Image by Lithalenga

I carry my Grand Mother’s big boots filled with sand on my shoulders as I navigate what balance looks like, whenever this mind whispers what never belongs to me. At times I look at what I write; my stories, my words, my theatre work, my music and feel like I have wasted so much time.

I say to myself maybe I should mirror a wall, and just be a wall and let all the mosquitoes rest on me.

It gets tiring these highs and lows which I’m in constant motion, negotiating with this body on how to exist fully in it. Without warning there comes a whisper reminding me that my body is a borrowed one. Like load shedding, something turns off without warning and leaves those who are around trying to keep the flicker going for me, so that I may possibly see where I’m heading. Sometimes I need a pause.

Here is what I mean, deadlines, dreams, hopes, stories, opportunities, emails, life, other people’s successes all of the above could it just wait for me until I come out of the devil’s armpit?

I read somewhere that; Japan takes mental health seriously to a point where a company is required to allocate time for napping… I think many of us need a napping time without missing life, possibly a national napping time. Let’s call it NNT.

I was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety and mild depression, at first I laughed it off, because I never imagined my past shadowing me and separating myself from my many selves, making me doubt and always seeming apologetic.

I was somewhere earlier today, and I mentioned something about mental illness as an important factor to focus on… It was like I was alone in a cavernous cave, with my own voice echoing back to me, like a clock ticking inside my brain, spiralling with thoughts, and more thoughts, and more thoughts. I was only met with silence… silence is like a hungry crocodile waiting patiently. It pained me to feel deeply stupid, I know that was not the intention at all, but with gaping wounds; everything else is salt.

And whenever, that happens my nights are gone, and now I use those hours in the night to write.

Trying to redirect, the busyness in my head, and ah! let me not mention the panic attacks especially when I’m about to submit, or when feedback is in the mail… one of the battles I’m facing constantly is the need to be wanted, need to be validated.

Writing scabs internalised wounds at least that is what I’m experiencing. Although it comes with critiquing— to me critique engagement will always conduct itself as reminder that the work is never good, rather not enough, no matter how much justification is done. Yes it may be true, that critique is there to make the work better, but unfortunately that only works when there is support and shared positive, and congenial engagement, and only then it works, it works when there is trust between the writer and critique person.

However, this aforementioned does not mean that I still enjoy constructive critique but when there is trust, possibly it creates a room to embrace and negotiate with ones body… reminding this body, this spirit, this energy to be kinder and loving towards learning.

I have never experience rejection because I was POC, never, but in the literary industry, publishing companies do reject works because of different race.

Nonetheless, my work has been rejected because of who I married and who my friends were… and that unfortunately happened when I was young and that happened during my mental diagnosis, that was hard.

Fair to say that every NO was a trigger—— growing up not having a stable home, being a constant reminder that my existence isn’t enough, and being an orphaned, intandane, feeling unloved; that disturbs the wound, and that wound has nothing else remaining to do than just bleed.

I made a choice long ago, that I will not try and fix myself because frankly, I don’t know how too, however I will learn to live positively with my mental illness, I will stop romancing the effect, I will not censor, how I’m feeling by lying, and stop being apologetic. Yeah… I keep apologising all the time, that is a projection of trauma. (I feel constantly that I might be wrong and to avoid being told that I was, I apologise. ideep lento!

I ‘m training to have a conversation with what I have been condition to see as a problem.

The truth is I will create, write non-stop, because I write to be read. Full stop. I write to be archived. Full stop. I’m not gonna lie about it, and pretend as if I don’t want my stories to reach readers, I do. I create to be seen and loved, I create so that my work outlive history. Yes I do.

So the conversation led me in an understanding that it is not always the external that are gate keeps, which that is often the primary factor, but there is also me and my wounds. It slows the pace down for me to reach greater potential.

But of lately I question what is that greater potential?

How can I live for the unknown…. shouldn’t I live for now and be present now… in my experience there are two types of slowness— the slow pace and then there is avoidance, procrastination, these dances very close to each other… and my conversation with my illness is that whenever it happens see it, and name it, speak the confusion, the lost, the sad, the chest pains… cry behind the door with muffled lips, so that your loves don’t hear. But cry.

This blog to exist for me and for the next person… I mean this is an online blog it’s not a chines rocket but anyway my point is, I like my creations to have a home besides my husband, my best friends and writing buddies.