Inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this piece is told from the perspective of a younger “monster,” one who is still discovering what it means to exist in a world that it does not understand.
Master, I’m confused by this gift, this thing you call life.
‘Coz this gift brings me pain, great suffering and strife.
As you gave me no comfort, no place to call home.
So I sat and I waited, patiently, all on my own.
When I craved for a companion, to be nurtured and held,
All I got was ignored or shunned and dispelled.
Now tell me my creator; what would you do,
If this was your life that you had to go through?
So there’s one small request, to you now I implore;
Master, take out this heart I want it no-more.
There’s a certain ache in feeling too much – an ache that carries both beauty and burden. The Unwanted Gift is a meditation on that ache, a quiet offering to something beyond words, like a whispered prayer to a god that does not exist. It is not an intellectual exercise, but an emotive unraveling – a space where thought gives way to feeling, where understanding is less important than simply being.
Sensitivity has often been framed as a weakness, something to be fixed, hardened, or outgrown. But what if, instead, it is a gift we have yet to learn how to hold?
Gabor Maté speaks of sensitivity as “not a sign of weakness but a sign of a nervous system that processes deeply.” It is the very thing that allows us to connect, to empathize, to create. Yet, in a world that prizes resilience in its most rigid forms, sensitivity can leave an individual searching for somewhere to belong.
Perhaps the gift was never unwanted, only misunderstood. Perhaps, in speaking to what does not answer, we are not looking for a response, but for the simple relief of being heard.
