Kabir Rishi's Story:

An average human unconscious mind has 70 000 thoughts/minute. Out of those, only 10 -15 are processed by the active conscious brain. This number is independent of the various swirls of things going on in the infinite subconscious. I don’t know much about mental health or even if I can be considered ‘mentally healthy’. 

 

Being the youngest in my family I've been trained to not have an opinion and be nothing but a spectator to the hurricanes and terrors that rose in my family and life. So iv been afraid to go to a shrink and listen to his/her hypothesis of what he/she thinks my mind to be. What I do know about pain. Physical pain turning into mental pain and mental into physical. Pain is one hell of a feeling, it can be present in any scenario, take upon any emotion and it’s a never-ending cycle. It causes you to think and feel a certain way about yourself and keeps on rising and spreading. Contaminating memories and thoughts like a virus. 

 

Living alone since the age of 15 I've experienced a variety of pain like many others. Abandonment, fear, losing things and people I love, being jumped and left in some catwalk tasting my own blood leak from my body; and then spending another 15 minutes trying to get to my empty home. Having questions asked but nothing to answer with. I've woken up in the middle of the night afraid to breathe or sneeze because of the pain it causes my whole body to go through. Unable to walk or flip sides while sleeping but in too much pain to stay in the same position. I have conditions and things happening to my body doctors cant explain. Nor do I want them to. As a result of all of this, my tangible self has been affecting my own image and how I see myself in the mirror. Heart rate goes up and I feel dizzy to the point at which I black out. Get so angry I wanna tear the world apart with my bare hands (“crush the glass from my bare hands and swallow it” –that’s some Eminem for ya lol) but instead I take my car and go on the highway until I find a wall to slow me down. Wake up in the middle of the night from dreams I never wanna go back to but then end up listening to an empty house dictate nightmares to me; wanting to cry but never learned how to so I spend hours yelling in a pillow till the sun comes up because I don’t want my neighbors hearing me. I drifted from everyone I liked and had in the fear of losing them initially. I don’t know if this is mentally unhealthy behaviour or just emotions everyone goes through. I chose to isolate myself surrounded by unwanted voices and colours because the world is just too much of a hollow place to be in. Nevertheless, I've grown up, I've learned to live with it and it has turned me into a different person, in a place I don’t know and cant judge if it’s the correct one to be in. I don’t know how to word things that I feel but I tried to name a few up there. If you ask me about me, I'm as jumbled as they come. You're asking me about someone I know little of, my mind does, my body follows and I am just a spectator .So for the first time in a long time I decided to ask my mind “ hey bro, tell me what’s going on” . There wasn’t any reference, no plan and nothing to study. There were the colors and my mind free to use mybody. I drank “thinking Kabir’ to a side and turned myself into a robot just like the old days. And this painting is what my mind told me. It’s made by two perspectives constantly being flipped around; so it doesn’t have a definitive orientation. Recently I was asked by the people at The Mental Health Spotlight to say something about my painting, and there I was. Expected to explain and define this stranger iev lived my whole life with. But since I had its own “words” in front of me I decided to sit in front of it and piece together/read what it was trying to tell me...and this is what I feel:

 

This painting is about 1 person, caught in the Loop of Pain as I like to call it. 1 person but different perspectives in the same scenario. I see this “thing” rising from the fire, conflicted and burning. His eyes are as shut as they can be and he's looking away turning his neck to the point of break. He's afraid and he's stubborn almost childlike. Everything in the painting is going with the flow of the loop, the fire rises, turns into smoke to only disperse and be a part of the fresh air, and comes back to burn something else. But he refuses, he's being burnt, he's wounded and being cooked at parts lol .His fear of metamorphosis is so immense hes tangled and deformed himself trying to stay in place. Hes lost what its meant to be a being, its left as nothing much more than a “it”. He's holding on to freedom, to something that'll guide him out but he's also holding on to the fire that he knows to be a definitive part of himself. He’s indecisive, too attached and afraid to move to the next step. Even though the fire burns him, he closes his eyes and takes in whatever feeling he may be getting from it; for it’s the only tangible and definitive thing he knows about himself. 

so flip your phones around and look at the other story we have to tell. Here we have a man that’s gone with the flow, he’s out of the fire and managed to untangle himself. He’s aged and illuminated by the fire he escaped above. He’s gone through the smoke and rose; free to see the world behind him amongst the fresh air. He's got whatever he wanted, and is liberated but why is he unable to look away from his past? He wants to help the burning man; he wants to pull him to freedom. He has a hold of him but not enough to pull him into the flow. I don’t know why every time I see him I feel like I'm gonna cry, shouldn’t it be the burning man? Maybe it’s the fact hes free but now has nothing to hold onto, he's lost, alone and has nothing to feel /nothing to keep him warm. He's fixated on what the burning man has ,what he once had. He's got his eyes open watching it struggle, but I feel selfishness in him. He wants to drag the burning man into this loose and hollow place so that he can feel what it is to feel once again. He wants the fire he was born out of so he can call something his own again. He’s got his body, his humanity back but at the cost of what was inside. Is he in pain because of “its” pain, or is he in awe and jealous?

 

I don’t know what all this will tell people about me or the type of person I am, I don’t claim to be an enlightened person. I’m just adaptable. My body is still in distress, distress that’s originated from many places. But now im at a place where I exist, and I really don’t give a fuck. iev come to terms with the fact that I am alone , as we all are. It doesn’t matter what you say or do. There’s only one person you need to worry about, the only person that was with you since you were born and the only one that’ll shut its eyes when you do. No matter how many say it, the only one that’ll really feel your pain and your happiness is you . The person in the mirror is all youll ever have. So keep him happy, keep him the center of your world. Take care of yourself and slowly everyone is taken care of. Now not all may agree with things ive got to say, im sorry but all I can say in return is “hahaha I really don’t give a shit cus we are happy as hell in here”. and ive realized not giving a living fuck , and I mean genuinely not giving a living fuuuck has brought me to one hell of a place. Where I am unaffected and as a result looked up to. People appreciate the person I am. This person may not make me happy , but its made me something. Maybe im “the burning it” or maybe im “the liberated man”. Does it matter ? after all it is a cycle , a never ending loop. So who are you right now ?