outlyingthoughts - Tumblr blog

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

Pantheon of Great Humans; a thankful letter to my sixth grade teacher: Jul 20.

there’s a pantheon for Great Humans in my mind. You’ve been staying there for almost fifteen years now, among my latest icons, all the people i’ve fallen in love with, my friends, my favorite writers, movie directors and political activists. It’s a place full of humans I admired and admire, full of people who’s words or works have inspired and sprung out a part of me.

Dear Ms. Platel, I wish you knew the impact a year in your first grade class had on me. Back then, there was no race, no politics and, virtually, no words altogether: just a mishmash of letters I would pretend to know how to decipher, freshly out of kindergarten and increasingly out of baby teeth.

In a world where many get told from a young age that they can’t, you taught me how I could and how well I did. I remember happily going to your class as an escape from the difficult period at home, new school, new sibiling, new custody arrangement. And I remember coming home, proudly counting and accounting of all the things we had done in class, of all the things I had learnt and all the things we had yet to do. I remember gleefully receiving green signs on my notebook and at home pressing with urgency the same pieces of paper under my parents nose: LOOK AT MY ACHIEVEMENTS, LOOK AT HOW GREAT I AM AT THIS.

Not only the results and feedback I received made me feel special but also what was on the menu of that school year. A visit to the museum down my father’s house, to which my father actually came to accompy the class (like most of my primary school day trips), made me realize first hand how my african heritage was a valuable piece of culture and art to be taught about and be proud of. I remember tumbling across the exposition of african instruments, now only remembering a vivid smell of melon from the wood, and asking my dad with pride to tell the class about things he had seen and done himself when living in Africa.

It was probably the first time, I ever felt like it was a chance for me to know about and hold this history in my genes, that I needed to share it with my whole class and now the whole world.

It was probably the first time I felt like I had things to say that were different, bringing another narrative and type of experience. Maybe that’s what shaped the person I am right now and the things I aspire to do: write, share and maybe educate a few ones along the way, correct misconceptions about people like me and/or other minorities, say and do what I think is right and relevant for all to witness.

Maybe it is that year and your class that shaped me or maybe it’s just me retroactively interpreting with grandiloquence the impact of your words based on what i already am.

Either ways I still remember the tiles of the first floor of my then-almost hundred years old primary school, surprisingly cool despite the start of the summer. Yet I remember the warmth of your words when you told one of my parents as we brought you a present at the end of the academic year to thank you for your investment in both my class and me. You said, with a smile and then looking down to me, that I had been by far the motor of our class, that many students wouldn’t have progressed so much if i hadn’t been in the class.

I will probably never forget, how the person that taught me what I am currently doing, namely writing and reading and which I am inherently passionate about, also taught me that I was a powerhouse. That you proved me that as I strive to learn and do better, I can also help others strive for it as well, whether it be socially, academically and now hopefully politically.

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

My mom was right, or a story on my privileges and microaggressions: Jul 20

Sometimes, your thoughts appear to meet at a cosmic intersection, everything coinciding and suddenly unlocking another level of understanding about your reality.

The start of Summer 2020 was a cosmic intersection for my reality. From populations around the world finally leading global protests against racism and police brutality, the escalation of Police-state-like situations in France and reading more books like « So you want to talk about race » by Ijeoma Oluo; everything confirmed an uncanny feeling I grew up to have an increased acuity for: my Mom was right, the world around me, despite how privileged I had seemed to be so far, was viciously racist and being blind to the racism I suffered from didn’t make it unreal.

Growing up in France with the myth of colorblindness, « because we are all one, indivisible and equal » in the eyes of the Republic and the Laïcité, makes it easy to deny the existence of institutionalized racism. French secularism, as the central pillar of our civic culture, provides a logic for our republic to conceal its racism under the soft blanket of a republican model of integration.

The French government officially rejects both censuses and data collection based on ethnic, religious or linguistic nature of groups. As such our national social cohesion is solely relying on the idealistic dream that from the moment that we have a French nationality, it grants us all an absolute equality in treatment, legally ensured by our all-mighty constitution.

Don’t get me wrong: I loved this principle that the state should be outlawed from seeing race and obliged by the law to treat us all equally. I loved attending my civic education classes and having a program that preached that we were all included because what mattered was that we were all French before anything else. I loved feeling like it was true thanks to my already existing privileges. I’ve had the luxury to believe in this illusion, all of it, until I had to navigate the « adult world » on my own, face racism with my own eyes and discovered how facts were radically different from our nicely designed civic education program.

My privileges allowed me to swim in sweet denial of the social reality of our country. But what happens if you're not French? What happens if you’re not perceived as French by the rising extreme right wing and populist political parties, by the people in the street, by a large portion of the voters in local and national elections ? What happens when the social reality doesn’t match those beautiful principles of equality and both the public discourse and authorities turn blind to systemic injustice ?

The problem is that not every French kid of color has the luxury to feel included and valued within the French society. When adults outside of your house are biased towards people that look like you, whether it be in the street, in fancy shops or even teachers at school; when politicians and people in the news are framing people from your ethnic or religious group or even from the neighborhood you come from as dangers, criminals or frauds of the system; how can you feel French before all, equal and included ?

