Alongside a whole bunch of practical academic and career projects, I’ve been contemplating on the daily. Time taken for meditative walks, morning coffees, streetcar rides. Large, looming questions, thankfully non-oppressive. Amazed at my mind’s ability to navigate, function. Shame about my body’s though, that has conveniently caved and forced me to bedrest repetitively. I blame it on a culturally pathologised flaw in the design – if you ignore my heritage, “special needs” – but I know and you know it’s not fully true. My mental has always been mirrored in my physical: witness the chewed down nails, the limp, the return of the headaches, the rash on my wrists. That noticeable decline of physical strength. When I’m broke down, I’m frighteningly fragile. Eggshell.

I digress. Things are clicking, stuff is getting examined:

• I have a fear of not being viewed/accepted as the only one. My family and friends (affectionately, I assume) label me as a princess, an attention-seeker, high-maintenance. Professionally, this has been reflected into an impossibly-small niche, a refinement/advancement of my career into making me one of a handful with the disparate knowledge base that I have. Easily traceable, the roots of this need. Despite this, or maybe precisely because of this, I do not compete with others, and resent feeling placed in a competitive situation.
• Things I thought I had dealt with are rising to the surface. I’m still easily triggered over things I believed I had long unpacked and put away, but that’s not true. I had just shoved them into a closet, assuming that no one would ever try to open that door. Great. Now everything’s all over the corridor, waiting for me to do a better job this time around. I’m just going to sidestep for now, it’s a little easier.
• I deal too easily with absolutes. When I’m wronged, the hurt I feel in (over)reaction is so intense, my reflex is to shut down, amputate immediately. It’s a joke about Scorpios, the way they hold on to grudges. Misunderstood that, we’re more likely to feel even the slightest mis-step against us as an epic wrong; it’s simpler and self-preserving to refuse to engage with someone who has hurt us, kinder to Self than to work through the pain. And don’t trivialise this as another overreaction – what might be viewed by anyone else as a casual, simple mistake has such profound consequences for my psyche, understand that I can’t help that. My only known coping strategy involves novocaine for the soul. I’m now searching for other ways. And please don’t categorise me as emo, I’m finding that offensive these days.
• I’m incredibly confused about everything, flashback to my teenage years. At least then I wasn’t worried about consequences. Everything now seems so dire, so urgent. Caught up in the now, future so hazy it’s frustrating. Paralysing sometimes too. A person of extremes, my response comes out in performed certainty. If you haven’t figured this out by now, the more self-assured I appear, the less certain I am about anything in that moment. At least I know this about myself, and to protect, I don’t choose to reveal this to most. But I try and drop hints to the people close to me. Even more so than the tortoise on the cliff top of a mountainous island surrounded with shark-infested seas, I’m protective of my soft inside.

In spite of all this, I’m feeling positive, strangely in control. Possibly delusional, but I don’t care. There’s a new strength, a drive to achieve something within this. To find out what I’m talking about, use this:

.

first, the world grows bigger. you get dizzy, reverse vertigo. then, all of a sudden, you realise that you’re really shrinking. you know this because your skin shrinks faster than the rest of your body and everything is so tight you can barely breathe. you’re scared because you don’t know what’s going on, all you know is that your environment has suddenly hulked out on your ass.

you turn, and step face-first into a chair leg that seconds ago was smaller, punier. the panic takes over. you do the only thing you know how to do instinctively – your childhood prepared you for this – and you look for a hiding place. under a table, in a corner, beneath a blanket. squeeze your eyes shut so hard, your temples hurt.

pleasegodmakeitstoppleasegodmakeitstoppleasegodmakeitstop.

you wait for god for who knows how long, until your breath calms down, your heartbeat slows, and the pain from your nails digging into the palm of your hands exceeds the sound of your blood pounding in your ears. you wait a little longer. the world seems so still, but you’re not ready yet to open your eyes, lift the cover away from your head, emerge from your cubby. you slowly unclench, barely shifting position, expecting something to happen. but nothing does.

the rational returns home, all boisterous-like: it’s just a moment, it’s over now, c’mon, it coaxes. you wanna shake the rational part of you until it dies because the second the world turned nightmare, rationality left without so much as a by-your-leave. but you can’t because that’s the only way you survive out there. the fear and anger turns into desperate need and you cling to the rational with every last shred of dignity you have left. and you open your eyes, relief tinted with… is that disappointment?… manic hysteria at the unexpected normalcy.

incense smoke. chant meditate. give thanks.

gratitude for power. gratitude for ability. gratitude for friendship and support.

repeat these words, encased in bass.

repeat these words, until you fall into them.

repeat these words, make them true.

calligraphic letters become character. holding the brush that painted them. brushing phrases onto blankness, seen in the mind’s eye.

repeat these words.

pray for those who came before. pray for friends. pray for success, happiness, peace. pray for self and others.

innercity morning. expressway traffic humming into the chant. birdsong adding blips of high-pitched.

unexpected appreciated gift of sunlight and warmth, this autumn morning.

beautiful send-off for the end of an era. beautiful welcome for the beginning of a new phase.

great-full.

It’s like I’m walking through the streets, studiously avoiding cracks on pavements and picking up discarded emotions. It’s all random, seen? Can’t describe where these feelings are coming from, so rationalising that I’m a cuckoo, and they’re shiny.

Cue the significance of birds. Everywhere, dead and alive, suspended mid-flight, perched on fire escapes. Tottering between seeing them as omens of optimism v. harbingers of horror. Choose to believe in the beauty, thank God they’re not horrible birds, just cute little ones. Even in death, something about their adorability makes me happy they lived at one point.

I remember when I lived in places where you could see vultures circling in the distance, and you knew some poor thing was dying, somewhere out there in the lands that were bad. Lands that the sun made harsh and deadly during the day, and nighttime brought out venomous snakes and scorpions. Lands so fatally beautiful at dawn and sunset, alien and seductive under full moons. Where people went to go mad.

Moving away on into this concrete jungle. The greyness of cities makes me less human, less individual, less whole, in the exact opposite way those prairie skies humanised me with their esoteric godliness. Nothing I feel is new.

***

A childhood backdropped by conflict. Grateful for the safety and sheltering that privilege provides. Gunshots in the night heard in childhood, but spared the site of death. Only in the daytime, blood smears, burned out shells, bullethole walls. Harsh desert sun sterilises, cleans. Nothing to fear out there. Weapons normalised. Three different continents, three different conflicts. Spared the worst. The army’s always been around.

Standing guard against possible attacks on sunburned tourists. Skulking on street corners. Abseiling down buildings in alleyways. Cuffing people against brick walls. Speak of dehumanising – who’s got it worse, the perpetrator of the violence or the victim? I think I know which one I would rather be, where I’d rather feel those handcuffs.

But nothing I feel is new.

***

Romantic notions of home, family, life and love. She was never easy with me, never smiled and chatted with me the way she did with others. Didn’t understand why until it was too late, didn’t understand that I threatened. I wish I could console, say there’s nothing here for you to fear, you’re too beautiful, too good. I’m nothing next to you. But we both know that’s not true, that the slightest gesture from me would move powers greater than both of us to act. Maybe it’s best I never got to say anything.

Wasn’t the same way for my ancestors. They spoke (were spoken to), and the outcome each time was what she feared. I’m not the same as them, although their blood’s in me, I’m not the same as them. I’m a product of my acceptance and rebellion against that heritage, and this struggle’s altered my DNA, chimera-ed me into this unknown, previously-unseen hybrid.

Nope, nothing new felt here either.