The house is quiet. The house is so quiet that every sound within these walls touches the tips of my prying ears. The ticking clock, the occasional grunt or grumble of the refrigerator, and the trickle of a stream making its way far, far away from the mundaneness of a dreary Tuesday morning. Before you wonder if I have in fact moved my home to some place in the thick forests of France, unhurriedly rousing from winter’s fatigued slumber, droplets of pale green turning into splashes of spring, let me assure you, I have not. I am still here, safe in the pocket I have stitched for myself in this mammoth city, living in a bubble, in a little world of my own with plants, tea and love. And the sound of the stream? Well, it’s the water boiler with a newly faulty valve stowed away inside a cupboard with mirrors for doors. Everyone loves a warm shower. I do too. In fact, I am one of those loonies who take lukewarm showers even in the peak of summer. But no one, not even me, wants to see this unglamourous giant of a machine that warms our water tirelessly through the day and through the night, should we make a demand with a mere flick of a switch. The white cylindrical mass with its bigness and its thingness does not fit into my aesthetic as perfectly as it fits silently into our quotidian needs of extravagant city living. So, it gurgles away behind closed doors with a motley assortment of brushes, brooms, orphaned plastic bags and cleaning products for company. All of these everyday sounds wash over me. A jolt, a reminder of being alive, to be alive; a cue to breathe, to keep my feet firmly on the cool parquet, to feel these little black keys bow to the weight of my gentle fingertips. These sounds, they are the original soundtrack for each of my days that dawn outside the window. They make for the symphony of an ordinary background score for this ordinary existence, for this ordinary being.
But what is this ordinariness and where does it live?
A few nights ago, I slipped under my warm, fluffy duvet, feeling the clean, freshly laundered sheets against my tired skin. And then I found that I can sleep only if my hands are holding each other in a loving embrace. One way or the other. If sleep has to find me, if dreams have to make me one of their own, I need to keep my hands together, clasped tight, almost like a handshake you don’t want to let go of. Strange. But that seems to be how I have taught myself to sleep; to let go. The irony. The irony of letting go whilst keep my hands clasped tight. It is like I am unwilling to let people in, experiences in, dreams in, but still yearning to let go of myself, yearning to freefall like Tom Petty into the lap of quiet, peaceful sleep. I found this little ritual bizarre and as with every other hint of dependency, I needed to break it. In fact, I have been trying to break the habit every night since then purely out of curiosity. I have been trying to keep my hands far away from each other, spread out like an eagle soaring across a bright blue sky. I tell myself I can learn to loosen myself once again. That I can learn to find freedom from these shackles that have no name engraved on them. Nameless, faceless, meaningless shackles… But as the minutes tick away on the clock, I find my hands coming together once again, every single night, in comfort and consolation, as though an invisible magnetic force is drawing them together, a force that comforts and protects and closes life and living as the curtain falls on yet another day.
I remember the person that used to inhabit this body in the past and I remember her well. She was a friend. When this body was smaller… When this body wore little dresses and frolicked and pranced around in the sun that shone on my childhood home. She was different, she was brave and valiant, a true hero. Uncorrupted perhaps? She knew to let go, she knew to sleep with her hands and feet far away from each other. Uncaring of the world and its tumults. Unafraid of rain.
But I seem to have lost her somewhere on the way. Like all the dolls that she used to play with, she too, is gone. Perhaps dead, who knows. And this new person that lives in this 32 year old body is new and strangely familiar and unfamiliar all at once. A woman of her times. A woman who comforts herself, holds her own hand, and reminds herself of history, of her story. In this world that schools us relentlessly to be our own saviours, in this world where we learn to be our own knights in shining armours, we teach ourselves to clasp our hands and cross our legs neatly at the knee a little too tight. What am I afraid of? What am I guarding so close? A warm, beating heart, my sanity or my purity? What is it that I fear so much that I have in fact forgotten what it was like to breathe? Who hurt me so bad that I have forgotten to loosen the tense muscles that connect my neck and my shoulders even when I know I am safe? What wound me up so tight that I am almost an iron ball now, tight and small and rigid, ready to hurt before I am hurt, ready to cause pain before pain pierces into my being like a gleaming dagger. Deep pain. Unfeeling of softness, unfeeling of a cool afternoon breeze, unknowing of sweet strawberry jam. Wary of hugs, afraid of grief and heartbreak? What left me so callous and scared? Almost unhuman. Ready to strip off the brown skin on my back, ready to let go of tenderness and joy and worth… Prepared for hurt, ready to laugh at the unlaughable, ready to crush feeling with the soles of my stilettoes and still not lose balance. Prepared to trip and fall on my face, under the weight of a nasty migraine… what changed?
It is funny how much we hold back – from each other, from the world, from friends, family, from our own selves. So much is tucked away, stored securely where no light or air or love can touch those bits. So much shame, hatred and disgust is associated with such innocent parts of our mind and body that has only keep us alive and breathing to tell our tales; fragments that have only added colour to the grey of our humanity. Our ordinariness. But we choose to look away every day and now so many days have passed us by, that it’s now an old, unwavering habit. The way we look away is now convention. It is forgotten, we are forgotten, left somewhere on the wayside, like a crumpled package of secrets thrown into the hedges from a moving autorickshaw.
