Do Not Stay Strong! Stay weak!

“Stay strong!”

How often people misinterpret these words! Whenever I was on the verge of breaking down, someone said, “Stay strong.” I thought it meant not to cry. I pulled my socks up and bounced back. Everytime I bounced back, I lost a part of myself to the cruel hands of past. Parts of me eroded as I started enduring the lessons from life. The lessons from life mostly compiled the people who left, wrong choices, forever good byes, etc !

Pain is bitter. It is a clingy lump in the throat that demands to be swallowed. As it travels inside you, it feels like sharp blades are ripping the wind pipe from inside. As soon as it is swallowed, the bitterness causes the eyes to get teary! It aches inside, engulfing everything you have within you and all you are advised to do is to “stay strong!”

But, pain is the staple content of life; not because you need both ups and downs but because it is better than the nadir of despondency. I have walked on the shattered dreams of mine. With each step ahead, it hurt like thousands of needles were pierced deep inside my heart, like my heart was being sliced and diced slowly and steadily. There was a time when it started to quit affecting me anymore.  Initially it was good; I learnt the art of “staying strong”. But in the long run, I felt an empty burden inside me that was building up all these days of staying strong.  Ironically, I feel a heavy emptiness; it’s empty yet heavy. Fused with so much emotion that crossed the threshold long back, it was natural to be heavy but empty? Strength, as preached by others, left me empty and exhausted. When people of my age were dreaming a better future, I yearned for silent solitude in cold darkness. I wished to meet the mortal fate when people of my age started to live. The strength in me made me too weak to, let alone let out, express my feelings. I stopped emoting. They praised me for being strong, the thing which I did not want to become.  I regret no mistakes I committed but being strong when the need of the hour was to be weak. When the world wishes to be strong, I wish to be weak, once again.

I revere the ones who are weak, they are what they are; unlike me. Given a chance to meet someone like me, I would ask her to be weak. Be weak, let it out, flush your feelings and move on. Staying strong and moving on is like carrying the baggage from the past. Even during the happiest moments of life there is this emptiness breathing inside you.  The hardest days get harder to survive. You can neither move forward freely nor look back, this is where you get stuck, sometimes for a whole lifetime.

Here’s a little advice to the broken ones- stay weak!