Unfortunately, when sociologists and researchers are interested in studying this phenomenon, it is virtually impossible for them to do so since such data and measures are deemed inherently illegal in the government’s eyes. Even minorities asking for acknowledgment of systemic discrimination and inequalities through ethnic and/or religious demographic statistics are thus called out for being separatist and/or communitarist, all of this based on the adoption of the Law on « Informatique et liberté » in January 1978 which prevented public authorities from collecting data based on racial, ethnic or religious criteria.

Since then, even laws aiming at allowing the study of diversity, social integration and discrimination have been deemed anti-constitutional. As such, there is no way in France to account for socio-economic inequalities of ethnic and religious minorities, which -of course- makes it easier to deny their existence since they legally cannot be accounted for and studied.

This lack of acknowledgment does translate into French society and the way many French people think -regardless of their skin color and religion, even though more regularly among people of caucasian appearance-. Since I started growing more and more aware of the insidious racism around me and calling it out, I received backlash on many topics like cultural appropriation or reversed racism and a lot of denying of racial issues in our country.

In France, like in many Western countries with large non-white populations, many people refer to the existence of a so-called « reversed racism » when minorities start to call out systemic racism in our societies. So much that even some of my own relatives have thrown this term in my face when I started arguing against them on institutional racism in our country.

Sadly, in France the inability to account for discrimination, inequalities and even violence against minorities makes it virtually impossible to prove with numbers how rare what they refer to as « reversed racism » is compared to the urgency to address the too common racism against people of colors.

In the context of social justice, the goal is to highlight the institutional character of racism in our societies. Reversed racism in this context does not exist because white people in Western societies do not suffer from systemic inequalities and discrimination. Because last time I checked, Caucasians looking people in France do not risk institutionalized racial profiling and violence by the police or discrimination in employment because of « reversed racism ».

To have family members, who can witness how racism plays out in my everyday life and still believe in reversed racism comes to me as a denial of the experience of people of color when facing racism. It is like turning the cheek to the other side and say « yes you may suffer because of racism but please let’s not focus on your pain because I found a concept that fits me and all my unchecked privileges and allows me to deny the experience of a whole part of the population justifying it with a form of racism that does not impact my everyday life and doesn’t exist on a systemic scale »: News flash this is extremely insulting.

These forms of insidious white privileges in people’s discourse; to be able to be blind to racism and deny its existence because it does not affect your everyday life are microaggressions to people of color, denials of our pain and prevent a fruitful debate on how to solve the issue of institutionalized racism in our societies.

On my own privileges

My mom was right, in the tender years of my childhood I was privileged enough to virtually not see a difference between me and the other white kids (apart from the hairstyles I couldn’t do or that I was tanner than them regardless of the seasons).

My paternal grandfather was white and mayor of his town, I loved going to his workplace as much as I could, always showered in compliments and candies. Sometimes I would look up at the portrait of the current president hung in a big ceremonial room in the townhall and despite knowing that my parents didn’t approve of him, still I felt so at home within the bounds of our republic.

And while such privileges didn’t lead me to be « colorblind », it did make me blind to a large part of the discrimination I suffered from when I finally old enough to face it myself. I was convinced to be living in a post-racist society, convinced that only a minority of uneducated countryside freaks who had never seen a black person could be racist. I was convinced of all of this because I lived in a country with such beautiful laws and principles on equality and republican inclusion that it seemed unimaginable that the contrary could be real.

When my black mother was trying to make me notice micro-aggressions and subtly racist situations from our everyday life, I was denying everything (“it’s not racism mom, it’s -enter whatever excuse I could make up for them-). Sometimes I’d even make fun of her for being so imaginative and overly sensitive. Worse, I would go crazy with my democratic propaganda when she’d tell me she couldn’t be bothered to go vote because she did not feel included or represented in the elections. While I still condemn not voting because (forgetting the debate on whether it is rational or not) it is both a right and a privilege that isn’t respected by the autocratic leader in my maternal country, now I also understand my mom’s stand, feeling ignored and not included in political debates.

Today, I’m calling myself out for blindly believing in this integrative republican lie despite my own mother’s truth. When first generation but also second, third or even fourth generation immigrants are massively deemed as frauds of the system, it is logical that they have a reluctance to waste their time and resources on getting informed and involved in a system that pisses on them while still exploiting with joy their labor for the benefits of the national economy.

On Microaggressions

After reading a couple books and many essays on race like « So you want to talk about race », I felt discouraged as the wanna-be essayist I am. I didn't want to become yet another mixed essayist since we all apparently had the same stories on the way our bodies had been shamed, fetishized and sexualized whether it is our big butts, big hair, the same stories on exceptionalism and belittling compliments we receive, either making us exceptions of the group we identify as (« you’re pretty for a black girl ») or even categorizing our successes solely as a result of affirmative action (when I was applying to one of the top universities in Political Science in France, a friend of mine who was also a person of color told me that I was sure to get in because I was a great and lucky token black person).

Such discourses are so normalized and internalized that as I entered adulthood, I found myself sharing with my Caucasian father my deep fears of making it in life only because I was very often the only black or person of color in the circles and institutions I evolved within. Luckily, after a year of attending university abroad, I recovered confidence in my intelligence and abilities; but still had this fear when writing about my experience to not want to be seen as yet another angry black woman. But now the cosmic intersection struck me like a truck in my face: we all have the same story, not because we are whiny individuals and all the same but because everywhere people of color are suffering from the same discrimination and/or micro-aggressions.

