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tellmesomethinggg · 5 years

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journal day 61

it’s been the longest since my last journal, mostly because i’ve been putting it off and then staying up late and getting up early, so i’m tired at the end of the day.

there’s a lot of shit to go through though, so here we go.

matt: i spent the day with him last weekend and it helped with the confusion. mostly. there’s always gonna be the stupid doubts and what ifs and hypotheticals, i can’t help it, i just have to learn to deal with it and remind myself that the truth is, we could never be a thing, and i see him as one of my brother’s and he annoys me like one too. he’s a great friend too, and is ever so supportive, even though it may feel harsh sometimes truth hurts. though there is still a minor fear that he may just cut me out of his life one day because i’m too stubborn, but i guess we just enjoy what we have, enjoy our friendship for now. as much as i’m scared to continue trusting him because i’m high key worried that he’ll end things trust issues for days i have found that he is ever so easy to confide in and talk to.

i guess now i can go into the trust issues: i have lost so much each time my life has changed, and with all the change going on now, i can’t help but have trouble trusting people. like i know that i can trust the people in my life to stay in my life at least through college, and maybe after too? but all i can think of is that eventually i’m going to lose them and i get scared because all i’ve ever done is lost friends throughout my life. and for once, i think i actually want to lose a friendship, like with chloe, things are weird. they feel forced from my side, like i have to force myself to be happy for her and i don’t know why. i think it’s partially because i’m so used to not having friends “carry over” but at the same time, we have survived the colusa to woodland affair. it could be partially that, but so much more of it is because of the shit that happened last quarter. like yeah, sure, she apologized, but there’s so much more and i didn’t really tell her the full extent of my frustrations. and i don’t know how to. i have never really felt comfortable confronting people, but somehow, i feel more comfortable confronting matt or jon with my true honesty, matt a bit more than jon (but maybe that’s because i’ve literally trusted him with everything so it’s easier with him, but if we’re being totally honest, i’m getting to that point with jon too).

there’s also the frustrations with the family being here now. my dad was a pain in my ass being super passive aggressive about anything and everything and then acting like he actually cared for me right before leaving and then both of them confronting me about how i need to be more religious and need to learn to love God or else and my mum throwing shade every five minutes and our relationship feeling forced sometimes and how my siblings drive me crazy when combined with bella and how damian is so against anyone being gay and how i could never come out as bi to them because they’d disown me so fast and how i wish damian would grow the fuck up and realise that there’s nothing wrong with being gay at all. i’ve never felt more uncomfortable around him, and i always thought that he was the easiest to deal with, but i guess now it’s annabelle because she’s not obviously against gays yet. it’s fun being the most progressive in your family. like explaining to your uncle about latinx vs. latino and how now in seminars and in college people ask for preferred pronouns but that i couldn’t really explain why because homophobic damian was there and would go nuts about nonbinary and trans, and i don’t want to explain it with any bias that could sway the girls either. it’s really frustrating and i don’t know how to deal with it at all.

and i cannot wait until i get to see my friends because i am literally dying inside being around only little children, and i can tell that even ceci is a bit bothered. they are so loud and clingy and just annoying sometimes. and i know they mean well, but i’ve been tired lately and putting up with them is so hard, especially since i haven’t had to for a long time. but of course, like during spring break, if i say anything, then my mum will be all they just miss you and you have to put up with it because they’re your siblings and you don’t see them and vise versa but the problem here is that i need some space and i can’t have these children constantly running around crazy around me.

oh and there was the thing were my mum was saying that ceci was kinda like the mum to bella when they were growing up and kinda still is and it took every ounce of me to keep from saying, well, yeah, same here, and i still am. like sure, not the same way, but there’s shit i’ve dealt with that you couldn’t do and i was only twelve years old. trust me, i’ve been the mom in the house for a long time too. they listen to me just about as much as they listen to you.

oh i cannot stand my dad and the shit he pulls. i thought he just was really frustrated with my brother and kinda brushed it off as situational, but this past year has really cemented into my head that he is the most childish and immature adult who has no ability to deal with feelings, and no wonder i’m so good at suppressing my feelings. there’s no way that i’ll be able to be comfortable at “home” much longer and i never want to live there anymore. it’s honestly a huge lie when i call it home, because uci is my home and so are the people there and i cannot go back north ever. i would hate to end up near there for med because that would be horrible because i’d end up living with them again and we all know i will literally die if that happens. i should get married before i ever end up going north because then i’d have a reason to not live with them, because i have a partner who can help to pay for a place to rent until we move for residency.

