The disease of the lost self

1. What are you talking about, I laugh, holding incredulity up like a shield and a shroud, of course I know who I am. I am confident as a declaration. My nose should have touched the floor.

2. With pride and certainty, like a child who has mastered a difficult skill, I name my feelings: This is bitterness and resentment. See, I know myself. Strange, then, how these feelings cry louder and louder. I named them and banished them, didn’t I?, I mutter to myself confused as a frown, safe in my ward circle, naming and banishing and kicking these demons with all my might. Strange then, the wounds that appear on me. The wounds that mirror and map the wounds I inflict. I examine them in confusion, turning around and around, twisting like a contortionist. Must have gotten them from the demons, I shrug.

3. I am lost and invisible under years of practiced burying. I shovel soil on top of myself, laughing, blithe, and blind. Of course I matter, I crow, of course I have a self!

4. When my needs show themselves and knock on my door, I take one look at them and slam the door closed, shuddering. I hurriedly turn on the TV and settle in. The cries of help outside the door barely murmur under the hilarious laugh tracks from the screen.

5. I pour all my energy into creating weapons to defend myself vigorously against myself. Vulnerability wears a different face, shame. I kick and spear and slice at it. Loneliness wears a different face, jealousy. I dive towards it with a sword. Grief wears a different face, bitterness. I load a cannon and ignore the tears leaking from my eyes.

6. Anger stomps towards me with feet like flame. The ground is charred in its wake. Kill or be killed, right? I try to smother it and do not understand why I, too, start to gasp for air. How strange that, as time drips by, I slowly asphyxiate alongside anger.

7. The war is changing. The demons combine and clamor and clamber. In a moment of ennui, I stop. Drop my weapons. Is this the end? But – no – the voices speak: Why was no one there for me? Why did no one protect me? Why did I have to shoulder the burden of this war alone? Why was I alone? I weep startled tears. They scald and burn like salt in a wound. My armor has been shoved aside and my enduring, wounded heart has been revealed. It is an ugly sight. The years of sympathetic violence have left it scarred, festering and oozing.

8. The secret is up. It is time to tear through the illusion. This war was never real. These demons were never alive. These weapons were never needed. It was all a lie, an elaborate and orchestrated conspiracy. The truth that was hidden from me is this: listen closely – soundless as a heartbreak stifled by the sounds of war is the cry for help. Perhaps I have finally found that which I have lost.

For wheat is wheat

“If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.”

1) What is this feeling like tears in my chest, clogged and grief-filled and heartsick?

2) Why do I think I am worth nothing, who’s impossible and sky-high standards am I contorting and stretching myself, as if on a torture rack, to try to even touch?

3) Is this why Oikawa Tooru means so much to me, he with the deeply internalized inferiority complex, he who tries so hard to touch Ushijima’s unturned back, he who keeps trying to be enough until enough has lost its shape and meaning entirely?

4) Let me ask myself this: am I really worth nothing to myself? What will it take before I am worth something, to me? Every other person is beautiful and has a million-dollar price tag attached. But not me. Why does every other person deserves more than me?

5) I murmur to myself, with some truth: “I matter, I like myself, I am not unskilled.” But in all truth, these are like three mere grains of rice placed against a ten tonne “I am not enough” weight. The scales barely shiver. I am not enough. It is a special kind of heartbreak to know, sure as bones, that you are not worth much to yourself.

5) Maybe the only thing I can do is to keep choosing myself, like an infidel lover proving herself again. Maybe the only thing I can do is to extend compassion and companionship and presence to myself, time and again, like a mother to her child. Maybe I have to prove to myself that I am here, and only then will I be enough.

6) I do not want to do it. I am not a Hercules beetle, able to lift up a load a hundred times its weight. I cannot lift up my heart. I do not want to.

7) But Oikawa Tooru, who is heart-sick the way I am, did so. He lifted his thousand-pound heart because he chose what he could not live without. He chose how he wanted to live. I, too, want to stop feeling this grief. I, too, want to be capable of amazing feats of strength. I, too, want to choose how I live.

8) Oh, when will I matter? Gentle, gentle now, like a salve, like a lullaby, like a promise: I am good. I am worthy. I am enough.