What I had interpreted as my non-originality which would make me unable to succeed as a writer is just yet another proof of the systemic nature of racism and the discriminating ways of thinking and standards in our societies which we all suffer from.

Somehow, I found myself wishing at times that I had been an outcast like Ijeoma, but sadly I was socialized to match and please people’s expectations. When puberty and reality hit, I found a way to fold away myself and straighten the black out of me to fit the mold: whether it be in school, in my mostly white friend circles, in my behavior or appearance.

For the longest time from the start of my teenage years, I began internalizing all the ways societies and people told me that my “blackness” was ugly. How my hair was too big or deemed disgusting, how my fellow classmates saw me as a milking cow for starting puberty earlier than most girls. It came to a point where I genuinely believed that I could never be seen as beautiful if I let my natural bouncy curls and curvy shapes out. I was in denial of how much daily microaggressions had destroyed my self-esteem and standards of beauty.

Micro-aggressions are actions or remarks that are received as subtle or non-intentional forms of discrimination against minorities and/or marginalized group. An example of micro-aggression is someone telling you that you’ve never been arrested by the police because “you’re not that black for a black person” or that your hair is “impractical” and annoying because African hair requires more time and care to be maintained.

The problem with such remarks isn’t necessarily the intent or the way the person who made it thinks about the micro-aggression but rather the way it is received and hurts the receiver. Often times, when we do dare to stand up for ourselves against a micro-aggression, we are being told the same things I use to tell my own mother: that we are too sensitive or easily offended (especially if you’re from my generation I’m convinced you know the pleasure to hear older generations complain that we’re “a generation of offended sheep”) and only now I can understand how disrespectful and unsensitive my privileges made me towards my mom. Because I was so blinded by legal formalities and public discourse on the way society was supposed to be based on our laws, I was completely disregarding my own mother’s experience and struggle and some of you still do. That’s what unchecked privileges do.

But the violence of micro-aggressions generally isn’t rooted in the action or statement or its intent per say. Rather, most of the time, it’s in the way they are enshrined in wider systemic discrimination as repetitive and accumulated attacks on an individual across different moments and perpetrators. It turns an action which might appear inoffensive to the perpetrator (like touching someone’s hair) but will be taken as something extremely disrespectful to the receiver.

Growing up in France, hair on TV ads and the hair products on supermarket shelves were different than mine, the same way my friends at school could all have those flowy ponytails which I felt very sad my hair type didn’t allow I couldn’t have (until I begged my mom to relax my hair and she agreed when I was 7 because being a kid of a divorced couple she couldn’t take care of my hair for the whole month of summer at my father’s). But in any case, my relationship to my hair was the first instance where I felt part of a “minority” let’s say.

Getting into middle school and puberty, of course everybody gets criticized, shamed or made fun of for their difference: it’s part of teenage years. But when minor teenage bullying cross-cuts a subject which society marginalizes you for (as futile as hair and physical appearance can) and which throughout your life you’re going to get comments and/or random people’s opinions on all the time. All of this tends to weigh on one’s mind and if all the while, it is being deemed unattractive by the male gaze, then this innocent teenage bullying suddenly makes you, from a young age, internalize racism and hatred towards your own self, with the courtesy of mainstream western beauty standards.

(And yes, still today some men that I’ve frequented have dared to tell me they “didn’t mind my hair curly but they preferred my hair straight because they think I’m much prettier with” DID I ASK YOU FOR YOUR OPINION ON MY HAIR?)

I hope now it is pretty straightforward, why when my relatives tell me that my hair is impractical, I go bonkers. I’m simply sick of society, of men, of my teenage years, everything that made me internalize white beauty standards and told me that my natural appearance was not enough, not practical or not fit for them. And don’t even get me started on the ones that feel entitled enough to touch a part of my body without asking for my consent (here, only, my hair but still): Don’t touch my hair nor feel entitled to give me a judgement on my appearance.

Lastly, to put it all perspective, would you go around touching people’s ass and telling them: “well I don’t really like your butt, I'd rather you wear shapewear to change it” ?

Sources:

https://theconversation.com/how-french-law-makes-minorities-invisible-66723

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000026268247&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070719

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2019/03/19/la-difficile-utilisation-des-statistiques-ethniques-en-france_5438453_4355770.html

Oluo, I. (2018). So you want to talk about race. New York, NY : Seal Press

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

The lady that wanted to disappear: May 20

It’s the story of a little lady that wanted to disappear. Off the face of the earth, into its molten dirt and flow between magma chambers to warm up her ever-cold body and heart;

sometimes the later froths at certain thoughts, and every single atom making this lady is numbed out, making her shiver even on the outside; hope is violently exhaled out her lungs; once emptied, she is so light that she could let go and join the worms in their warm and buried hideout.

yet rationality burns faster than affection, unfreezing her icicle cells, droplets now trickle down what used to be much fuller cheeks. The burn of Tetrahydrocannabinol combustion ate her fullness away, leaving behind a sunken shell, hollower than it ever was before. The little lady has found a way to disappear, now her body takes less room, draws less attention and her spirit drifts away deeper into a heart of darkness: oblivion.

still she quivers and trembles, a soul blowing squall is always near when one’s own self-confidence is solely based on other’s vision of herself. Now that her shapes are combusted, there’s really nothing left in her to please horny testosterone producers.