i’ve needed this journal for so long because it’s been so long and i’m surprised that i didn’t cry while writing this because i’m so damn tired and this was a lot of emotions and shit that i’ve been holding in and hiding though i did talk with both matt and jon about some of this so it hasn’t been fully suppressed the whole time, just partially but i am tired, and even though i feel like there’s something that i’m forgetting to write about, i am going to end this for now. at least i got the chance to journal today, though who knows when i’ll next get the chance and remember and have the energy to journal again.

until next time.

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shannonmw · 6 years

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I am a blogger. No, I’m not an avid blogger, but it is a medium I am familiar with. My goal for this project is to use this form to tell you a story. This paper will be multimodal, because it is a blog, and because it contains personal stories and actual photographs. It will also be accessible to all, because I will actively share it on social media, allowing a community of people to read and share it.

I have been asked to tell a story. A story about my family, my community and my nation. My subjectivity is conditioned by my awareness of the constructed nature of the story I am telling. Smith and Watson, in ‘Reading Autobiography’, write that “personal memories are the primary archival source” for a life narrator despite her access to other sources such as letters, journals, photographs and conversations (2001, p.6). My archival sources are my memory, conversations with my mother and a few friends, and photographs.

An awareness of the situational and interactional features of autobiographical acts, as mentioned by Smith and Watson (2001, p. 50) gives me a sense of agency in the tale I narrate. While I am the producer, or teller, of my story, I am aware that my coaxer is the question given to me as part of the final assignment for a course at the University of Colombo’s MA in English Studies Programme; you are the consumer, reader or audience who will interpret my tale. I would like to imagine I am as revolutionary as Roland Barthes in his text, ‘Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes’, where I (the critic) turn to myself, and critique myself as a text. However the limitations of time and space quell my revolutionary fancies. Yet, while writing this I couldn’t help feel like Scout, in Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ simply because I am recalling childhood memories and retelling them – I found myself writing in a more childish manner and literally channeling Scout. To the reader who does notice the similarity, I apologise.

Life Writing, I have realized in retrospect, is easy to critique. It is harder to write. It is hard to dig deep, dredge memories and emotional experiences you’d rather forget. No, not because they’re traumatic or potentially scaring. It’s nothing like that. It’s just that these memories would rather be forgotten. Memories are shady, and in the process of recollection I have questioned my memories, and constantly asked myself ‘did I really do this?’ or ‘did I really think this?? Or do I think I thought this?!” Stanley Fish answered my questions, “[a]utobiographers cannot lie because anything they say, however mendacious, is the truth about themselves, whether they know it or not” (cited in Smith and Watson, 2001, p.12).

I’m going to tell you a story. I’m going to tell you about something that happened to my mother when I was 10 years old. This story affected me and my perspective of history and Sri Lanka as a teenager, it continues to affect how I’ve viewed the LTTE and other terrorist organisations. My retelling of this story comes from my family; it involves a community of people who stepped up in a time of need; right now my story actively involves a community of readers who will engage with it via the world wide web. The relationship of my story to the larger narrative of our nation is too blatant to ignore.

