Prisons are cruel, but the cruellest one is the prison of thoughts. Being caged in your dark thoughts is painful and disheartening. It is one of the hardest elusive things to escape. You find yourself crying and covering your mouth so you don’t make noise. Every thought wears you down and your mind becomes engulfed with negativity and everything becomes dull.

I am sitting in my unbalanced bed writing this with tears escaping through my eyes. The thoughts fumble, rumble and jumble organising an evil meeting in my mind. Cardio is full of pain and life is becoming senseless. Why does everything at 3am become so meaningless? Everything becomes black, bleak and unwelcoming at all. Maybe life coated with legit smiles, happiness and joy makes a human feel like a human.

I am here in the dark constructing the most difficult problems without solutions, and creating numerous questions without answers leaving my mind in a pool of blood. I am a breathing zombie as the soul has escaped the flesh the inside is no more patiently waiting for the official burial.

At 3am you shoot bullets of depression to the cerebrum and arrows of pain to the heart, you steal my sleep and makes me fall in love with the dark. In the dark where you introduce me to my ghosts that host my smile and my happiness.

This is the hour where the mind distinguishes the truth from the lies and separates all the information from all non-verbal action. It opens wounds and bandages, damaging the meninges. Everything makes sense when you’re in the dark all alone listening to Frank Ocean, Phora, NF. Each word makes sense and is relatable. That makes you realise that inner strength is a must-have quality.

Nights aren’t peaceful anymore. While others are sleeping, I am stressing over that, “You are not good enough” remarks from my favourite person. That “why can’t you be like that child” from the one I trusted with my confidence, that “You’re slim, big, fat, ugly, dark, pimpled,” from my ‘friends. They may have been playing but here I am stuck with the words pasted in my mind and heart. Words are knives they cut deep. Listen before you ink, you might be the reason why someone next to you has a paralysed self-esteem. Learn this, if I don’t talk about it please don’t talk about it. I am dark, I know. I’m slim, I know I am big, I know I am ugly there is no need to deepen the scars by reminding me! I’ve become best friends with pain.

At times look beyond the bright side, look beyond the smile, and search that ‘I am fine’ phrase. One thing I have noticed nowadays is that people are not afraid to die but afraid to live. People have mastered how to die than to live. To my eyes, life is no longer gold, not refulgent like it used to be, no longer pleasing. We live because we still have the organs functioning and air in abundance.

Nowadays you just need to fall in love with overthinking then you will die. One thing I love and hate about people is that they say they do but they leave. The words they gave us live with us, poking our hearts and minds.

I thought I was over it but I’m numb right now. I need a miracle. The more I think is the more it hurts. Once it crosses your mind the smile and happiness fade. Ke imetswe ke le ngwana! Arrows to my heart, stones to my head and Kilimanjaro on my shoulders. You wouldn’t notice as I put on a bogus smile exposing my not-well-aligned teeth in shame and shyness as I wait for you to ask if I am sure that I am fine. I don’t trust myself.

I am wearing shoes with thorns walking on a gravelled path with no water, no energy to alter words. I am kneeling on the hot ground begging God nakedly to hear what my heart needs, it needs peace, peace is what it needs. Hear its screams, it’s shouting in a disappearing voice it is suffering. Can’t you see my smile is crying pain, my bubbliness is fighting demons embedded in the body, can’t you notice that my loud laughter is trying to burn the grave in my heart. You’re a blindly glancing being. You’ve got eyes for decoration.

My face and body is painted with scars, my back has got machetes, daggers, bullet holes, stitches, scars, and arrows. All those come from the ones I love wholeheartedly.

If you’re legitimately happy then hold on to the feeling because you got one of the most important minerals in your body. To some of us it is deficient, we can’t even smile for milliseconds. Please check on your friends. A mere ‘I love you’ makes everything bright. I am working on myself. I’ll be fine, I got this!

Tell us: How does this make you feel?