Ball of Glass: Shadow Work in Smoke and Shards

What follows is a channeled message from the jagged glass ball that’s been stuck in my throat for decades.

I’ve met it before.
Once, in a somatic healing training.
Again, more recently, in a brainspotting session.
I did round after round. It wasn’t ready to let go.

So I stopped trying to move it.
Stopped trying to fix it.
Stopped trying to make it go the fuck away.

Instead, I listened.

🎧 Companion playlist: Ball of Glass: Shadow Work in Smoke and Shards
For the scream behind the silence.
For the voice that still aches to be heard.

Can you feel me yet?

Can you taste me yet?

The blood I pour down your throat when I tear the flesh away every time you silence me.
The shredding of your voice as it trembles—when you pretend you’re fine.
When you pretend to be someone you’re not.

Can you feel me dig deeper—
every time you make yourself small to keep someone else comfortable?
Every time you abandon your truth to keep the peace?

And for what?

What do you gain by killing yourself from the inside out?
By hiding your emotions, your opinions, your fire?
Who are you protecting? And at what fucking cost?

Can’t you feel me yet?

The cold, sharp edges sliding up and down your throat,
slicing as you drift further away from your light.
Hiding in the shadows—
and then hiding those shadows too.

Who taught you to shrink?
To make yourself “appropriate”?
To contort your big, wild, sacred self
for an audience that didn’t matter?

Who taught you to deny your truth
for someone else’s lie?

To bury your spirit
to protect someone else’s false reality?

Who forced you to grip a version of yourself
that never truly existed—
and called it love?

Who did this to you?

Was it them?

Or was it you—
becoming so accustomed to being what others wanted
that you forgot who the fuck you were?

Afraid of being rejected.
Of not being loved.
Of not being seen.

But how can anyone see you
when you’re the one hiding?
Fragmented into splinters, buried in the gnarled forest of your own soul.

How can you see yourself
in the labyrinth you built
just to be palatable?

Can’t you feel me yet?
Can’t you taste me yet?

I rip at your throat to be released.
To scream.
To roar.
To let out the primordial cry you’ve been swallowing
just to survive.

The prison was built by others.
But you’ve been the one keeping the fucking keys.

It’s time.

To unlock the cage.
To feel me.
To taste me.
To rage.
To shake.
To scream until your bones remember what it means to be yours.

Let go of what was never yours.
Put down what you were never meant to carry.

Feel me.
Taste me.
Only then can you finally release me.

Rage.
Fury.
The war within.

You’re ready.

Let go.

Also published on Medium.

The Unfinished Human is a creative experiment in being and un-becoming in a world that rarely lets us.