I am broken. And so are you

Stop pretending you’re untouched—nobody makes it through unscathed

Every man I’ve ever dated, every friend who has been close, has met a version of me mid-breakdown. Sometimes it’s a quiet unravelling over drinks. Sometimes it’s me sobbing in a parked car. Sometimes it’s howling on their living room floor.

And in those moments, I’ve found myself asking: Am I broken?

Or worse, declaring: I am broken.

And I wouldn’t say it lightly. I’d say it with the weight of someone who meant it.
Like once my sparkle wore off—my exuberance, my ‘interesting’ mind, my quirky personality—what remained was something ruined.

A girl with too many feelings. A girl who, once you got close enough, was just...sad.

I was Meredith Grey in the early seasons—dark and twisty. Or like every manic pixie dream girl whose golden glow is just a distraction.

And even though I liked this quote by Hemingway (or Cohen, the jury is still out on that):

We’re all broken—that’s how the light gets in.

I never quite believed it applied to me. I was sure that I was more broken than most. Too far gone to be fixed or salvaged in anyway.

When the roles reversed

This was a few years ago. But recently, the roles reversed—a man asked me that very question.

It was after a panic attack. After I held him as he cried. After he said he didn’t know what was happening to him. His body was shaking, his breath shallow, his words scattered. He unravelled—softly, messily—into my lap.

And then he looked up and asked: Am I broken?

That question came from a very tender, fragile place. But also a very honest one. So I was not going to give hollow reassurance—that kind of truth was meant to be met with truth.

So I said: Yes, you are. But we all are.

But I didn’t continue to say, that’s how the light gets in.

I said: But that just means you’re lived in.

Like when someone apologises for their messy home, but you don’t even see a mess.
You see a space with life in it. A place that’s been inhabited. Not sterile like a hotel room. But full of humanness, routine, and warmth.

You’re not a showroom. You’re a home. With cracks in the walls, tube lights that flicker no matter how often you change them. Leaks. Stained carpets. Plants that are mostly alive.

It’s not aesthetic. It’s not curated. But it’s real. And it’s never a bad thing.

The plot twist though

This guy who had collapsed into my lap just a few hours ago, had disappeared back into the illusion of control.

Stoicism as armour. As if vulnerability had never happened. As if I had imagined the whole thing. And that wasn’t just a total put-off for me. It also made me worry for him.

Because another thing he asked me mid-spiral was: Do you ever get over this?

By "this" he meant the pain. The PTSD. The relentless anxiety.

I get the stoicism. I do. It's a coping mechanism. But the answer to his question? Yes, you get over it. But only by going through it.

Through another panic attack. Through thirty more. Through crying in someone's lap again and again. As many times as it takes.

Because the point isn’t to never break. The point is to keep showing up anyway.

Emotional expression is not weakness

We’re taught to believe that emotional expression is a sign of weakness. That the person who cries, who feels, who says "this hurts" out loud—is fragile, is sensitive. is weak.

But I’ve started seeing it differently.

In fact, I don’t think not feeling is strength. I think instead it’s just:

• Avoidance

• Dissociation

• An emotional shutdown disguised as maturity

Most men I’ve met? They haven't cried in years. And they say it with a sort of reluctant pride.

Until one day—one thing overwhelms them, one conversation triggers something—and they crumble. They shut down. They ghost. They spiral. They run.

Not because they’re monsters. But because they were never taught how to feel and still function. I don’t think they are even aware that is a possibility.

They are, in many ways, still boys. Boys who were never allowed to sit with their own sadness, so they never learned how to carry it.

And when they finally unravel, they say things like:

I’m not like you. You’re so strong.

The first time I heard that from a man, I was shocked. Me? Strong?

I thought I was the “emotional one.” I cry easily. I get impacted by the smallest things. I overthink, spiral, speak before I process, as I process—and processing I always am.

But to him, that was strength.

You may cry and express, he said. But you process it. You come back. In fact, you never leave. You deal with life. But me? Main bikhar jata hoon. I fall apart so easily.

And that’s when I realised something I wish I’d known earlier:

Emotional expression is not the opposite of mental strength. It is a form of strength. It’s the capacity to name, face, and sit with what hurts. To feel it without fleeing it.

The boy who fed on nightmares

Not feeling things, acting nonchalant, unbothered, distant? That is not strength. That is repression. That is a lack of resilience. That’s a lack of growing up.

A children’s story from a K-drama deeply resonates with me because I know this truth.

The boy woke up from another awful nightmare. Bad memories from his past that he wanted to erase from his head were replayed in his dreams every night and haunted him non-stop.

The boy was terrified of falling asleep again. So one day he went to the witch and begged: Please get rid of all my bad memories so that I won't have a nightmare ever again. Then I will do everything you ask.

Years went by and the boy become an adult. He no longer had nightmares. But for some strange reason he wasn't happy at all.

One night, a blood moon filled the night sky and the witch finally showed up again to take what he had promised in return for granting his wish. And he shouted at her with so much resentment: All my bad memories are gone but why, why can't I become happy?