Male gaze is the wrecking ball, which within her, has morphed into weeds: they germinated as disgusting words reaching her on the sidewalk, middle-schooler backpack strapped on her shoulders, too young to be harassed by old pigs asking her to come home with them;

the weeds also sprouted from seemingly innocent remarks as she internalized she was nothing else but fit;

They finally bloomed in the corner of lightless bathroom, with hands and lips roaming under her clothes, taking over the only thing that she had thought so far was completely hers: that fit body of hers;

a statue iced at first, by ethanol, fear and shame and then brought back to life by the same fear and disgust;

She eventually pushed him away but the stain of his hands over her breast still squeezes her chest, now she only sees herself as what they see in her and tries to determine her real value on the only scale men seem to be able to measure her on.

So she seeks to be lovable or fuckable in turns, following the seasons and her ages, giving up one after the other, trying to fit into the limited amount of desire and attention she is granted; because it’s easier to accept yourself through the lens of how much of you they are willing to accept.

To not be a burden to them equates lessening the burden on herself, and in any case, she ceased trusting young, when her onyx pupils turned glossy watching a belt delving from a knotty ebony hand into a creamy white bare back, as if the sting of the leather could lessen the sting of betrayed confidence and a broken marriage.

It’s been a while now that the little lady does not care anymore, she is done with the “trying-to-please” merry-go-round, all she wants to lose her brain in orgasmic serotonin rushes, choked and spanked to release the anger and insecure pains.

Ultimately, none of this really matters, she’s somewhat of a clever little lady, has places to go and more to become but how appreciative of her life journey can she be if all she dreams of is disappearing because she holds hatred for her physical envelop and more often than not it is too much of strain for a tiny lady’s shoulders to carry.

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

Fight to lose control: Apr 20

I fought to keep control. Taming; one strand of hair at a time, straightened, one cursed sounding laugh at a time, repressed. I grew up split in two; first two cultures, then two parents & ways of teaching and valuing life, trying to please one and the other, one week to another. Split between groups of friends, apparently contrasted/opposite interests within myself, I’m the sum of all that my essence has been infused by since my tender age.

and today I’m at a crossroad.

I fought to appear in ways I thought would be the most fit to be appreciated, by my peers, by my kins, by myself. My psychologist once told me, this was my comfort zone, where my intuition and awareness of social implications and interactions allow me to emphasize one part of myself that is adequate to the situation.

She said I wasn’t living a lie, all those aspects are part of me, but I’ve grown to cut my personality in bits, to lessen the intensity of life, to control what can’t be controlled, because she knew there is one fear in me, lighter than air that turns thick and foggy whenever I lose sight of the bigger picture among the puzzle bits I’ve become. It blows in the wind, words that echo in my skull, thoughts I try to repress, thoughts that tell me to cut even smaller bits of myself and polish even more the angles.

Scared of the abrupt edges of my personality and appearance, insecurity brush the peaks and cracks and flows in almost imperceptibly; so I break more crumbles out of my brittle being, forgetting that many don’t like soft hills but ache for steep-sided canyons, carved out, like me, by our surroundings and time.

Today, I fight to lose control, to lose the instinct to dilute my essence, to get drunk on it once in a while and let my words flow out exhilarated and uninhibited; and finally be mindful and grateful, instead of self-conscious and feeling like fraud that doesn’t belong.

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Photo

Danusha Laméris, Bonfire Opera: Poems; “Passion Fish”

5K notes · View notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

Million things: Jan 20.

it’s difficult to be rational at times, it’s difficult to force motion in your frozen brain when fear and insecurity paralyzes all. It’s difficult to explain the things that overwhelm me, because of their irrationality, they turn into burdens that weight my tongue and shrinks myself, I am not 19 anymore, I’m an embryo in her egg, I know nothing, can’t move out of my shell and when situations pull me out of safety womb, I scream and cry in my bed, as if life was sprouting out of me.

Scared of all, it’s unexplainable, I panicked in my lecture halls, I panicked around my friends, and I withdrew more and more but now I’m doing better, but I always do before getting worst. So today I took an appointment to heal my sometimes freezing brain, to rationalize and break the shell, tear the womb. I want to grow back for real into the young adult I am on the outside, I don’t want to risk fading my personality and aspirations away in blazing panic attacks again.

I’ve always simmered with million things in all the corners of my mental palace. While all the rooms have always been well sectioned, now all need to meet and turn those broken parts of me into continuous appartements-en-enfilade, with cohesion and sense, I want to be one and only me and turn off the stove of my fears, making me a calm body of water.

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

Higher frequencies do not imply higher volume: Feb 20

Higher frequencies don’t not imply higher volume and yet now that I vibe with life in all its range, I’ve found myself putting the volume too high in my earphones. I might be turning deaf to life as I enjoy it more now, more vivid but too loud, I spoil my eardrums one bike ride at a time, one club at a time, one panic attack at a time.

