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jonesrooy-shanghai · 7 years

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What I Want is Wrong

All my life I’ve been told that what I want is wrong.

My earliest memory is wanting to be a boy. You’re too pretty to be a boy, my teacher said. My school made me stop sitting with the boys in the cafeteria. I had to sit with the girls, whose interests I didn’t share. For my ninth birthday I wanted a snake and a football. No one said, “That’s great!” Everyone said, “Why?”

My orthodontist is the only person to ever honor my childhood request to be called “Fred.” To this day, he still does it (not that I see him much), and to this day I am grateful.

I don’t want to be a boy anymore (I don’t think), but there is plenty else the world has told me I have been wrong to want.

In high school I wanted to go to an Ivy League university or a college in a city. No you don’t, people told me. You want a school that’s not a “pressure cooker.” You want a school with a campus. Do I?

In (my small, rural) college my professors told me that smart people want to go to graduate school. I applied, but said I didn’t want to study Chinese politics. I wanted to study “pure” international relations. You’re wrong, they told me. The China angle will get you in.

It did.

I tried for years in graduate school to not study Chinese politics. I proposed other dissertation topics. No, they said. The China angle will get you a job. I wrote a dissertation on China. I got a postdoc based on that dissertation. I got a faculty job in China.

I spent a decade in academia trying to convince myself I liked it. The lifestyle didn’t suit me, but everyone told me it was the greatest profession in the world. You want this, they said, something else is just getting in the way.

I went to therapy to figure out why my brain was wrong. Why didn’t I want what I so obviously should want? Why can’t I commit? We never considered maybe I didn’t want to.

The rest of the world wasn’t alone in conspiring against my wants: my brain learned to chime in against itself. My first life choice was between soccer or ballet (yes, I’ve led a privileged life). I chose soccer because it was what boys want. I chose wrong. I fucking love ballet. I learned: Don’t trust what you want. And: I am horrible at soccer.

In seventh grade I switched math classes and my friend got mad at me for leaving her behind. I learned: Do not exert your will on the Universe or people will be upset with you. I did not learn: math.

That year I also developed anorexia, which is a lifetime sport of denying yourself not just wants but needs. Then -- and now as I write this -- my body is hungry. My brain says: No you’re not. Right, I’m not.

Succeeding at an eating disorder takes much more than willpower. It takes convincing yourself you truly do not want what you want. You take your want, crush it into a tiny ball until you can’t see it or feel it, and then shove it deep down, where it dissolves into your body, the last bit of nutrient you get: your dying want, as it is absorbed into your stomach alongside zero calorie pickle juice (don’t worry, I don’t drink that anymore -- mercifully, they invented kombucha).

Listen to your gut, people say. Oh, darling: I shut that down in 1997.

There was something I wanted once: To be a circus performer. I almost didn’t move to that job in China because I wanted to do circus in New York. But I did, because I was supposed to want the best job in the world. I cried the whole way there. I felt like an outcast until a circus moved to Shanghai and found me. For 16 months I loved it and it loved me.

The circus closed and I was left with nothing.

There was something else I wanted, secretly. I barely even admitted it to myself. There was a man I met in Shanghai who lived in New York. We met right when I moved to China -- even before the circus. He went back to New York, and I watched the back of his head disappear as his taxi drove to the airport. I wanted to run after him, fly back with him that second, build a life with him. And maybe do some circus while I was there.

Instead, I stood, heart beating in the Beijing sun, fists clenched, repeating to myself: You don’t want those things. You want to be a professor in China. You want. You want. You want.

And so I was, for three years.

Except for the circus months, I was unhappy. I wanted to stop being a professor. I wanted to live in New York. I wanted to be with that man.

One day, in a moment of strength (or was it desperation?), I acted on all three of those things at once.

I have them now.

Yet, I wake up every day still empty.

Getting the external scaffolding of your life right is no help if there’s no one on the inside.

I want.

I find I cannot complete that sentence.

I have a smattering of jobs and activities. I’ve lost interest in circus. The man and I live together and love each other. I love New York City. Or, I try to remember how I used to love it. Some days it feels exhilarating. Most it feels like prison.

I want.

To my horror, I have realized that a lifetime of shutting down my wants has not only left me with no capacity to listen to or trust what I want -- but that there’s no want even there. It’s not like my want is a tiny flame that needs encouragement. It’s that the flame went out long ago.

I want.

What do I want?

I want to want. I want to remember who Andrea was before I shut her up. I want to tell whatever desire it was that was inside me when I was a little girl -- that it’s ok to grow back. That it’s safe now. That wants are ok. That as long as what you want doesn’t hurt other people, it’s a good thing to want. Listen to it. Let it grow.

I am not the only person to be told what to want. Humans have made a sport of telling each other what to want since we first learned we could.

And I know my version of it is mild compared to many -- maybe your parents demand you go to Princeton and be a lawyer, lest you be disowned -- or you’re forbidden from going to school past third grade because you’re a girl. My share in this game of being told what to want has actually been quite light.

But even that is part of the narrative my brain tells me to shut my desires up. Just because I have great privilege to be able to even think about what I want doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to want. We all deserve to want. It’s all we get, really.

Here’s what I want. To tell other children and adults out there now: You there. With the sheepish desires and the questions and the “who am I to demand something for myself....?”. Yes, you.

It’s ok.

You’re ok.