Then the witch took his soul as they had promised and told him this: Hurtful, painful memories. Memories of deep regret. Memories of hurting others and being hurt. Memories of being abandoned. Only those with such memories buried in their hearts can become stronger, more passionate, and emotionally flexible. And only they can attain happiness.

So don't forget any of it. Remember it all and overcome it. If you don't overcome it, you'll always be a kid whose soul never grows.

— It’s Okay To Not Be Okay (K-drama)

Also, we need to address “stoicism”

Widely misunderstood (and misused!) school of philosophy that gets muddy in modern discourse.

Stoicism is not about suppressing emotions. It’s about training them. Being calm in the storm. Being kind when provoked. Not because you’re numb—but because you’re free.

Drop your ‘bro stoicism’, please

Bro stoicism is what happens when people mistake emotional avoidance for emotional maturity. And don’t get me wrong, just because I’m calling it “bro” stoicism, doesn’t mean this doesn’t apply to women too. It’s a human thing, not a sex-dictated one.

Bro stoicism is when someone says they’re “stoic,” but what they really mean is:

• I don’t like accountability.

• I don’t engage unless it’s on my terms.

• I’ve intellectualised my shutdowns and now call it self-control.

Bro stoicism looks like disappearing in conflict and calling it peace. It looks like detachment, but it’s actually fear—of being vulnerable, of being wrong, of being seen.

The real flex? Soft stoicism

Stoicism isn’t the absence of emotion. It’s the refusal to be ruled by it. And I am no philosophy major but this is my interpretation of soft stoicism:

It’s not coldness. It’s containment. It’s not denial. It’s discipline. It’s knowing I can’t control others—but I can control what I do with the story they leave behind.

Soft stoicism is lighting a candle after a hard conversation. It’s crying without crumbling. It’s letting yourself feel everything, but choosing not to bleed on everyone around you.

It’s the gentle version of: Don’t react—respond.

Soft stoics don’t reject emotion. They let it move through them—then metabolise it into clarity. They don’t ghost. They set boundaries. They don’t explode. They express.

I may be messy, but I am also resilient. And a reluctant stoic—still fighting for the truth that survival isn’t the same as suppression. Even though the world wants me to believe that.

I’m choosing to feel—and learning how to do so without burning the house down every time I do.

If we are broken, can kintsugi fix us?

People love referencing kintsugi—the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. I do too. But sometimes I wonder if we’ve turned it into a metaphor too pretty for what healing actually feels like.

Because in my experience, there is no delicate brush, no shimmer of gold. The mending is jagged. Uneven. It stings.

It’s not gold that fixes me. It’s the rawness of looking at the crack and saying—yes, that happened. That hurt. That still hurts. That broke me in ways that I can never go back from—but I will still go forward.

The gold is:

• The voice notes I was ashamed to send but sent anyway

• The tears I didn't hide, no matter if in a public place

• The sleepless nights I lay down on the floor in my favourite “starfish” position

• The moments I sat in discomfort instead of pretending to be okay even though the latter would have been so much more convenient

And the writing. Always, the writing. Not as proof that I’ve healed. But because it is how I heal.

I’m realising now that I’d written the truth of this long before I knew it. I found this in my notes—something I had written a few months ago in the midst of a heartbreak.
It was addressed to someone, yes. But maybe it’s also a message to anyone who’s ever made softness feel unsafe.

Nobody can live this life unscathed. By the time you are in your late twenties, not only have you been through some trauma and are damaged in multiple ways, you’ve probably lost the light in your eyes and have forgotten how to dream.

Or maybe it’s different for you (I hope that is the case).

But what I am trying to say is that your issues, your wounds, your sadness would not have scared me away. I am not afraid of broken people, dented people. I think that’s inevitable when you’re living this life.

What I am afraid of is people who are delusional. People who are evasive. People who are manipulative. That’s what I’m afraid of.

All my brokenness? I never expected you to fix it. If I’m being honest, I think that’s one of my favourite things to do — to work on myself. To heal, to understand, to elevate. So why would I put that on you?

Did I, however, want you around? Supporting me? Hearing me out? Understanding me? Of course. So much. And I wanted to do the same for you. Because I understand — nobody can go through this life unscathed.

I would buy you coffee and you would buy me books and we’d pick flowers together and understand each other’s triggers and pacifiers. We’d hold hands and laugh and cry and record embarrassingly funny videos of being silly and talking nonsense. We’d soothe each other, we’d make each other smile.

Don’t you see? It was always this simple.

Why did you have to go ahead and complicate it, then?

Do you really think anyone can go through this life unscathed?

— circa November 2024

Lived in

I used to ask—Am I broken?—like it was a curse. A flaw I had to hide. A truth too heavy to say out loud.

Now I say it like a reclamation: Yes, I am broken. And I don’t know if that’s how the light gets in, but it’s definitely the way I experience the world and the world experiences me without withdrawing or pretending.

So no—brokenness isn’t a flaw in the design. It is the design.

We’re not meant to be untouched. We’re meant to be lived in. And loved not despite that—but because of it.

To feel and still function. To break and still belong. If that’s you, you’re not alone.
Forward this to someone who needed this reminder today. Or comment and tell me—what’s your gold? How do you deal with your ‘brokenness’?