I used to be cautious and protective of my body, to keep it as good as possible for as long as possible, but now there’s sweetness in damaging, the louder beat of my song harmonizing to the louder beat of my blood pumping.

The logic has changed, before I did things in a way that’d preserve my health down the road, there was appeal in responsibility and satisfaction in knowing I did things right.

I’d say no to weed, no to alcohol, no to high volume in my ears, no to biking without a helmet, no whenever the part of my conscience that didn’t change after my 16 years old would need to. Now, there’s a yes that slipped out of my mouth a while ago and tattooed itself onto my tongue and my positive way of life has turned all my answers to an affirmative response or answer.

Somewhere between Lyon and the Hague, my love for safety and security died in a heartbeat as I stopped feeling half alive and living half a lie, now I embrace existence on the fuller side and recklessness is a standard in my surroundings.

Yet the little Zoe that I used to be survives in the most primal parts of my instincts to keep me on the safety side while I watch all things in life solely work out of chance.

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

COVID-19 #1: 17th of March.

The quarantine is on the verge of getting kick-started and question marks are all over our skins. we’re counting the number of cases and deaths, globally, in our countries, in our regions, we’re counting the days we’re expecting to be cut away from “real life” and its deadlines, we’re counting those that went home and those that stay in the Hague with us, we’re counting the food that we’re buying, we’re counting the money that we have to ask from our parents, counting by the meals, by the hours, by the activities we busy ourselves with.

And around all that counting, we’re not only blessed

with ephemeral yet loving sunrays,

cool temperatures but healing enough to let us stroll around Zeineb’s garden with ease,

not shaken and cramped by the Dutch rain and wind anymore.

but also blessed by being together in this. Somehow laced among all the interrogations caused by this COVID-19 virus, there’s a certainty that we are living through an historic pandemic, a tingling energy when biking out for quick errands:

all around, mouths are referring to “people” only as potential victim of you or you victim of them, and now when I go out, I look at all around me with a childish grin. I smile to all that I see with sacred distance and take pictures of those queer times we’re trying to make sense of, all smiling through the awkward understanding that we have to make sure the distance between our bodies stays that way.

we fear being the matches that lets the bomb blow or hopefully young and healthy enough to be minor casualties of the explosion.

I miss my family, despite chosing to stay because I’m scared of going insane back home, seating in the back seat of the back seat of «my “real life”» among the reminders that I’ve painfully grown out of my child car seat and to lose track of the natural rhythm of my life for way too long.

not before next February.

Going back home means taking a plane and risk spreading or exposing myself to the virus. Going back home means taking a plane and risking to lose what we’re all trying to capture in those times:

control over our lives.

I’m numbed out by the bubble of self-quarantine, everything is so easy, I am surrounded by my sisters from two other mothers, protected and sheltered by our strategic group thinking and affection. Yet when governments suddenly release unexpected updates, panic still surges under my skin, despite myself, about being trapped in the Netherlands away from my family, about the deadlines and expectations of our «real life».

Out of pressing things to do, an everlasting mix of tiredness, constant need to stuff ourselves and creative/positive energy fills our days: rolling in bed until brunch to dancing, trick shotting our ball games in the garden, dance challenges, drawing, filming, capturing moments and meditating yet at all times threatened by the clouds of all the numbers that are left to be counted;

of what’s happening the outside (although sometimes it may seem clearer than what’s happening within our insides when you’re trapped away from the outside).

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

Nightmare seasons: Feb 20.

Nightmare season might be back, it’s slick and crawling from your fears to the alarm center of your dreams at night. Vivid and anchored in my realities, the nightmares feature you, you and you-s. To an exterior eye, they might seem funny or just twisted, but when your dreams trigger panic attacks and hastily wake up calls that deform your understanding of reality, there is suddenly nothing worse than being alternatively awake or asleep, based on when the latest stealing of your sanity happened.

While all the piracy is done in the deep seas of my sleep, in this season, the night crew of insecurities and doubts slowly start hijacking my awaken conscious. And as an attack is launched in broad reality-light, it’s difficult to pin-point what’s the source of the panic, whether it is the constant reminiscing of vicious details my subconscious has planted in its treasured fears box to push me faster off to the high seas of anxiety or the phantom of the wreck I become as a result of my haunting nightmares. Usually, the treasure chest and the wreck are ghoulishly linked in the way they make me walk the plank and fall into my open wounds.

Always a new mutation of yet-another-one of my decades old fears, my nightmares, as virus would, evolve faster than my rationalization of fears. Multiplying every nights while there is a limited amount of introspection I can do; my everyday life is suddenly blasted by epidemics of panic triggers or anomalies in all the domains that interact with my daily routines: self-appreciation, social interactions, nutrition, sleep, and if it’s a particularly fatal strand or emerges at the right time of the potential season, it makes performing basic things of life seem insurmountable. Infected by own inhibition or by the feverish doubt of whether the causes of my anxiety are real or just the fruit of minor childhood trauma turned sour into an overly self-conscious critical inner voice, my researches still haven’t found a cure.

Those are self-attacks, an allergy to my own self and being as the virus spreads in my mind. I repel myself from myself and, from there, start an agonizing quest for sense because what was meant for my nights only to vaguely remember, becomes the only drive for my ship to sail ahead everyday. Discovering or hopefully conquering one doubt at a time whether I’m truly as worthless as the illusory reality of my poisonous dreams make me believe I am, through mild half asleep psychoses.