My mum’s friend, Nishani, worked for the World Bank in Washington DC. She had come down to Sri Lanka for work. She is an Economist and was writing a report (on what I don’t remember, but it was something really important). She was staying at The Galadari Hotel. Ammi and Aunty Nishani were very close. While Aunty Nishani was here, they met a few times but didn’t gossip as much as they liked to. A few days before Aunty Nishani left Sri Lanka, an ideal opportunity presented itself: a midweek poya where my dad (who is a member of the Sri Lankan Airlines Cabin Crew) had an early morning flight, my brother and I didn’t have school. Aunty Nishani invited Ammi to come for dinner and stay over. On Tuesday night Ammi dropped Mallie and me at Achchi’s place. We were happy to stay, though I really wished I could’ve gone with Ammi – I loved staying in hotels! I was grumpy and wrote a long letter to my mother, berating her for not letting me join her and Aunty Nishani. I had promised to be good and not interfere, but Ammi had just cast me aside. I was heartbroken! My grandmother went to great lengths to repair my broken heart. I went to sleep determined not to talk to Ammi when she picked us up the next day. The next morning I was awoken by the constant ringing of the phone. I don’t remember what time it was, except that the phone was in the room and my Achchi was very agitated; she didn’t talk to us; she was always speaking in Sinhalese (as if we didn’t understand!) and kept giving us the classic, “no, nothing is wrong” answer that all grown ups give children when there really is something wrong. I can’t remember what I thought the matter could be. Achchi didn’t allow us to put the TV on, but was very keen that we read or go outside to play. I had just finished an entire collection of Enid Blyton’s ‘Five Find Outers’, and I also had my favourite book by Enid Blyton ‘The Secret Island’ with me – I was in sleuth mode. It was inevitable. I hid behind curtains, eavesdropped and gathered that there had been a bomb blast somewhere in Colombo. Ok…so what? My sleuthing got me no where, my Seeya found me hiding and sent me outside. Mallie, who in my opinion had never been a particularly suspect child, was not interested in anything I had to say because it did not involve Romesh Kaluwitharana or cricket. By 10am there was a call, and that call changed my grandmother. It was my mother. Apparently she was alright. There had been a bomb blast near the Galadari Hotel. Ammi was caught in it, but she was alright now. She was safe. I remember feeling really really bad. I regretted my decision to never speak to Ammi again. “Please Jesus, let my Ammi be ok. Please don’t let anything happen to her”. I think Achchi made us kneel in front of the altar in her Hall and we recited the Rosary. I was fervent, and promised to be a really good girl, if only Ammi was ok. I recalled the Central Bank Bombing the previous year when Ammi had appeared in school, miraculously, to pick me up (If you knew my mum at that point, you’d know why this was miraculous – she avoided picking us up from school because she was always really busy and school vans were very very convenient). I remembered her telling me then, that I had nothing to worry about because Ammi would always be there. While reciting the rosary, I remember feeling like an orphan. I literally didn’t know where in the world Thathi was, and I felt very lost without Ammi. I cried. Achchi promised me that she would take care of me and to pray. So I prayed.

The next day I was taken to Nawaloka Hospital to visit Ammi and Aunty Nishani. Ammi had a small head injury, and both Aunty Nishani and her had lots of cuts, bruises and shrapnel wounds. Ammi cried when she saw us. I refused to leave the hospital room. I stayed the night with her and Thathi. She had to be given medicine to sleep because she was too scared to sleep. I was scared too.

I’ve heard Ammi’s story many times. Whenever she recalls her story, she adds more details. It’s not that she’s exaggerating, but I realise she’s adding more details because I am older. When I was 10, the story was quite basic. At 17, when she told it to me again, there were more details. At 31, she related it to me again, for the purpose of this assignment; she was more free and unrestrained. I learned more about her experience at 31, than I did at 17. It is interesting how stories can be conditioned, or condensed, based on the age of the audience despite it being the same story.

Smith and Watson have noted that the memories invoked in “autobigraphical narrative is specific to the time of writing and the context of telling…it is never isolatable fact, but situated association” (2001, p.18). I guess this is true of my story. Right now I am recalling this narrative for a specific purpose; I examine it with a fine comb to dissect and identify specific sections that are relevant to my question (the coax) and the theories of Life Writing that I’ve been taught. Likewise my Ammi’s memories were fleshed out, with more details, because she was more comfortable sharing this experience she had at 31, with her daughter who’s now 31.

