Learning to Harmonize
♫ MJRH (Lifafa)
Most people make me anxious. I remember the first time I, a hopeful and optimistic teenager, began recognizing what I referred to as adult “weirdness”: the obvious projection of people’s shadows. As a child, I would frantically and unashamedly call my mother multiple times from our landline — like an anxious-attached lover — had she not returned home by my bedtime. Some days, afraid of being bullied by white children, I would complain of a stomach ache, and after pushing me to go for at least half the day, she would finally give up and tell our cook to make khichri for me. I maintained a loving (often avoidant) distance from behaviours that heightened my anxiety, but now, as an adult, I am finding it harder to grasp these realizations, and instead, I completely lose my grounding without putting in the self-care that I deserve.
Dissociation is a difficult thing for me to understand. I know I experience it often, moments where I find it difficult to absorb, respond, and where I feel as if I’m floating through the room — unseen, wishing to disappear completely. But then there are times of heightened anxiety where I will do anything to prevent being alone. The terms ‘introverted’ and extroverted’ are binaries, and I can attest to fluctuating between both modes throughout my life, depending on how my mental health is. There have been weeks where I am constantly surrounded by people, expelling energy, enjoying myself and experiencing new things, yet while also being in overly stimulating environments, lacking the time to process my emotions, drinking too much alcohol or smoking a few too many js, all of which have eventually lead to severe burnout.
My most recent relationship, while submerged in issues stemming from our own individual traumas and dysfunctional attachment styles, ended because of a lack of prioritizing self-care and time spent apart. What I have learned and remembered during this time alone, is that I function better (metaphysically) when I spend ample time alone. This past year especially, I have denied myself the very one thing I require to function healthily: uninterrupted solo time where I am not anticipating anything other than my thoughts to come in the present moment. Nowadays, I appear to be having far too much of it, but I spent so long denying myself the opportunity because of guilt, and an inherent fear of loneliness. The current global health crisis was inevitable and also what we desperately need. To pause, breathe, and reflect. To forget about money, machines, and other masculinities. I hope we grow and learn from this. I hope it turns out better than we could have ever imagined.
Most people make me anxious because my anxiety has worsened over time. As a teenager, I rebelled. I was raised in a home with men who were entitled and behaved as if the world owed them. That was what I learned, too, that if I behaved the way they did, I could also garner that faux respect and adoration. This especially felt true throughout years of being bullied. Being the “nice” new girl never worked, I was picked on until I began to defend myself and behave in the ways I had seen men in my family (and those closely connected to it), react to perceived disrespect. As a survival skill, I eventually taught myself how to conceal and distract my agonizing anxiety with rage, pride, and recklessness. I became the bully.
In his book The Body Keeps The Score, Dr. Van Der Kolk writes:
“Talking about painful events doesn’t necessarily establish community — often quite the contrary. Families and organizations may reject members who air the dirty laundry; friends and family can lose patience with people who get stuck in their grief or hurt. This is one reason why trauma victims often withdraw and why their stories become rote narratives, edited into a form least likely to provoke rejection.”
Essentially, “log kya kehenge?”
I started therapy for the first time in November. For years, deeply embedded conditioning told me it was shameful and prevented me from taking the initiative. So far, it has been worth it, even if my mind is on repeat, undergoing the same trauma again and again. How could I ever be happy, before and after this pandemic? I have always been miserable. My mother once told me I had depressive tendencies even as a young child. At twelve years old, I became an existentialist and an atheist. The modern world has always been dystopian (always is such a heavy word because it tries to prove the concept of universal truths). My inner child points her finger at me and says “Ha! I told you so. We were so privileged. I knew everything was a lie.” Have we been fed lies this entire time? Do they inject panic into us through headlines and inauthentic imagery? Has all the progress we’ve made just been a facade, a manipulation tactic by the media and the imperialist white supremacist patriarchy?
I desperately want to believe we haven’t surpassed healing. What is happening now may not be irreversible. We need our eco-systems. We need community, collectivism, and care. Abusing our privilege reminds me of a young male elitist from Islamabad, who says things like “tum jaantay ho mere baap kaun hai!”, and refers to himself as a hedonist. We have been hedonistic with our world for far too long, and we are collapsing. Late capitalism is finally being exhausted, as it was certainly meant to. This is the result of our reckless privilege. The planet has been abused, and now, in its trauma body, like Sufiya Zinobia in Salman Rushdie’s Shame (one of my favourite books, I reference it often) — it is turning into a burning, violent blush and exploding.
