Divided

It has literally taken me years to perfect this piece. Though, i wonder if it will ever truly be perfect. Nonetheless, it's here. And it's done. It speaks about a loss. A living loss so large, it left a gaping hole in my thoughts, heart and memory. A loss, that even until today, I still mourn for.

Here’s the thing.

Death is all around us.

Living things die everyday, big and small. Our skin cells die and turn into dust, which accumulates at the corner of the room... or on that shelf you could never reach, and once in a while, we decide to sweep it up and throw it out.

But until then, it remains forgotten. Ignored.

Our hair and nails are made up of dead cells 

but we style our hair and paint our nails, making sure it’s pretty

and we keep up with trends, masking the death that had to occur in order to allow this version of beauty, to take form.

When we speak, when we breathe, when we touch, a minuscule death occurs.

It’s how significant the death is… it's whether we choose to acknowledge it.

It’s whether the death is just a tiny dent, or whether its crushes all together. 

It’s whether the sorrow felt lasts a day or two, 

or if it seems like paradise, next to the heart that's squeezed repeatedly and torn apart almost every minute of every day.

Have you ever felt that sorrow?

You know, the kind where you think you’re having a heart attack but your body forces your it to beat faster, to keep you going, while it tries to give up. 

Your lungs feel like they’ve collapsed because the muscles that were used to breathe forget to function.

Your skeleton feels like jelly because it seems like it has lost it's supposedly strong and rigid calcium walls, ridding you of your main support system.

Slowly, your body loses energy and strength, 

and you’re left lying shivering in the corner of your bed, under the covers 

because crying has ceased to help any more 

because the hurt from the loss is like the sea compared to those few tear drops soaked in the sheets.

Death is not the only time you'll feel this. 

It’s also when you lose someone close, someone you could never imagine living without on this soil.

Someone you'd never thought you'd lose until the day you die.

Because this... this is when your soul splits in half, and one half dies within you.

- Vanessa

Despite having seen much suffering & injustice in the world, Vanessa Ee-Lyn Gomes still believes that her words can, someday, change people's lives for the better. She also believes that hugs are essential to make the world go 'round. Putting a tougher front as a journalist by day, she succumbs to being a hopeless romantic by night... though she knows Prince Charming is not on Tinder.