The locus of my story is my mother. It is her story that I want to add, because without her, I wouldn’t be where I am. Without her, I wouldn’t be telling you this story. Her story helped me at 17 when I was selected as a member of a Delegation to participate in the Initiative for Peace program at the United World College of South East Asia. Here, during the ceasefire of 2004, group of Sri Lankan teens from all over the island were selected, based on a story narrating our personal encounters with the Civil Conflict. I wrote about my mother. To a 17 year old, the trauma of losing my mother was exaggerated because though I remembered what had happened, I was blissfully ignorant of the finer details. Unfortunately I cannot locate the original story I wrote, but this is that tale, and then some told by me, as it was narrated to me:

(Ammi’s story) After dropping Mallie and I at Achchi’s, Ammi had gone to the Galadari. They’d had a nice dinner together, and gone back to Aunty Nishani’s room for some gossip. Ammi says it was late when they got to bed. Habitually an early riser, Ammi woke up before 7am. She noticed Aunty Nishani wasn’t in bed, she’d said ‘Nishani?’ and Aunty Nishani had replied saying was in the bathroom working on her report because she didn’t want to disturb Ammi, and that Ammi should sleep. Deciding to snooze for a little longer, Ammi had closed her eyes and begun to drift off when she heard a continuous “tak-a-tak-a-tak-tak-a” noise. Getting out of bed, she opened the curtains and looked down. They were on the 12th or 14th floor (she can’t remember exactly) and the room overlooked the car park. Ammi says there were about 6 or 7 men, wearing black with bandanas or “something like turbans” on their heads. One thing stood out – they were barefoot. They had ammunition draped over their shoulders and were attempting to maneuver a very large lorry into the Galadari Hotel’s car park. Ammi had thought this was a robbery and rushed to bathroom to tell Aunty Nishani. As they came to the window they saw a large black shape, heading towards the WTC Building. It was then that they realized, this was an attack. An attack by the LTTE. Aunty Nishani’s father happened to be former UNP MP Festus Perera, whom she called immediately. He advised both of them to leave Galadari at once. (Ammi laughingly recalls how the most important thing at that time for both of them was to brush their teeth!) The sound of gunfire continued as they changed into streetwear. Ammi had just stepped out of the room when the first blast occurred. The door of the room fell on her, because of the impact and she fell face first onto the carpeted corridor. She blacked out. When she came to, Aunty Nishani and a large African American man were hauling her up, towards the staircase. Then the second blast hit. During the first blast Ammi had misplaced her shoe, and the second blast had scattered glass on the floor. She couldn’t walk barefoot so she had to run back to the room for her other shoe. When she returned to the stairwell, the third blast hit. After descending 12 or 14 flights of stairs Ammi says the Lobby was like a ghost town. She said it was like in the movies – you recognized it, but you couldn’t believe your eyes. Aunty Nishani, Ammi, a few American Green Berets (who’d also been on the same floor) rushed out of the hotel and towards the beach. They were joined by hotel employees fleeing for their lives. Ammi says she had to jump 12 feet onto the Galle Face Beach – to date she doesn’t know how she did it. She says her head was throbbing and she could hear a ringing noise in her ears, but she kept going. In every version of this story, she emphasizes that it was the thought of Mallie and I that kept her going. They’d run along the beach to the Galle Face Hotel, while shooting sounds permeated their environment. They were sitting ducks, obvious and visible, running along the beach. Upon reaching the Galle Face Hotel, Aunty Nishani’s dad had sent a Police Jeep to escort them to the hospital. En route to Nawaloka the vehicle was stopped. The Army didn’t believe the Police escorts; they didn’t believe that my mother and Aunty Nishani had escaped so soon. They assumed they might be LTTE Cadres in disguise. Ammi says she was more afraid at that point than she was on the beach. Here, they were trapped. Literally. And if something happened, the state of emergency and ensuing chaos would mean that their deaths would become collateral damage. Eventually they were released and both of them were admitted to Nawaloka. That’s when Ammi called Achchi.

Thathi had boarded the aircraft, and the doors had just closed when he heard about the bomb blast. He couldn’t leave and he didn’t know what had happened. He says it was the longest flight he’d ever worked on.

Aunty Nishani returned to the hotel within a matter of hours. The shooting hadn’t subsided but moved to Lake House, where the LTTE held hostages. Aunty Nishani needed her laptop and her report. My Loku Maama and our driver had accompanied Aunty Nishani. They’d taken a few pictures. The bed closest to the window is where Ammi slept. If she hadn’t woken up, I wouldn’t be telling you this story.