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

The Words That Slip From My Friends’ mouths: Jan 20.

There are words that you say that induce fizzling bubbles in a breach of my head.

I collect them like one collects crystals, at times sparkling and glittery because of the euphoria they create and at others translucid and soothing with meaning and clarity they bring.

These are my tiny gems and somehow in the gardens of my mind, someone gathered them into an orchard. Like the precious seeds exported from some far away land, they are nurtured in my fertile subconscious and when the season seems right, they sprout out their delicate twigs and leaves; and for a little while it’s a luscious spring green and soft shades of pink that filters my vision.

Like a momentary rest induced by medecine, i float over the gardens. Like Red Jasper is supposed to help with grounding your energy and stabilize your root chakra, all the words I’ve gathered make me burst with confidence at times, making me grow everyday a bit more content with my cherries and peaches.

In basket of full of your syllabes and sentences, there are some possessive adjectives and expressions, a couple of open heart conversations, and hundreds of tiny proof of affection, hidden in simple sentences or just your tones. It’s a capharnaum of million things that slipped out of mouths that move in my surroundings everyday and engraved themselves into my mind, soft lullabies for my lonely thoughts.

And when i’m alone, sometimes, I read through the catalogs of this wordly accumulation and happy parenthesis cuts my face in half, my eyes shining of pride and affection like the healing crystals. In those moments, the velvety rush of borderless bliss flushes all my doubts away, and for the time of an angel to pass, I trust that you’ll somehow will always be there, a bit clueless and yet making this merry-go-round make a couple more turns everytime it seems it may come to an end.

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

AlterEgo1 (Karen): Aug 19;

Sometimes you find yourself facing your own image, often times in front of a mirror where there’s nothing you can hide from your inquisitor spheres; realities are sharper onto the reflective aluminum. Bleeding out self-realization, it slashes my ego into crusty scabs and crumbly mistakes, throwing me into spamming as if it could blunt out the thin razor blades my self-esteem is laid onto.

Hemorrhaging self-confidence, my stories turn into trashes and buckets trying to save and collect what’s left of my leaky essence. It’s too late, drained and convalescent, half myself, Karen takes over. She’s obnoxious and lacks density, texture and consistency, a distant true me, she bickers around, unfaithful to my nature; unconscious of all that she lost by losing faith in herself. Blinded by fear of (/and) rejection, she pursues tasteless quests to smooth herself out. Bland and cringe, there is nothing about her you’d want to associate yourself with, neither her conspicuous obviousness nor loud emptiness. There’s pity and disgust in your eyes, shame and insolent obliviousness in hers, as if the clichés she carries around her social media presence and uncanny laugh weren’t enough of an uncomfortable burden for both of you and her.

Hardly able to withdraw, as stubborn in her cringe as one can be in their honest mistakes, yet there is nothing spontaneous about Karen, she emerges when all natural instincts have disappeared, when I can’t trust myself anymore and I can only have faith into what appears to be the truest version of myself: the most honest fraud I can be. Rigid and plain, she plans her outfits two months in advance and she’s senselessly scared you’ll forget what you used to see in her. Afraid to be discarded into the void of your irrelevant acquaintances list, she’ll make me stand out in the most despicable ways. Infinitely sorry to lose you to my Karen side, I’ll dive deeper in her and embrace somehow all that I loath about myself and post, hoping that you can remember you were once laughing with me and not about me.

Never quite in the joke and slow to get it, there’s a sluggishness about her that tempts your hand closer to my wrist in a vice-like way, your palm closer to my cheek in a stiff way: it’s how annoying and exasperating Karen can be. When I fail a witty come back after feeling cornered and patronized by your knowledge and dense sense of self; when I’m loud and obvious after feeling like my most invisible self; when my spine shudders cold from the lack of warmth I normally get from your eyes; when I’m writing this thing using two adjectives at a time to describe everything but not three because it makes comparison superfluous in redundant way that personifies the wanna-be writer that Karen is: basic, she’s like a couple of unneeded adjectives, heavy and hard to swallow, a weight in your sight you can quite get rid of somehow. Sorry for yourself, you keep me around despite my irritative potential.

Karen is a synonym of (my) insecurity, I won’t ask for the manager but i’ll still get pissed, maybe just out of self disrespect, because I’m aware I won’t ever be better.

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

Sing songs to you-s: Fall 19.

I hate myself because I thought you could.

I read the between lines signals that weren’t. I wished you had visions of me when I was not there, a tight grip in your chest when I was in your arms. I wish there couldn’t be any comparison, I truly wish I was one in a million, wishing it were my eyes you thought of as a reference, wishing it were my hair you’d cherish & stroke on a cool summer afternoon. Projecting onto us a life that we’ll probably never have. I wish you were the love of my life and i was yours.

And once in a while, that intense moment,

where everything is crushed to dust, finely grinded hopes turn into crusty crumbs. There was nothing to be done but to be sorry, there is nothing to say that will make things better or sweeter. Out of the illusion, everything appears crystal clear.

