Kash Baloch — Poetry, Prose & Survival

Blame became the flames that ravaged my reason, and I—the arsonist of my own undoing. My self-worth burned to the ground under accusations I refused to release. I wore my pain like armour, mistaking survival for strength. But denial is not protection— it is delay. No bullet, no punishment, no external force could penetrate what I refused to face. So I stood there— watching everything collapse under the weight of my own avoidance. Until finally— I stopped pointing outward. And turned inward with the same intensity I once used to destroy. Now— I remove the bandages instead of hiding the wound. I learn to love what I once resented. Because healing does not come from pretending it didn’t hurt— it comes from refusing to abandon yourself again.

I have mistaken hunger for purpose, chased things that consumed me because I thought being devoured meant I was desired. There is a difference between being needed and being used— but it blurs when you are starving for validation. I fed people pieces of myself until I had nothing left to recognize as mine. And they called it love, and I believed them. Because I did not yet know that real love does not require self-erasure, it does not demand you shrink to be digestible, it does not leave you emptier than it found you. So I stopped offering myself as something to be consumed, and started becoming someone who cannot be.

The silence became deafening as it taught me accountability— a lesson louder than any chaos I had ever known. A boy who cries wolf too many times is destined to be abandoned, left alone with echoes of his own invention. Consistency—that was the missing language. Not apologies. Not intention. Action. I will climb mountains, swim through shark-infested waters, cross deserts in the name of self-mastery. Because I refuse to keep rewinding lives I’ve already damaged. Self-control is not suppression— it is discipline dressed as mercy. So I bite my tongue before it becomes a weapon. I pause before reaction becomes regret. I choose differently even when instinct begs me not to. Because I am no longer interested in being understood if it means continuing to hurt people who once loved me. Growth is not loud. It is repetition— of better choices no one applauds.

So there I was—again— at the bottom of another version of myself I swore I had outgrown. It is humbling to meet your own patterns face to face and realize they recognize you better than you recognize yourself. I had rehearsed progress without embodying it. Spoken healing without practicing it. Named my demons without ever dismissing them. And so they stayed. Comfortable. Familiar. Fed. But accountability is not a moment— it is a method. A discipline of choosing differently even when it feels unnatural. So I begin again. Not from scratch— but from truth.

There is a silence that comes after destruction that feels almost sacred. Not because it is peaceful— but because it is honest. No more noise to distract you, no more chaos to hide inside. Just you—and what remains. I used to fear this part. The aftermath. The stillness that forces you to confront what you’ve done, what you’ve lost, what you’ve become. But now— I understand its purpose. This is where rebuilding actually begins. Not in the moment of collapse— but in the decision to not recreate it. Over. And over. And over again. Silence is not empty. It is space. And for the first time— I am not rushing to fill it.

My body remembers what my mind tries to revise. It flinches before I understand why. It tightens at the sound of certain names, certain tones, certain silences that echo too closely to something I survived. I have rehearsed forgetting— told myself it wasn’t that bad. That I was dramatic. That pain requires proof to be valid...but the body does not lie. It stores everything—in muscle, in breath, in the way my shoulders rise like they are waiting for impact that never quite arrives.  Healing is not linear. It is remembering without reliving. It is learning that safety  is not a temporary condition. It is teaching your body that the war is over— even when it still wakes up fighting. 

I built myself like a structure meant to intimidate— all angles, no softness. A cinderblock of chaos, stacked high on ego and sealed with deflection; nothing got in. Not truth,  not tenderness,  not the quiet voice that asked me to slow down. I called it strength. I called it resilience. I called it anything but fear. Because fear doesn’t look like trembling when it lives long enough—it looks like control.  It looks like reaction. It looks like a man who destroys everything before it has the chance to leave him.  But even concrete cracks. Even the hardest version of me could not withstand the pressure of being wrong for so long.  So I broke,  not loudly, not dramatically; but in small, undeniable ways that forced me to pay attention.  And in that fracture,  something honest finally entered,  n ot to ruin me— but to rebuild me without the need to be untouchable. 

With my heart in the Antarctic and my mind in monsoon heat, I have become a contradiction that breathes. Fire one moment— consuming,  demanding,  impossible to ignore. Ice the next— distant,  silent,  impossible to reach.  People call it instability; I call it weather. Because what else do you name a system you didn’t design but are forced to live inside? I have been blamed for every storm I didn’t know how to stop,  apologized for climates I didn’t understand,  feared for seasons I couldn’t predict. But even the wildest environments can be studied, even extremes can be navigated. and maybe I am not broken— just unregulated. Just learning how to exist without destroying everything in my path. I am not one season.  I am all of them— and I am finally learning when not to rain. 

Voices fracture into faces as memory freezes over— people replaced by glaciers that move slower but cut deeper. I lower myself into the Arctic and pray I remember how to swim in something that does not want me alive.  Cold has always been honest, it does not pretend to hold you while plotting your disappearance. It does not whisper love with teeth behind its tongue. It simply takes—heat, breath, movement— until you learn what survival actually costs.  They say the ice is melting, but no one talks about how fast a person can freeze when left alone inside themselves. I have been both— the collapse and the witness,  the fracture and the flood. Still... beneath all this frozen language, there is something moving; a current,  a pulse, proof that even here, in the most inhospitable version of me, I have not stopped trying to live. 