Figure 4: Aunty Nishani with her Police escorts retrieving her files

Figure 1: My parents in Aunty Nishani’s room a few days before the blast, when they’d visited her

Figure 3: The view of the car park from the room

Figure 2: The bed Ammi slept in, after the blast

Nawaloka Hospital was teeming with victims of the accident. There were also many security personnel. Ammi was interviewed by many intelligence officers. I think it got tiresome after a while. She’d been telling her story so many times. She says she had to take sleeping pills and attend psychiatric sessions to move on from this experience. These tidbits were news to me. Until recently I didn’t know the extent she’d been affected by this experience.

This story helped me join a larger community; one I encountered during my participation at the IfP Conference in Singapore. Initially participants were split up and we had many team-building and trust exercises, but later we had a few sessions which were harrowing, eye-opening and jarring. I remember more than once I went to my room, crying. I met a former child soldier, who gave us a different perspective of the war. I helped write a massive Time Line, where all participants attempted to pinpoint the exact incident that triggered the civil conflict; no one could. The only consensus was that the war was a culmination of events, and bad decisions. Now, in retrospect I realize that what we experienced was a miniature of a reconciliation discussion. We were students from Colombo, Jaffna, Batticaloa, Kandy and Galle, and Matara. Our community taught me a lot of important lessons about conflict: that this conflict was the culmination of many events; there is no ‘us’ versus ‘them’; that suffering is universal and it doesn’t matter where you’re from – if the conflict affected you, that affect had a forever kind of effect. This community we created is still in touch, but not as active as we should be. Sadly, being teenagers got in the way of us engaging in any large scale social movement.

In terms of a communal narrative, this experience has affected me in two ways: firstly because of how my extended family rallied around my parents and helped care for us while my mother recovered. Secondly, because through this experience I met members of my IfP community, some of them still continue to work towards reconciliation and the rebuilding of the North. I have written to a few friends, asking for permission to share their stories but they are yet to reply, once they do I plan on updating the blog post to include their stories as well. In terms of the nation, there is no need for me to present a history of our country’s civil conflict. That’s a topic that’s been hashed and rehashed. Even the WTC or Galadari Bombing (as this attack is referred to by the media), is an event in our nation’s narrative that has been criticised. In any social situation, if one person brings up the topic of the civil conflict, this topic is guaranteed to trigger memories of everyone in that social group. I believe this is because the conflict has affected every Sri Lankan in some way. Also because as a community and as a nation we are all subjects within these larger narrative frameworks – we want our stories to be heard, we want to say ‘I too have been affected, here’s what happened to me’. I hope that this blog post will address another extended community and encourage the sharing of stories.

[T]he story of my life is always embedded in those communities from which I derive my identity. I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships. The possession of an historical identity and the possession of a social identity coincide . . . What I am, therefore, is in key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a history and that is generally to say, whether I like it or not, whether I recognise it or not, one of the bearers of a tradition (MacIntyre as cited in Freeman, 2002, p.202) (emphasis mine).

MacIntyre’s lines struck home because I believe that the true meaning of a self-referential writer is embodied within a larger narrative. This is why I have chosen to tell you my mother’s story through my own. I believe that the memorable stories within my family, which are related to communities and the nation, are told by every person in my family. He/She will just have a different take on the same expereince, or he/she may pick a different experience. We are all story tellers, and as the digital era evolves I believe that we will have more spaces to tell our stories, we are all auto biographers/life writers in this sense.

References

Athas, I. (1997, October 19). Operation Twin Towers: How and why LTTE did it [News]. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from http://www.sundaytimes.lk/971019/sitrep.html

Freeman, M. (2002). Chartering The Narrative Unconscious: Cultural Memory and The Challenge of Autobiography. Narrative Inquiry, 12(1), 193–211.

SecureHotel: A Specialized Muir Analytics Threat Report. (2016, October). Retrieved October 1, 2018, from http://securehotel.us/features/15-october-1997-bombing-of-the-galadari-hotel-colombo-sri-lanka

Smith, S., & Watson, J. (2001). Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. University of Minnesota.

Vittachi, I. (1997, November 2). Green Berets unlikely target of Tigers, says US [News]. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from http://www.sundaytimes.lk/971102/news2.html

Telling a Story: The Personal, The Communal and The National I am a blogger. No, I’m not an avid blogger, but it is a medium I am familiar with.

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