  The light we chase often conceals more than it reveals, casting shadows where the truth lies hidden, muted beneath the glow. We are taught to seek clarity, to avoid the darkness, as if the absence of light is inherently perilous. Yet, is it not in the shadows, in the absence of external illumination, that we come to see ourselves most clearly? To shatter the lamps is not to reject light, but to abandon the reliance on artificiality, on the comfort of being told what is good, what is right, and what is true.  The pursuit of truth often lies in the untamed, in the darkness that offers space for reflection and revelation. It is in this darkened space that we are not shielded by comforting assumptions but confronted with the rawness of existence.  There, in the absence of blinding lights, we have no c...