An Informal and Quite Complicated Thank You

A few days ago I was feeling like my world was ending. You could see my thought process deteriorating and at one point I wrote a lot of very depressing stuff. My best friend(who will hereby be referred to as TheAwesomePossum) swooped in and jolted me awake. She sent some pretty life-changing messages (which, being who I am, I decided to ignore) where she basically said to me that I'd accepted this whirlpool of self-hate and had put myself in this state of 'omg I'm a butt'. By not appreciating myself and ignoring all the good things (which I knew I had and she knew I knew this... Which is why I love her because she knew I knew this... Confused yet :P?) and my strengths, I was consciously making the choice to bring myself into a dark pit. 

This is the part of depression which is relative to each person. I'm not saying I'm qualified to become a spokesperson about the struggle being real. Neither am I saying I am not someone you should listen to. What I'm saying is a load of bullshit that I can't word because I seem to be unable to write this fine morning-- you can bring yourself out of whatever torrential downpour of hate you've inflicted upon yourself by listening to the people around you. 

Doesn't matter why you hate yourself. If you're like me and you've got a friend like TheAwesomePossum (and I'm pretty sure you don't because she's one of a kind) then listen to them! 

I can't make sweeping statements like before where I used to cackle in the face of fear and when the whirlpool of hate wasn't something so encompassing. Those were the days when I knew that the whirlpool could be contained within the confines of the bathroom sink and when I washed my face of the tears and snot encouraged by my self-pity. Those were the times of hyperbole and exaggeration, when I could throw around terms like 'woe' and 'despair' without actually feeling them rip my chest apart. I can't say: depression is gone and I have defeated that egregious foe!!!! I know that there will be times when this black-hearted villain will creep up on me. There will be times where I will lose a few skirmishes. But in the end, I know I'll be victorious because I've got some fierce allies by my side. 

Codename TheAwesomePossum gave me a mix of tough love and cyber hugs and even though the ugly beast of depression may rear its head again, she's helped me deal it a few injuries and I don't see a threat in the foreseeable future. 

In a roundabout way I've used an extended metaphor to thank TheAwesomePossum because each time I try to start thanking her it comes out weird, like this morning's questions on trust and if she can keep my secrets -.- I'm sorry I can't articulate things properly and no, you don't have to reassure the 13 year old in me of your trustworthiness. 

And so I shall sign off leaving you all envious of me for having my wonderful friend,  TheAwesomePossum. Come to think of it, she's more of a unicorn but considering her ability to stomach the most appalling of confessions and yours truly's atrocious spelling mistakes, I know she'll appreciate the connotations behind the label and will see it as synonymous with terms like 'magic unicorn', 'sensational Sasquatch', 'cool koala bear', and most importantly: my best friend. 

Relocating Voice

Upon entering university I realized two things:

1) This is not Kansas anymore...

2) I would have to start writing in a different way to please my instructors

All of my elementary school life had been spent writing in my own voice: interposing ideas and opinions, and putting some of myself in my writing. When writing from the point of view of a character, they would have their own voice too. I was the 18th century editorial narrator and I could also switch to the omniscient narrator using the active voice with very little adjectives littered about. In high school I learned to write for different audiences while still being distinctly ME. I wrote cover letters, I wrote essays, poems, stories-- I wrote everything under the sun. Whenever I wrote I would be guided to improve my grammar, to choose better words, to fix my punctuation and to be more concise. All elements to make me a better-rounded writer and which have helped me over the years. 

Enter university life and suddenly everything familiar about my writing was being slaughtered and torn apart. What went wrong? Maybe it was because of my lack of grammar knowledge. On I went to learn about clauses, modifiers, and proper punctuation. 

Enter creative writing classes. While everyone was busy writing realistic fiction I was feverishly writing fantasy and magic realism. While everyone was connecting with the characters who were having "real life experiences" I became embarrassed to stand up and tell everyone about my personified sparrow who was bringing messages to the ex-pilot in prison. I could only choke out my story about the 18th century
French woman who had allegedly murdered her English husband and the estrangement between her and her daughter. My professor would always find something to nitpick about my writing. He labelled it as unrealistic just because I wasn't writing about separated lovers, about coercive/abusive relationships and from his point of view, I wasn't really writing what I knew. I'm sorry I did not live to your expectation of writing about an exotic Arab family with problems. Just because you tell me "you have a beautiful Middle Eastern background you can explore" does not mean I am going to write about something for you to fetishize. What I know is parent-child relationships like my historical fiction story about a girl coming to terms with her parent's past and accepting it as not a definition of her personality. What I like is magic realism like that associated with the ex-pilot and his mysterious origins. But that was not acceptable to my prof and in the end I wrote about a girl whose boyfriend cheated on her. A story that I wrote with barely any exerted effort received an A+. My other well-plotted stories received C's and B-'s. 