Energy is essential. It is everywhere. Our collective energy has weakened alongside the Earth’s. Without her and without moving towards divinity, we will cease to exist. If the current situation worsens, or if my Uber Eats driver wearing gloves and standing as far away from me as he possibly can become the norm, I will inevitably feel guilt for the way I’ve spent the past few years of my life — for being in denial of my privilege, and for not being as loving as I could have been towards myself and others. And my God, irrespective of what it has looked like over the years, I have lived an abundant life.
During my A-Levels in Dubai, I recall a classmate from a very wealthy family ask what car my mother drives. I replied, “a BMW 330i”. He scoffed and told me that was a mediocre choice. Capitalism. Many years before that incident and during my parent’s separation, my father successfully managed to gaslight me into hating my mother. He once said, “your mother only drives a BMW because she sleeps with Sheikhs, did you know that?”. Ingrained misogyny and hedonistic gluttony have devoured our world.
Growing up in Dubai, in a British school, amongst white peers — I was convinced I was inferior for being darker than them, quieter, and spending my time building homes for beetles (while some boys crushed them with twigs out of sheer sadistic pleasure). Their racism felt unchangeable. As an adult, I saw the way entitled Westerners spoke to South Asian workers. The Emiratis did the same as if they were mimicking their colonizer. Our colonizers. People with whom I share a language and a skin tone, dehumanized and demonized. My class privilege has prevented me from ever knowing what it feels like to have your humanity stripped from you, repeatedly, and I may never be able to truly empathize with my community. Am I lucky? All I know is that I am angry. Let us learn from this. If there’s one thing I’m learning, it’s how to harmonize before it advances into a burning fury of resent.
In place of Radcliffe’s arbitrary lines, the subcontinent could have thrived (in harmony?). If it weren’t for Partition, the birth of nationalism, and the cataclysmic gender-based violence that occurred as a result of patriarchal colonialism — perhaps my paternal grandfather would have never been in the Pakistan Air Force, and perhaps my maternal grandmother, a Muhajir, would have borne less trauma to pass down to the similarly displaced women who came after her. Then perhaps, just perhaps, my life would have looked starkly different than it does right now. Perhaps many of ours would.
A few weeks ago, I was going down the stairs of a TTC station during rush hour. An elderly woman of colour was making her way up. Chaos ensued around her — people shoved past her, rushing their way to catch the train while she struggled to hold the railing, no space being made for her. I gave her my arm and helped her walk up the stairs, even though I knew I would run late if I missed the oncoming train. She smiled and thanked me. This does not make me exceptional nor a good samaritan. This is the bare minimum. However, had this been now, would she allow me to help her at all?
A week after that, I found myself in a slightly dodgy bar near the theatre my comedy performance was booked. Fifteen minutes before performing, I witnessed a heinous act of anti-Asian racism and misogyny by two extremely drunk white men. Ten minutes before I had to perform, my anger found its way into a panic attack. I pushed it aside and managed to make others laugh, even if I was screaming internally. Sadly, these events are not novel to contemporary society. The violence has been cyclical.
Most people make me anxious because of my own positionality, and capitalism has sold us the idea that money is all we need. Money only temporarily allows me to feel free. Nothing else has, other than helping and being helped without genuinely expecting anything back (the dopamine is great, though). Aries season has begun, spring has sprung, and it’s time to fuck shit up in the best way possible. We need to end this cycle of transactional expectation. We need to take care of one another, including the plants and the animals because that’s all we truly have. Ecological imperialism has been fucking shit up since the 16th century (that’s 500 years of penetrating the Earth). Now, we need to nurture her the way she is owed and deserves.
In Donna Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, she writes:
“Eichmann was astralized right out of the muddle of thinking into the practice of business as usual no matter what. … The result was active participation in genocide.”
A friend of mine recommended I read Borges during this time. I also recommend this book. Finally, my mind has quietened down, and the silence has moved away from being frightening to blissful. With all the noise in my life, I sometimes forget how much I love reading. Books have always been my true love, my saviour from the ugliness that surrounds me, yet what also coaxes me back into the world the way I want to see it, yet perhaps also the way that I am supposed to.
Stay safe and the fuck away from people, question everything, and wash your hands.
Imported from substack.
