I Also Feel

I see,

I see your head held high

And,

Your reassuring smile.

I hear,

I hear you laugh so tender,

And

Your words so meticulously stung together.

I also feel. 

I feel,

I feel your pain so strong beneath

And

Your gut wrenching agony.

I feel, 

I feel your despair,

Your inner light fading.

Like a silent roar it pierces through the words unspoken,

I hangs like an ornament over the mirage you try to create.

I see,

I hear,

I also feel.

xoxo

Chido Dziva Chikwari

This doesn’t happen often but sometimes in life we go through stuff that literally tears us apart. And sometimes although the worst has happened we do not shed visible tears or walk with our heads hanging low. Sometimes we do not run to tell our closest friends or family what misfortunes we have come across and sometimes our pain and heartache we keep wholly as our own, dealt with in the confines of our private spaces. I am reminded of the shona saying, “Chakafukidza dzimba matenga”.

The reasons for this are varied but it is during these times that we wake up each day and put up a front. We show up, we smile, we act…we act as if things are okay, as if things are normal.

This post was inspired but what I believe to be a similar experience but from an outside view. An experience where although a close friend or family member doesn’t want to share what they are going through you can still feel and see as well as hear with your heart that things are not okay. As a friend/sister/brother this can be an extremely tough time. How can you help someone when they won’t share with you what is wrong? How can you help someone when they do not want you to know that there is something wrong? You wish that they could just cry out so that you can hold them close and tell them that things will be okay but instead you are also forced to pretend; to ‘act’ as if all is well.  

"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity."

Carl Jung