Trauma is abstract

Kia ora, I wrote this poem in Aotearoa a couple of months after I had an extremely profound experience of acceptance and realisation of self-love. Ever since this moment I have been reflecting on the wider systems and environment that pushes us to reckon with existential exhaustion and suicide ideation. This poem reflects my conceptualisation of trauma, and while it reads rather cynically, I think it also evokes hope derived from our unity within this struggle.

Trauma is abstract.
It is not always easy to pinpoint.
But, to me it's a feeling deep inside,
trapped within a labyrinth of conditioning and (mal)adaptation.

If I listen, and listen carefully,
its pleas for release echo throughout,
rattling the cage it is ensnared within.

It has been pushed so far down out of necessity for survival.

We muffle its cries with suppression and distraction.
We consume ANYTHING to take us away,
and inadvertently this takes us away from ourselves.

Further from ourselves than we already are.

We are human.
Human; no more than our ancestors millennia past.

We evolved to be a part of nature,
not as a detached observer.
To be a protector,
not a destroyer.
To be physically connected,
not digitally divided.

We advanced technology as our tool,
not our addiction.
Belonging in groups out in the open,
not as individuals holed up in walls.
We evolved to be intuitive, to have self-agency,
not to be at the mercy of capitalist industry.

We exist disjointed,
distant from our core.
We are lost from ourselves.
We are lost from each other.
We are lost.

Lost from our world,
exponentially changing,
beyond comprehension and control.

Bound to here and now,
we all are acquainted with precarious uncertainty,
powerlessness is ubiquitous.

We all have hurt in our hearts;
we know not the answer.

We all are misaligned,
and we all seek sanctum.

We all are human,
and to be human today
is to be living with trauma.