My desolation doesn’t rest in the disappointment, for, there were no reasons to be disappointed but my own nature and paranoia. Yet the disappointment of never knowing or always having known that it was never going to be still stings and I still fold my arms under my body as I sleep, cold and out of love. But back then I didn’t know why I was crying, if i was crying, and now, I know I was and am, still hurting knowing i’ll never be better than this.

I’m the girl that led the way to his coming-out and I’m running out of luck. I am mad at myself today. I wish i could leave (with) you out of my brain tomorrow, or at least I wish I’d have the luxury to let you know how long a week without you is. When I get lost in my thoughts, I wonder if you could ever care the way I do about the things of life. I wonder how I’d feel if you felt the same way: unwavering affection and support. If you had ever been like I am: your realest critic but biggest fan.

Wish i could’ve changed the course of things, but then i’m even madder, for, my wishes are senseless. I fell for you despite and in spite of all. sometimes you tricked me with the way you covered me of kisses, trailing down to my belly in the comfort of a bed. My heart skips a bit and I try to remind myself that your lips weren’t there to claim ownership for my guts but out of a short lived lie that repeated like a promise. One year ago.

I am mad at myself today. Because I lie awake sometimes, aching for indulgence, affection and playfulness, calling for a genie to grant all those wishes I’ve had when laying next to you. I want you exhilarated and I wish every hip thrusts were millions of soft kisses and proof of love. I wish you’d call, I wish you could know whether miss me, there is nothing more terrifying than thinking of how easy it’s gonna be for your memory to forget about me once you fully come out of your uncertainty. not a milestone, nothing extraordinary, just a parenthesis. One year ago, before I harvested the seeds of taking things for granted.

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 4 years

Text

the Rapture: Oct 19.

I thought everything was going to settle once they all met.

All the realities I cultivated, grown and nurtured to be me;

In all their differences: meant to be one within me. Yet the Rapture happened, fast and unsteady, without any alert, the process is such that one can only know once they’re out of it. Today, I should be a finished product, or at least based on my beliefs before the Rapture, but it rather feels like the worksite is still under construction. I fought to form myself,

and now

All the versions of me have met. They don’t like each other, like long lost relatives they can’t relate to anything but their link to me, I fumble and tumble, the energy slips out of my vessel, filled with thick emptiness, dark matter.

Out of touch. I’m afraid of time, I’m afraid of myself changing, I’m afraid of being numb or never feeling again. I’m scared of my loved ones not recognizing me, I’m scared they’ll stop loving me once they see what I see in myself.

I’m terrified that my vision of myself turns me into my deepest fear, I’m scared that my negative thoughts materialize in my behavior. I’m scared whenever I can’t say the things that hurt because I know, the longer I hold them in, the more they infuse me in their aching.

0 notes

outlyingthoughts · 5 years

Text

1:58, exam szn & cuffing szn: Oct 19.

It’s 1:58 on the small digital clock of my computer. Sleep is a scarce during exam period, either fearing to fail professionally or at life in its entirety. College students roam around campus from 8am to 12am. One cigarette break after another, groups, nationalities and pasts meet and strive among one another. Just over a glimpse of sunshine, all our youthful bodies plead the rays to caress our skins.

It’s normally soft and overwhelming, but today it made me shiver. Crawling inside, overthinking, social anxiety and aching mood swings, burst up under my skin and words can’t reach my mouth. Today, I tried to tell the words, vomit all that was weighing on my guts, but instead watery spheres glide innocently out of my eyes. All the uni students were out, early afternoon airy light, all holding the profound belief that it was the last time we’ll see this star while my only profound belief, almost primal, was that I had never been this lonely. I probably had a couple of notifications left to check and more people to greet, but tears blurred the warm rays and my vision; I ran away.

Coming back from my short exile, the words were seating lower, down my throat, stuck, fat with meaning and emotions. Scanning the curious or worried eyes of my friends, shame burnt my fingers, my hands suddenly fidgeting faster and faster. Dismissing my unrestful inner crybaby and its whiny instincts, I dismissed your questions: exam season, exam season is the reason.

For it’s not a lie but rather an incomplete truth; exam season is a closed Tupperware in which we all marinate, trapped, we may mix well as a dish but still the steam on the lid hovers above our heads. Threatening, the pearls born from condensation are reminders of the future ahead, of our responsibilities of today for tomorrow, of our parents back home, expectations and knowing that deception won’t be an option. Afraid to never become the person I’ve promised myself to be throughout my almost two decades of life experience, anxiety grows from my expectations. I grow with my fears, drowning at times, closing my eyes facing them most of the time. It’s a sweet life one can have when all fears are just hidden under a big invisibility cap. But electro-shocks revive those old friends like rusty hearts, and within two blinks of an eye, closing my eyes to them becomes impossible. Crushed by the size they grew to while my eyes were closed, my terrors can’t blink, eyeless, they just smell my weaknesses and dig blindly into them.