I decided to try out one more creative writing class but I never did change my mind about them. Everyone found me eccentric for writing fantasy. I was "funnyyyyyyyyyy" for writing a story about a lucid dreamer. In the online discussions my otherness was accentuated and I was labelled as 'that girl who has a huge imagination'. This pseudo-derogatory term was something I was supposed to accept because when I questioned it I became someone who misunderstood tone on an online discussion forum. Of course. Why should I defend myself when made inferior to what is seen as more worthy writing? Excuse me while I brush up on my guide to real life writing. I do not hate realistic fiction. However I don't see magic realism and historical fiction (among many other genres) as any less worthy of praise. The story of an individual finding their way through adolescence could be explored with high school trauma and other elements from real life experiences. But there are no rules that say I can't use a fictitious backdrop against which I can lay these struggles and have a character develop in a fantasy world just as well as they would in a high school in some part of the Americas.

I am slowly finding my way back to things I love.After shoving the inclination away for so long I've come to realize that there is nothing wrong with writing the genres I love reading. I can become a better storyteller through clarification of character intent and by plotting better-- I don't need to get rid of the imaginary worlds I've made up. The little notes with story ideas strewn over my desk can become pages of great books that others can flip through and enjoy reading and picking apart as much as I will enjoy writing them. The struggle to quell my voice is over because mine is just as good as any other. It's time to write.

Lethargy and Self-hate

It's like these past couple of days have been an emotional storm where my brain is being thrashed around in the confines of my skull. There's a hollow black part in the peripheral vision of my mind's eye. looking inside my head I am able to see my ideas ebb and flow and there's always been an almost tangible feeling of a surplus of thoughts. This past while when I retreat into my head, the blackness in the peripherals grows and swallows everything else. I'm left drowning in this darkness and I'm reminded of my lingering childhood fear of the dark. At night I'm too scared to close my eyes to have that blackness engulf my vision. I am 20 years old and I shake at the thought of sleeping without a hallway light on.

I am plagued with doubts: is this what I want to do? Do I really want to spend my life at school only to graduate then be thrown back into school again? How different is to be at the other side of the teacher's desk in the classroom? You're still being judged by snotty teenagers. I've never explored anything, done anything really spontaneous. Spontaneity and originality is me deciding to take a different bus then staring at the stops waiting to reach the right one. Spontaneity and originality is deciding to turn on my GPS location on my phone then blunder around only to give up and ask someone for directions because of my fear that somehow these directions are wrong. I am the most boring person. When I do have a new idea it is pushed down and pummelled until all that's left is a pulpy mess in my mind. It is swept into the blackness. I like to pretend that I am confident. I act it out pretty well. When people see me walking they see a proud Muslim woman who will not stand for injustice. I commit injustices against myself in my head multiple times a day.

The blackness is my waking nightmare. It's like this is a vacuum made of regrets, doubts, self-hate, and some ominous nothingness which gives voice to my new ShrugEverythingOff attitude. I remember when I used to look in the mirror to see a beautiful young woman staring back. She was even cheeky enough to wink back and laugh off the thought that there are little fairies inside mirrors with cameras who project an image back to us. Now the woman staring back has an aging hopelessness in her eyes juxtaposed against the face of a 15 year old. She doesn't feel confident. She doesn't feel beautiful. She feels ugly, hated, and disgusted with herself and how she has let this force dominate her. She gives in to fainting spells but is too scared to follow through with them and jolts awake before she flops to the floor.

I am a washed out version of myself. A photocopy that walks, talks, and acts like the old me. But on the inside I am a writhing slug letting acid eat away at its heart.

Sad

I've been feeling off lately. Ugly, unloved, and not caring enough to look for happiness. I am happy in my misery, or at least that's what I've convinced myself. 

My insides feel like they're being pounded on by a fist made of broken feelings, tears, and small slivers of glass and splinters worming their way into my pores. The pressure in my head makes my eyes swim and I see in front of me a shrieking Medusa whose hair is made of the wisps of lost dreams that floated out of my head ages ago, replaced by lethargy. My thoughts are molasses, the harder you swirl the more sticky it gets and everything good is suffocated and held down. I don't feel anything anymore. My mind is blank-- so contrary to the usual overflowing maelstrom of ideas whirling around in a typhoon-like force ready to crash and suck in energy. 

My third eye is blind. It is unseeing. I've turned into a blob who has no goals-- who shrugs at people with ambitions. Even my regular eyes have stopped registering smiles, concerned glances, secret winks. Everything glazes over and I don't have the energy to make myself focus the lens. The camera is just jostled about, barely hanging by its strap off the neck of a once-fluffy sheep. 

 My face has turned puffy because I seldom use the muscles to smile, to grimace, or to frown. I'm blander than a bowl of porridge. I live on laziness. The only place where I find solace and company is in my dreams. There no one will judge me for my freakish habits, for my strange tastes and for my absurd opinions. I wish to escape the real world without exerting any effort to vanish into the next. Nothing can console my bleeding heart.