Kintsugi

“We’re all a little broken; just some more than the others.”

These are words that I’ve been preaching for a long long time, dark isn’t it? But well, it is so true. We all shatter sometimes, break and look around with demons in our head and broken fragments of hope in our heart but somehow we still manage to piece ourselves together and be who we are. That’s why I titled this- “Kintsugi”. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold which is built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art. Just like Kintsugi, breaking apart teaches us somewhat of resilience which is one of the most important things to learn in life. But why is it so hard being a teenager or just being a person in general? I think this generation, in Conan Gray’s words, “Generation Why”, are a bunch of really good liars.

Don’t come at me, you know I am right. Elders think that it is just the raging hormones, which it probably is but so much else is going on in our lives other than just the oh-so- adrenaline rushing through us. We are supposed to be having the time of our lives but instead of doing so we are here, fighting with our peers, fighting with our parents, fighting with ourselves and fighting with everything good in our life. Why is it like this? When I know, I’ll let you in on this secret. We all go through this, it's just that all of us have different theories regarding this, based on different personal experiences. Society and technology may have helped ends meet and gapped the bridge between people, but being a teenager still involves a crappy lifestyle.

Now, coming to why we are a bunch of really good liars... oh who am I kidding? A bunch of Ph.D. liars. We, in our miseries, act like we are fine. When you’re a teenager, everything changes and there’s no constant in our lives. We can call people our constants and all but we act like our trauma is traumatic and other’s trauma is dramatic. We don’t know who we are, even on a good day, we don’t know whom to trust. Our double standards are impeccable, sarcastically, and incorrigible, literally. Even though it is a time filled with high levels of instability, we are thrust and we even thrust ourselves into the most physically challenging and emotionally tiring situations of our already unstable lives discovering all sorts of problems and wrong decisions along the way. Trusting the wrong people, dating and heartbreak, peer pressure, low self-esteem and so much more. We are clowns, making a creepy joke out of our own lives and zombies with the overthinking that is eating up our brains. We go through a lot of stuff, socially and mentally and I have a lot of stories to share which I will save for another time.

But fellow teens,

“I like that you're broken,

Broken like me.

Maybe that makes me a fool.

I like that you're lonely,

Lonely like me.

I could be lonely with you.”

~lovelytheband