The hard season

The hard season is upon me.
I am split through.
I bleed water.
I cough and cough and cough up the smoke from the deaths I have kept within me.
Who knew bitterness felt so much like grief?
Who knew healing felt so much like grief?
Who knew truth felt so much like grief?
Oh Nayyirah, when will this end?

I am meeting myself for the first time in my entire life, unmasked and weaponless.
Ten years of swallowing my very self and folding my anguish into smaller and smaller pieces have caught up with me.
I am grieving and heartbroken all over again.

But I keep my promise.
I extend a hand to myself.

I will keep coaxing the truths from their hiding places.
I will keep spilling pain like tears.
I will keep opening up spaces for myself.

The soft season will come.
For I see glimpses of it already.

a promise:

  1. When hurt knocks on my door and invites itself in and makes itself at home in my house, my mouth opens as automatic as a machine gun and fires: it is herfault! If shehad not abandoned me like old and outgrown slippers, if she had not made my heart bruised and aching, if she had not said those godawful things, she, she, she! I spew blame like bullets to keep her at bay, to keep myself at bay, to keep everyone at bay. Like a wounded animal, I howl with ache and hurt, a help me! so distorted and mangled it is unrecognizable. I chase every living thing away. (But that isn’t what happened. Stop lying.)
  2. Martyred and undeserving, this is how Icome into the narrative. If shecut me to ribbons, then I deserve none of it, poor but perfect but pitiful victim that I am. I am content in my victimhood, relaxing into it like an old coat, luxuriating in its plush leather feel. I soak and stew in my sorry state as though martyrdom is the most fragrant of bath salts and herbs. I do not deserve this, I did everything for you and you did not notice, I bent my spine out of shape and minced and carved and rearranged my own heart into the most exquisite dish to serve you, to please you, to guilt you. It is not my fault you did not notice. (But you’re making this up. Stop trying to get attention.)
  3. I want to punish you because you hurt meand I did not deserve it. I want you to hurt as I hurt. With my own hand, I want to right the cosmic weighing scale because I am “Victim” and you are “Perpetrator”. I want to eke out the difference between you and me, powerful and powerless, she-who-hurts and I-who-am-hurt in blood, in distress, in tears. I am bitter-happy and bitter-sated and bitter-satisfied on my rampage, I make a feast of bitterness, and I can ignore the small voice whispering: (But she didn’t do anything. It is all yourfault.)
  4. But this is the secret that I have been hiding: like a teen who parties till the crack of dawn because she is fearful of home, so I have been rampaging and raging because I flinch from the voice within. If I stop for even a moment, if I do not fire and spray bullets of blame, if the silence catches up to me, the voice speaks: “You made all these up to feel righteous. She grazed you with a finger and you imagined it into a brutal stabbing. You cannot even get the facts right, you dramatize everything so you can feel good. It is all your fault. How pathetic.”I shake. Tears seep and burn like pain as I agree, “Yes, I am worthless. Yes, I am nothing. Yes, I am a failure.”What do you call hurt by the self? Does violence against the self still count as violence if I deserve it?
  5. It is a special kind of wound when it is done by your own hand. I, who should love, protect and cherish myself till death do us part; I, who should to myself, soothe and hush and croon like a mother to her beloved child; I, who should to myself be gentle like the most tender of lovers – Ihave only knife-edges and grenades and heart-wounds to offer. Is it any wonder that my hand knows only to offer war to others?
  6. When the fire burns down my house, when the typhoon blows onto land, when every odd is stacked against me, my first safe harbor, my foremost line of defense, is and always will be me. So I tell myself now: I am sorry. I pointed the finger of blame, loaded as a gun, at myself because I thought that I chose this misery, for is that not what victims do – ask for it? I blamed myself for everything and anything, because is that not what someone does when they cannot tolerate the roommate in their souls? I blamed myself to punish myself because is that not what you do when you think you are worth nothing?
  7. But I do not want to dance with you in the waltz of blame anymore. Let us both lay down our guns, you and I. I am a war veteran, a war machine, and I am deathly tired. We have been at this for so many years that our wounds and blood seem as natural as the blue sky. It is time for peace, now.
  8. Listen, can you hear that? In the silence after the fire, there is the sound of green and growing things. They sound like this: I am a survivor.Even if it feels like a lie, even if I do not quite deserve it, even if I repeat mistake after mistake, I must – I want to – acknowledge my strength, if I am to survive, if I am to be worth anything later, if I am to live.
  9. I went into the fire, trembling. I lived in the fire, alone. I came through the fire, alive.
  10. When the fire takes my home, when my skin is cracked and excruciating and peeling from the heat and pain, when I am lying in the gutters bleeding and grief-filled and alone, I promise you, I am here. Take my hand. We will start anew.