Stand up straight. Proclaim what you want. Do it. Keep wanting it.

How?

Ask somebody else.

Fig. 1. Here’s what I really want are some higher resolution photos.

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currentbalochistan · 5 years

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Countering the Wannabeism - By: AS_Qambrani_H

When I was younger, fake accents were something people associated wannabes with, the lot that tried hard to fit in into a certain class with more privileges and more style. The so-called style was defined strictly of having a fancy for heavy metal rock sounds (Scorpions in particular), paired with a druggy look on the face, loud music blasting in SkullCandy headphones and a pair of low-rise jeans sinking you to the lowest of the lows. Ones trying to fit-in among-st those crowds were often the ones you would catch snapping at their parents for talking to them in their mother tongue when their brand ambassadors for Levis cum friends were around. All in all, this attitude of disowning your true identity in hopes of getting accepted by the elite fake lot was majorly dissed and rejected and only a few immature minds would fall for it. It wouldn’t take long for even a 14 year old to realize how an accent nor the brands they wore would ever define them. This attitude was showcased rather too compliantly by only a certain class of people: the ones coming from an under-privileged background with little to no sense of belonging, the ones who were an outcast and pretty much the ones who had no self-confidence nor any knowledge about their own unique history.

If humans were sent down in clans and races then each race is unique. Each era has its own heroes and each clan has its own songs to sing, its own language, culture, values and most importantly, its own unique identity. I might sound like a right-winged Trump supporter but in a world where feminism is defined by pink armpit hair, I don’t see the shame in stating facts about the human race being diverse in multiple spheres of life. We are different in many ways yet similar in many. It is all about respecting each other for the good things we committed and the wrongs we stopped. Where did the times go when things like honesty, courtesy, selflessness, bravery, hard work, decency and a refined mindset were enough to earn you the respect you wished to have? The standards have changed now. I am pointing in particular to the lost world of the elite GCC countries, where a person’s worth is graded upon the watch they wear, the car they drive, the number of countries they have visited and their Instagram following. This never ending circus is fueled all the more by yet again, the underprivileged lot of those oil lords: the expat community who apparently feel ashamed of even being termed as “expats”. THAT is the amount of nuisance that infests deep inside the upscale world of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and its surrounding counterparts. But don’t get me wrong. The Arab nation lives up to its true reputation to this day and never in their right mind will they accept lower middle class nationalities coming from the subcontinent as of their own. They are indeed a ruthless nation and when push comes to shove, they know how to get things done- hence, the ever-increasing population of labor workers imported from the slums of the subcontinent.

While the Prime Minister of Pakistan shares dinners with the a likes of Jack the Ripper in hopes of blood money worth billions, the labor class Pakistanis are lagging way behind trying to fit in amongst the ones lower down the Arab hierarchy whom they work for. Speaking Arabic to their Pakistani children is more important than even English- a language Universal and crucial for a child’s future. The child now carries so-called special rights since he was born in the GCC and hence, gets a license to look down upon his distant relatives back home whom he seldom visits now since they don’t even know the meaning of the word “lit”. When it comes to the English language, they would rather learn the accent than the grammar. Although, no Arab state gives any rights as such to the expat children born there (unlike Europe), yet there is still a strange make believe atmosphere residing inside the expat community that they are better than the rest because they were born on Arab soil. The random border free trips they take each weekend to the country next door and the tourist acquaintances they get to share a cup of coffee with somehow justifies the narcissism that has them deluded.

In the event of a human rights defender, Rashid Baloch going missing in the UAE- the same expats now appeal the Free Balochistan movement to call off any protests against their Arab masters. You see, the decades of slavery that has finally earned them the right to say Hi to their masters there has to be salvaged, regardless of an activist losing his life under illegal detention. A life belonging to the oppressed and instagram-free nation of Balochistan is not worth risking the so-called “decades of relationships” with the Arab authorities that the Balooshi lot earned there. Rashid Baloch was a student leader for the oppressed people of Balochistan- a place where life is cheap, bullets are cheaper and hence the a gradual increase in activists being force to seek refuge abroad. To escape illegal detention, torture and even death, Rashid Baloch had to resort to fleeing Pakistan. He was allowed inside the UAE and only later, did the UAE police abduct him with out giving out even a shroud of information of the reason behind his arrest. Information now surfaces that Rashid Baloch had many of his relatives killed in torture cells for speaking up for the rights of the Baloch people, something dealt with zero tolerance by the Pakistani regime. You speak up for Balochistan and you will be killed. The only movement that still holds the audacity against the mighty Pakistani regime is the Voice For Baloch Missing Persons who fight a lonely battle led by the elderly Qadeer Baloch, a person with ailing health and a heart scarred with the loss of a young boy. He was torture killed.

THIS dear friends is what has become of a society that once honored the sanctity of human life before anything else, let alone random invitations to personal and impersonal events coming from the 100th cousin of some oil lord, sharing the same watsapp group or perhaps a few employment opportunities in case there is any vacancy left for the odd jobs to get done. I would ask the deluded Balooshi community to try and regain their sanity and give back at least a quarter of the recognition they enjoy there earned solely by the Baloch Heroes of the past centuries, and so not them. Donate a tweet to #RelaseRashidBaloch and join the ones protesting before the authorities instead of taking the subservient attitude to a whole new low. Be a person, not a persona.

http://sangarpublication.com/home/page/992.html

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