Beauty begins with Dark Thoughts

A new friend, over a coffee, asked me what was it like to be assessed, for being on the “spectrum”? Did it explain away lifetime supply of ‘weirdness’ and the ‘who the heck is in the mirror’ disconnectedness? Was it finally good to label the source of all things dark and grey? All things outlier, too? 

And that unwittingly uncovered way too many scar tissues. Just like that. And that’s what happens when you are not on your guard constantly. 

But, after decades of trying to find my place on the chessboard of human society - the realisation that, I don’t need it. Am not a chess piece or even a board. Am multitudes. I know that now.

Defaulting to primal instincts - all my choices from outfit to people to be vulnerable with, is now just viscerally curated by it. If there is a zing - I give myself into it. If not, well then not. There is no such thing as oversimplification when responding to energies. And I finally am able to recognise the cousins and even the distant cousins of my tribe. We are way too less than one would imagine. And hence as one of my sweatshirt says ‘unfollow people IRL’

Living with MS with a ‘healthy’ dose of clinical depression and silvers of what is popularly called ‘being on autism spectrum’ has been fatally challenging. And that is an understatement.  Multiple ‘organ’ failure complications of mind is how one of my doctors described it.  

If I had to sum up this colossal degree of genetic cluster fuck - I have a word for it. Guilt. The red hot lucifer of all emotions. My leading primary emotion.  

Why don’t I feel enough? Why do I feel too much? Why am I not thinking of what people would think of this? But then why am I also over thinking how someone was really feeling? How do I fix this? How do I fix that? How do I stop the fights? The hunger? The violence of all varieties? How do I make sure that person has all the comforts? Why am I still unable to attach myself truly to people? Why do I get coerced into relationships only because I don’t want to embarrass the other person even when I can’t fucking stand the way they eat or laugh? Why am I able to see the beauty of math theorems and intuit the answers but just unable to solve it in pre-define methods? Why did I let myself be taken advantage of time and again without any regard for myself? Why can’t I stand certain smell, textures, colours, ideologies and well a lot of people? The OCD I have for trivial things in their places is way too many. Why was I explaining away my postpartum depression to my own self? How do I fix this? Why? How? I AM RESPONSIBLE for this cluster-fuck! II deserve the mind-bending crescendo of chronic pain (in all forms) 

But, hey I can easily fix this! 

And thus began the creative ways of self destruction, I deserve-all-things-bad suicidal cycles.  Like an addict I also began to hide behind the complexities of word plays, scientific facts, bits and bytes. Books and computers are both beautiful and very benign. They don't think you are weird or bad or dispensable or actively hurt you. They can't hold their affection as a proverbial carrot with a dangling stick of violence. For years, nay decades, I was swimming in various levels of toxicity.

Some of my friends,I did manage to find some of these - despite myself, and my sister always remind me that I have a saviour complex. How do I explain that - it’s not a saviour complex, it’s me trying to constantly neutralise my armageddon level destructive thoughts, constantly trying to Control-Z my Guilt.

...to be continued

Copyright© Nee

The Space between the Ribs

These are days of thunder and clouds, of quivering rain-soaked leaves, of things starting out one way and ending another. Expectations are for fools.

The damp air is sweet with the fragrance of bloom and fruit and soil. The air is so humid it feels like we are drinking water as we breathe our skin slick and salty, feet skimming the gravel. 

Sustaining has been the one thing that has held this year. In fact, every day - I have made it a point to find something new - big or small to be grateful about. Even when things have been endless: rain, worry, self doubt, there has been blood thrumming through the capillaries in our lungs, our rib bones rising and falling hard like the hulls of little boats pitching on a storm tossed sea. 

Sometimes when I sit still on my window-seat, in the middle of contemplation or a sentence off the book in my hand, my entire body moves slowly with each beat of my faithful heart. Syncopated. To their own sustained beautiful rhythm.

And then day in, day out… to “just get on and do your job” … just go, and gradually make a difference. I am trying to learn this: to expect nothing and persist. Never before Karmanya Vadhikaraste has felt more apt than now.

To wipe sticky cheeks, to listen to theories and to be the bedrock, kiss good morning and nights, experiment with age old recipes, gather words, gather fallen frangipani and tuck them in my long raven hair, even, gather hope,  put words on the page, hit the delete key, hit the wall, remember, recycle, rinse the plates, go for walks on the harbour; city lights rippling on water, stay up late reading, write… click pictures, taking nostalgia trips with collaging old photos.

And, some days it takes everything just to show up for the day. To get out of bed after a night that turned into gradients of noir cinema. Some mornings I open my eyes through the fugue of, wanting to climb those walls and escape. Mornings where my thoughts are black and jagged and tea seems like a weak substitute for all the hours un-slept and torn into fragments by the urgent primal demands of something beyond body and beyond sleep.

And it's on those days that perseverance of sustaining matters most. Some days it is the only thing saves me: if I can just breathe and I can write or even read for an hour. I can live. If I can live, I can mother and be a worker. If I can live, I can be a human and raise a decent human.

It is the hardest thing, this: to turn towards a new day empty handed and ready to fill it with whatever comes and still to persist stubbornly and gratefully. 

Copyright © Nee