Oikawa Tooru [及川徹]

n. Person. Setter. Student. Third year. Captain. Senior. Grand King. Trashykawa. Uncle. Brother. Teammate.

1. A disgusting personality, Iwaizumi mutters, irate as a glare, watching Oikawa flirt outrageously, leaving a ripple of giggles and whispers and blushes in his wake. Boys and girls alike are treated extravagantly to his twinkling eyes, his casual peace signs, and his flippant tone. To Iwaizumi: condescending ‘Iwa-chan~’s, blithe and patronizing ‘are you my mom?’s, and endless needling and mocking and teasing.

2. A reckless overworker, obsessive and fixated. The sole player who wears a supporter for his poor, abused, often-strained knee, the sole player who stays late late late, practicing to exhaustion and rewatching plays till sleeplessness. Perhaps pushing his body to its extremes will finally prove something: that he will bloom, that he will build a bridge across the chasm between ‘skilled’ and ‘genius’, that he will grasp and touch the ever-turned back of Ushijima Wakatoshi, that he will at last be enough.

3. A heart that is missing and a mouth that lies, glib and silvertongued and adept at deceiving everyone and himself. He is always restless, wandering, and ambitious. His clever and agile mind works and works and works without rest, body and mind aspiring and conspiring to grab and hold and keep all that his pride desires. But where is Oikawa Tooru’s heart?

3.1 Found near Iwaizumi. Perhaps for Oikawa the wanderer and sailor, Iwaizumi is his unshakeable lighthouse, his immovable Polaris, and his deep and immeasurable roots. Perhaps for Oikawa the confident and untouchable, his heart appears in the startled and vulnerable moments when Iwaizumi is cursing, damn it, Oikawa! Don’t say he is better than you! because Oikawa should never be doubting and defeated. Perhaps for Oikawa the narrator who spins falsehood upon falsehood, his heart lies in the years-old storied history of Oikawa-and-Iwaizumi.

3.2 One half of a pair. Perhaps Oikawa Tooru’s heart is the heart that Iwaizumi carries within his own. Perhaps his heart is the heart that finds a home in the gruff ‘don’t stay up too late’ and the exasperated ‘your personality is really the worst’. Perhaps his heart is the heart that delights in Iwaizumi’s care-taking of him. Perhaps his heart is the heart that knows Iwaizumi is home and spur and rest and ache and shield all at once. Perhaps his heart is found not quite within, but without. For Oikawa, chronically dissatisfied, flippant, vulnerable, and obsessive, Iwaizumi is the one with whom he is forever dauntless and indomitable, restful and known, and, at last, enough.

A serene summer evening

It is a different kind of peace:
the balmy blue sky and the cotton-white clouds,
the water glittering beside the path, the flat expanse of grass,
the wind running fingers over me, whispering in my ear,
the green smell of growth and the summer scent of heat,
and the mild evening light turning the world gentle.

Clarity

The sun is pouring light, thick and golden and vivd and clear.
The sky is mild summer blue like a robin’s egg;
and flowers bloom red and clustered and vivacious.
The trees are shadowed moss-green and verdant-gold
and everything is limned with light.
Summer, summer, summer sings in my veins,
and I feel these words sitting on the tip of my tongue: “What do I want?”
and I ponder and taste and savor the shape and color and texture of these words: “What do I want?”
and I utter them wonderingly and listen to the way they ripple through the air: “What do I want.”

Coming home.

The curve of his body is a home.

When he pulls you close into a hug
you hide there,
you rest there,
you seek solace there.

He is hard muscle and soft skin.
Your hands cross and clutch a back that is broad and solid,
the arms around you are steady and firm,
and warmth radiates from his body like steam.
His shirt is soft and worn as any beloved blanket,
the scent of him is familiar and comforting,
and his breath is soft against your temple.

You close your eyes
and you rest
and you are finally home.