darkness

Every time I think there is light at the end of the tunnel I make the mistake of blinking. In a flash the tunnel shudders and grows and suddenly an expanse of twists and turns is all I see.

I cannot find the light. I cannot find the light at the end of a work project or team or even stint. I cannot find the light in people, blessed as I am to have such lovely ones with me. I cannot find the light in books or research or giving tuition or cooking. I cannot find the light at the end of the bottle, although with every glass everything around me shimmers and hints at the possibility of light.

When I am with people I smile and make jokes and do the best impression I can of Tinker Bell, light and pretty with a light inside of me.

When I am alone I realise how familiar I am sitting in the dark. I am Bell in all her jealousy, her spite, her frustration, that comes sputtering out in huge choking heaves.

If you get used to darkness you don’t worry about not reaching the light

Me

My therapist tells me to write more.

Isn’t it your outlet, she asks

But I always falter when I start something, let my cursor hover, blinking

Blinking

And then I leave it

I don’t know what to say

Today as I obsess again over all the things I should have said right

It occurs to me how continually unsettled I am in my own skin

How I shrug and pull and

Nothing is comfortable, or isn’t for very long

I try to drink less but I am happiest just slightly buzzed, just that much less conscious of every racing thought

I don’t know how to be me

again

my therapist asked if i’ve started writing again

my therapist asked if i’ve started writing again, again

no

no, again

she asks if i’ve read any fiction

no, again

she still smiles but i wonder if this is another way i am a disappointment

again

trauma

I’ve never cut, having always been too afraid to see my skin tear open and spill red.

Yet yesterday I lay in bed, feverish, shocked into awakening, going through the play-by-play of everything that happened. Every scene a cut, a wound ripped afresh. Each take the one where I should have ran away.

I remember joking once, about how you’ll be in the news and I’ll say hey i went to school with that guy! You said that’ll be sad, it means we’ll no longer be friends.

Called it.

Victim-survivor

I use the term “victim-survivor” in my research because, unwieldy as it is, either part of its whole fails to capture how I personally feel. “Survivor” is popular, and I like its inherent connotation of living despite the pain and fighting the odds. But for me, it’s important to bring in the idea of victimisation, to recognise the power dynamics inherent in sexual violence. I reject the passivity of being just a “victim”, but I also resist painting over the very real forces of power underlying such violence.

surviving sexual violence

My therapist tells me to make sure I look after myself. It isn’t easy to be researching something so painful and close, she says. I tell her I will, of course.

I brace myself especially everytime I go back to my data, but sometimes i get blindsided. I am rereading Liz Kelly’s text on Surviving Sexual Violence because she has broken down the importance of naming, she goes through how we cope by forgetting and minimising. I read quotes taken from her data in 1991, and suddenly my stomach heaves and I taste my breakfast coming back up. I begin to tear up but I must keep it down because I am at the dining table and my family is arrayed around me.

“A social definition/name makes clear that others may share this experience, thereby undermining the isolation of feeling that you are the only one. A social definition also suggests the possibility of a social cause.” (Kelly, 1991, p. 141)

But this is what I’m doing it for. For a social definition so I can begin to articulate and convey the pain, the fear, the nausea. So I can take a stab at tracing out the walls of resistance and mapping the barriers ahead. So, I pray, that others after me have more words and weapons, and we forge ahead a little more everyday.

grit

Reading about other Singaporeans heading back to London and I feel so hollow inside. These are people with spouses and/or jobs there, so they have hella better reasons to go back, but the quiet, ambient pain I’ve been living with has reared its head again.

I signed away any easy way back to England two weeks ago, when I submitted my part-time work contract. It’ll be a relief to earn something again so I can ease my mind on money worries at least, but there goes any hopes of hopping onto a plane if I feel like it once any travel restrictions ease. But I cannot shake the dread that my world shrank so much, not just in geography, but in ambition, when this virus hit. I am thankful to have a job, but. But it is not what I want to do long-term, but my heart does not lie here. I only hope I constantly dwell on this discontent such that it will push me along, push me further, rather than allow myself to wallow and become resigned. Also crossing my fingers real hard to restart tuition and take on new students because it’s what I missed most about being in Singapore.

Counselling has been helpful, if only because there is a gentle face on my screen nodding and asking careful questions, someone who doesn’t know me or my family and whose preconceptions I don’t have to grapple so much with. Thankful for the small blessings. (Also, given the price of counselling outside, at least my school fees are going somewhere ha ha ha.)

Now just let me out of this cage to see the people I love and I think I’ll survive.

 

help me

I feel like I worked so hard to pull myself out of the pits just to be kicked in again by the G. For the life of me I don’t see how hair colouring services are fine, but giving allowances to meet a non-family someone else from outside your household with necessary precautions taken isn’t. Take England’s relaxation to allow you to meet ONE person from outside your household in public places like parks, so long you keep a distance.

Anyway. I am trying, trying but with no end or hope in sight I can’t do this anymore. I am tired of my unproductivity, of zoning out at my work or dissolving in tears. I am tired of a family who doesn’t understand, and I am tired of being the only one who can’t venture out legitimately for work.

Just had coffee with my daddy after he came back from work and filled him in on well, the recent shitstorms. Recent being last night’s and this morning’s. And just like that, I realised, they really are still dependent on me to pull this family together.

No, it’s not healthy and I am not trying to do this alone. I have so much hope pinned on a Zoom therapy appointment coming up the week after, even though I tell myself not to set my expectations so high. Especially not after the disaster that was the national care helpline in Singapore. I’m just looking forward to speaking to someone neutral or who doesn’t know me, I suppose. I’ve held off telling so much to my friends only because, well, how much dirty laundry does one want to parade in front of people, particularly people who know your family?

Fingers crossed.

 

fatigue

I am so very weary.

The past seven weeks have passed in a blur.

I am buckling under the mental and emotional load of being at home. I fought so hard for my year away from home because it was what I needed to do for myself, and it’s been so very difficult being back.

Some stories are not mine to tell, so we’ll leave it that my sister has a mental health diagnosis, and one that my parents, my mother especially, don’t know what to make sense of. It is draining being in the middle, playing peacekeeper. When I was in England I still had to do it, relaying messages, asking questions by proxy. But at least the time difference and distance gave me some blessed space.

Two, three, four (I really can’t keep track of time now) weeks ago we had a quarrel with my mother. We told her, not for the first time, that her constant criticism and comments on how we look, how we behave etc take a toll. It was revolutionary to her. She didn’t, doesn’t understand. It was news to her that her picking on my weight drove me to disordered eating. She doesn’t understand that words can hurt, apparently. She is sorry that we’re “so sensitive” – the greatest non-apology. That night marked a turning point. There are too few fucks left for me to give.

I am antsy all the time. I can’t focus on my work. My mother and sister take it in turns to come to me to bitch and complain about each other/my father/my aunts. I have never wanted this degree less, or been less sure of how I will attain it.

I am so very weary.

thirteen

Dreamt a l l night last night about this boy I had a massive crush on in Secondary One/Two and woke up really bemused. I don’t have him on social media so there is no reason for me to even think of him but maybe the heart wants what it wants LOL

All the same, it was technically a ~ good ~ dream I suppose, even if I am mad knackered today. I will always think of him fondly because he was kind and gentle and I cannot emphasise enough how important those qualities are, especially when I lack them myself. AND I FINALLY GOT TO HOLD HIS HAND HA HA HA even if it was literally in my dreams

I can’t believe I was half my current age when I liked him. Yesterday my mum and I were talking about TJ and she was speechless when I reminded her I first entered the school 11 years ago. Where has time gone?? And why did growing up include this stupid 2020??