So there I was, sunken at my latest definition for what it meant to hit rock bottom. At thirty-one, I was penniless, promiscuous, and panicking— teetering dangerously close to manic, and overdue for another severe break from reality. How did I get to this point? Everything was supposed to be different. I was supposed to be different. But somehow, it was always more of the same. Perhaps my greatest delusion was believing I was destined for greatness when really I was just made to be a stain— a grease fire that refused to go out, an aneurysm that never quite learned how to clot. But if there was anything left that resembled grace, it was this— I could not lie to myself anymore. No scapegoats. No rewrites. No romanticizing ruin. Just truth, raw and unflattering, staring me down without blinking. And in that moment, buried beneath the wreckage of who I had been— there was something else. Not hope. Not yet. But accountability. And that was enough to begin again.

Anxiety’s an infestation of the mind, it lays its eggs under my skin, securing a foundation for the home where it will rear its kin. It is the black widow of doubt, and simultaneously its web; the venom in her sac, and yet the prey within her net. Untherapeutic thoughts crawl like millipedes, racing in Olympic circuits across my chest as I concede defeat. It is a caterpillar spinning its cocoon inside the fragile forests of my overripe emotions— threatening transformation, but promising collapse. It is the voice that sounds like mine but speaks in sabotage. The hand that grips my throat and calls it caution. The fire alarm that rings in empty buildings. But I am learning— not every thought is truth. Not every fear is prophecy. Not every storm requires surrender. Sometimes survival is simply sitting still while your mind invents new ways to destroy you— and choosing not to believe it. Sometimes healing is not silencing the noise, but recognizing that you are not the one making it.

I close my eyes and disappear sometimes, in a cloud of cleansing sage. Quiet my chaotic mind, I vanish without a trace. As apprehension subsides, I find myself in a daze; set adrift in bliss, I resurface in some foreign place. There, my spirit is softer, less splintered by the machinery of thought. My nervous system loosens its fists, and every burden I’ve carried for too long falls soundlessly to the floor. In that suspended hush, I am no one’s enemy, not even my own. The ghosts that pace the hallways of my body grow tired, sit down, and finally stop speaking over one another. For a moment, I remember what it feels like to be housed gently. To inhabit myself without bracing for impact. To breathe without borrowing panic from futures that haven’t happened. Then slowly, as all rituals must, the smoke thins. The room returns. The world knocks again. But something holy lingers— a reminder that peace is not a myth, only a practice; and that even I, with all my storms, am still capable of b...

All it took was time to truly let my wounds heal, as introspection taught me how to feel. I was as angry as a warrior starved for honour, like a soldier in trenches waiting to be called a martyr. I made the world walk on eggshells around me, mistaking fear for respect, control for stability. The slightest misstep woke the dragon— they were David, I was Goliath, my voice a weapon that echoed like thunder. When all I needed was a reminder that I was also filled with wonder. Not every battle required blood. Not every silence was an attack. I was not being hunted— I was being held accountable. So I unlearned war. I loosened my grip on anger as identity. I stopped rehearsing conflict in rooms that were already safe. And slowly— the world stopped bracing for me. And I stopped bracing for it. What remained was not weakness— but peace I no longer felt the need to defend. 

As ships brave stormy weather, nearly sinking to the ocean's floor, sailors whisper silent prayers, hoping to return to lives they left ashore. No sea monster could inspire fear quite like electric skies that roar, as lightning strikes repeatedly, until the night is sore. As though lured by some unseen source, water fills this fractured hull, each creak a whispered warning, each wave a violent lull. The compass spins in circles, drunk on chaos, void of north, while courage clings to splintered wood and bargains back and forth. At the edge of dusk and sunset, when the skies are watercolor bright, where amber bleeds to violet in surrender to the night, I see reflections of myself in oceans I can’t outrun— a man at war with tempests he mistakes for setting suns. And if I make it back to land, salt stitched into my skin, I’ll know the storm was never out there— it’s always been within.

I was not made to falter; weakness looks better on other men. And every time I hit the ground is just a chance to build my fortress walls anew. When my city crumbles, it does not mean that it will never thrive again. I refuse to listen to the protests of my insecurities that urge I quit while I'm afraid. They may be ferocious beasts, but I will not back down that easily. This time—I choose to live! I will not come undone. So what if I sometimes slip and sprain my resolve, .I know I'm not the only one. The moment has finally arrived where I stand and fight, and face my demons head on. I won't give up, I'll soldier on until I've crossed the finish line. I will stumble forward  long after the race has been won. My late arrival to the ball is no reason to sulk backstage; the show must go on. I choose to live! I won't give in. My stubborn heart will not stop  for anyone. I carry on, I am quite strong. The day has come for me ...

Losing my mind was like swallowing hot coals—it stole the words from off my tongue. A treason like no other, even though we anticipate that it will burn. Embers lit up my mouth from the inside, like walls of a cavern lit entirely by torch.  When my brain malfunctioned, my grasp on reality suddenly became loose. Unraveling like serotonin silly string until all that remained was one big knot. As my sanity escapes, all that was left is a pile on the floor of mess.  I lose track of time as I obsess about an idea that evolves into branches that make up a nest. Twigs of delusion turn into entire trees when subjected to neglect. Dopamine twice a day does nothing to improve my self-respect. I search the seafloor for something familiar to swim alongside with, making my way upstream until I can tell fish apart from their tailfins. Saved crocodile tears in a sandcastle—oysters reveal pearls of oxytocin alabaster. It is finding yourself in quicksand sinking faster than a s...