Well nested within the stress of exam season, my fear of not-making-it-in-life is now a recurring motif of my anti-climax drama. Being away from home is both a blessing and a curse, finding yourself by leaving also means losing yourself in the novelty; all the responsibilities from before fuse away from my brain: I forget about the pain, I forget about the past, I live moments as if they were pearls from an necklace without a string. I feel guilty I’m afraid of changing, even more afraid of going back. As if all Zoes I might have been were finally meeting, they’re loud and all take too much room, yet they don’t bring me enough and I can’t handle any of it. I’m afraid when the lights turn out that I won’t be able to “reach out” anymore, as if the bluetooth function had been turned off, I can’t say the things I mean, my eyes can’t remember what they normally look at when I listen or talk, they move around like balls of onyx, dark empty of colors, my mouth opens and my body moves but it’s not me anymore. Anxiety took over and I retreat, sometimes I peek through and my eyes look up at you my friend.

I wish you could see me looking at you, I’m worried for both of us. I’m worried because I know you’re not doing good, I’m worried because it feels like I can’t convey that I’m not either. then the guilt takes over: I insult the selfish bitch in the back of my head that cries for help (who are you to think your issues are more pressing, painful and threatening than others?). Suddenly I watch all the words, I weight all the moves, trying to take the least amount space in the room, of words in the discussion, of my presence in the moment: trying hard to give you as many options as possible to forget about me. And sometimes it feels like it works, and with an explosion in my heart, I retreat further, like a lost kid. It’s all worst when you start doubting the people you care the most about; but how can they care about someone like you?

Such a puzzle, further in the retreat, I still want you to find me but won’t move I’m too afraid you’d notice I’m still here and decide it’s time to ditch me. Caught up between feeling like you shouldn’t be here and wanting to be here, share at home where your heart is, I’m paralyzed. That’s why the sun didn’t bake my soul like it normally does. A fear of not being compatible with the people you relate the most too, like the uncle hated in the family, it becomes constant obsession, sickened brain that tries to find proves and clues in meaningless words and thoughtless behaviors, you exclude yourself in your own paranoia, you’re afraid to not be loved by the ones you cherish, yet another recurring motif.

It turns everything into a fog, daily duties aren’t linked and I tumble through life either with intense bliss or destructive deception. Loss of satisfaction, because suddenly nothing has taste anymore. Almost as if, without the belief in the love from your surrounding, all turns fade and cold. So I look for a home in everything, dwell over new routines, new projects, but mainly the past. All but concentrate on the keys available today, I project, continuously trying to understand others while I can’t begin to find the words to put over my inner turmoils. My mind simply gets lost, jumping to conclusions, dropping the arms try to get out of my mental messes. Trying to open up, spill one more time all the pains but still nothing comes out, I’ve already said it all in bits but I can’t bring myself to connected the dots for you as I fear if you saw it too, you’d confirm it all. It’s too hard to look back at what you were, the intensity that was once yours, almost fearless in the arms of someone. It’s hard to know that one year ago, you were in love and in denial, softly coated in illusions. It’s harder when the only person you want to talk about it with was the one comforting you in these illusions; the hardest when that person knew all about your discomforts, your fears, silences and reality. When that person met your heart on another level, the hardest when now, there is nothing left but bitterness, anger, regrets and derision.

It’s so hard when I call you and you don’t answer, harder when you don’t call back, the hardest when we’re in the same city and it feels like we walked past each other a million time and only I looked back as you went on. When we’re in the same city, I see you everywhere, I see heartbreak everywhere. It reminds me that I was once vulnerable, and my core tells me I won’t ever be. There’s a profound sadness radiating in my chest when such reminders are flagged across my mind. I know that for now I’m fine, I’m in the age of fun and fear of commitment, but sooner than later, I’ll stay behind, as they’ll all walk past.

Hand in hand, and now I’m holding my own, strong grip, small and dry hand, I hate its texture under my own fingers and don’t wonder why no one is holding my hand. I’ll be behind, numbed by emotional unavailability, I’ll be a late bloomer, late to the party, hurried into the cab of marriage and motherhood for I’ll convince myself it’s all I ever wanted. Maybe I’ll put a stop to it, jump out through a quick and clean divorce, I’ll retreat once again, either I won’t want to bother you, as you’ve been the love of my life but I was never yours, or I won’t want to have nothing to do with you, as you were never the one, only trapped me because I know I don’t deserve better. It’s so hard to get back “into” life once you feel like you’re not welcomed in it anymore. I’m not welcomed anymore in love and affection, I feel like I’m not welcomed anymore in breathing freely, I feel myself changing and I’m afraid of her, of my reflection in the mirror. I’m afraid of becoming who I fear to become.

At night, when I’m alone, he surges and I can’t sleep after a day of panic. I open youtube and a TED talk about “overcoming the fear of love” rolls on. Trillion Small tells me that our neuronal system has mechanisms of defense. It recognizes what hurts you and when you encounter one of its components or something similar, apparently police sirens blasts in your brain. My fear of love shakes my soul, whenever someone mentions having to put trust and vulnerability on the line, sirens cry and my instinct runs: it’s already hard enough to not doubt my friends’ love, how could I trust that one could give me his full incompromised devotion?

So I shake further in my fears of the future, failing, love, past and paranoia. Unfortunately, this year, exam season and cuffing season overlap and my fears turn cross-sectional.

It’s 3:22 on the digital clock now. Drake on the speaker says “she could do better” and she asks if “he’s drunk right now”. My tea is cold and so are the salty puddles on my keyboard. I wish my mouth allowed me to ask questions but Billie in the next song tells me not to ask questions I don’t want the answer to.

0 notes