We hold back so much. I have been holding my stomach in for a very long time. It is something that started so long ago that I can’t put a finger on a date. But I do remember a time in my childhood when it wasn’t expected of me. The expectation to be smaller, the expectation to be tighter, tauter. When I was 11 or 12, a truly well-meaning teacher taught us the basics of good posture. Elongated backbone, shoulders back with confidence, no slouching, chin up and tummy pulled into our spines. Like most of the lessons that were dealt out to me at that age, I sucked it in like a sponge. I sucked it all in like I would my tummy through all the many revolutions I would make around the sun, all through which the world would clap for my “good posture.” We hold back so much.
We hold back so much. Yesterday, I sat on the jute mat by my large French windows for a very long time. My share of sky transformed from one shade of grey into another. Black birds and jet planes crisscrossed across the grey canvas without announcement or apology but there seemed to be enough sky for all of them. The coniferous on the other side of the stone wall has a new twiggy home nestled into its branches, one crow or two moving in and out as long as there is daylight. Both my hands felt cold against the ground, my legs relaxed and apart. Damien Jurado sang deep into my ears about love, smiles and memories. And I breathed. I breathed all the way into my belly and watched it expand like a carefree balloon under my thin t-shirt. I breathed out. Let out all the air in me, I let it all out into the Universe until my stomach caved in. I breathed in again. And out again and in again. And out again. I don’t breathe like this often, I came to realise. I use just enough air to keep me alive. I breathe air like I serve myself food at a potluck in an acquaintance’s home. A polite amount but not a morsel more. I am considerate. Thoughtful and respectful.
But yesterday, on that jute mat by the French windows, as the sun struggled to peep out of the dense rainclouds, I found myself thinking: Would there still be enough air in this world for us to breathe, if we all chose one fine morning, together, to breathe in deeply? To fill ourselves up all the way to our bellies until our waists took up a few more centimetres, until we all took up a little more space?
We should try sometime.
We hold back so much. I have known and believed that I am a little too much for most conversations. Well, I recognise that I harbour an innate tendency to slice across light, jovial conversation with questions and observations about the tenets of human condition; the common stitches that run across the fabric of our individual existences. I am intrigued by the things that nudge the unloved emotions with us. What makes us jealous? And angry and sad and greedy… I am intrigued by the ugly bits, I am fascinated by our humanness and yet I store mine deep inside a closet. I acknowledge that this could be a wee much for many people to carry or put themselves through, especially when they are more strangers than they are friends. But the folks who hold tenacious places in my inner circle know this bit about me and we laugh about it at dinner tables and otherwise. But this is still something, a part of me, that I hold back from most people whose paths cross with mine. I have come to realise that this part of me, this very part that is just “too much” or “too dense” or “too heavy” is the part I love the most about me. It makes me, me. This is the part that I would recognise as mine if I were ever to spot it under random rubble at a jumble sale. It has always been that way. For as long as I can remember. But to this day, I guard that part of me behind stubborn doors made of iron. I hold it back because I am scared it will be laughed at. Smirked at. Eyes rolled at. Scowled at. I hold back the part I am proudest about, for I don’t want to be too much, for this world teaches us far too early that it is nicer to be too small than to be too big. Too little than to be too much. So, I try. I wish I didn’t. I wish I wouldn’t.
The line by Thomas Shelby rings in my ears every so often. “Everyone’s a whore, Grace. We just sell different parts of ourselves.” It’s true. But you know what else is true? That we are all in the closet too. In this life, we keep many different parts of ourselves deep inside the closets to our name. Afraid to come out, afraid to let them out, afraid to let people see inside, lest our carefully curated, uncomfortable image should come crashing down like a flimsy deck of cards. We hold back so much from the eyes of the world. We hold back so much from our own eyes. Like the pile of laundry on the bed tastelessly hidden under a bed sheet just as the doorbell rings, we know it’s there and we hope no one raises a question about it. We hold back so much that makes us remarkable. Instead we suck our tummies in and squeeze ourselves into unremarkable spaces we have long since outgrown. I want to break that habit, I want to breathe in until my stomach fills out, I want to weird people out with uncalled for philosophy. I want to spread out like slime on the earth, with no straight lines, stretching my body and my limbs covering as much ground as humanly possible. I want to breathe out all the air in my lungs and I want to flaunt my poor little boiler, the big white thing that does not fit the “aesthetic” and yet keeps my showers warm, day and night.
Hello my people,
Have you all been well? Have you been happy every now and then?
I woke up this morning and I knew I had to write a little something to you all and I did. This is once again raw and unedited and just my way of unspooling a few thoughts that were weighing me down. There is a great deal of comfort in writing to people you know are interested in reading your work and your thoughts. This thing right here gives me so much peace to allow myself to think all that I am thinking and to even find words for tangled thoughts and emotions. So, thank you for stopping by to read me, for making me feel like somebody. Thank you for all the comments and emails that you send my way and keep them coming. It makes me happier than you know. Have a wonderful rest of the week.
Much love, xx.
Beautifully introspective! 💜