The dominoes may be falling, but it is not at all pretty.
Yesterday was way too fucking intense. I have not cried that fiercely in a really long time, but I guess this is also the point.
Processing it all is nothing short of illuminating.
But I will also insist on calling it indisputably tragic, as I no longer care about what anybody else thinks. I know what I live because I have lived it.
I have two blogs to write now. This one and another one on unpacking.
My facial injuries at birth were exceptionally painful, but because the X-ray caused stomach weakness and constant vomiting, my body was not able to find the rest to heal. A baby brain was also unable to process anything.
Thus, as we know, my body developed around these injuries.
However, I did try to express my pain to others; to my family, friends, teachers and coaches, and this is where the monster narrative really works.
Because I was so talented, nobody understood the anxiety and fear that my pain caused me and they all thought that I was just overreacting.
Our bodies really are fucking amazing, as mine had a crazy response.
Because my pain could not be socially recognised, my body somehow convinced itself that it did not exist.
My pain did a Keyser Söze and created a monster to bury it.
This is why I have been unable to physically process it until now, after years of daily ice baths and contrast therapy, often several times a day.
I needed to physically discover the how and why.
That’s why I have always felt so worthless, as my actually lived narrative has ‘no right to exist,’ not only socially but also internally.
I fucking hate that expression, but it is appropriate here.
My body really did not know that healing a birth injury was an option.
I had to keep everything secret and hidden because trying to talk about it always makes it worse. Why? People usually respond in two ways.
One is ‘I understand,’ as happened with the energy call centre on Wednesday.
The second is by trying to show love by minimising my pain.
This may be what the koala did.
After moving to London, another way became prominent: silent discomfort.
That is why I left the city I fell in love with after only six years.
It broke my heart and I always wanted to return.
But with a monster inside of me, my life is ridiculously dramatic because I cannot properly defend myself and get into extreme situations.
So, for example, when I lived in a squat, the previous tenant stole all of the money I had saved doing my sandwich round that summer.
To afford my undergraduate studies, I cycled around Westminster every morning to sell lunch to office workers, alongside working a café job near Goldsmiths. Both were cash in hand and for some reason the bank declined me when I had first tried to open an account in the UK.
It was only about £600 (equivalent cost now about double).
However, the guy came back one evening with a knife and kicked open the front door screaming that he was going to kill us.
Thank God my housemate immediately called the police. They arrived just as we were escaping out of the ground floor window.
That was fucking terrifying though, as he was really high.
And they did not press charges because we were in a squat!
I experienced burglary again, about two years later, three days after moving into my own flat for the first time. The thief pretended to be a window cleaner to enter the house and somehow jimmied the glass on my door to open it and steal my IBM laptop computer, a graduation present.
Even with my mum’s company discount it was super expensive, as that was seriously new technology back then.
More importantly, however, it stored all of my creative writing on it that was not backed up because it was early days. I had taken a course at Goldsmiths after graduation and was trying to make a go of writing as a career. I had about a dozen short stories and several novels started.
I took this as a sign from God that I would never be a writer.
When my home was burgled again over another year later, they hacked open the door with a shovel and went through everything like a tornado. They stole a crappy used computer my father had handed down to me and my passport, along with my music collection – probably like a hundred CDs, a soundtrack that I desperately needed to assuage my monster pain.
I now listen to music nonstop for my healing.
So that burglary actually felt the most violating.
All of this is shitty for anybody to go through. But I was already living in a body that did not feel safe, so not living in a safe home was overwhelming.
I left the UK shortly afterwards because I could not talk to anybody about any of this. British culture was just too uncomfortable with my emotions.
So, my survival skills again kicked in and convinced me that this trauma, like my pain, was not real. And my body never learned that it could heal.
This is why I subsequently have had so many housing panics.
Including about doors.
And also why I cry about being a fucking loser who is worthless.
But then I threw myself into researching the suffering of others. I went to Senegal, Iran, Lebanon and South Africa to learn about Islamic ideas and practices of social justice through a politics of love.
I was and am inspired by theologies of liberation.
Unfortunately, all of these experiences were also deeply traumatic.
This included a housemate in Beirut trying to prostitute me. Really.
But the geopolitics and sectarianism were even more dark.
So, when I tried moving back to the city I had previously fallen in love with, it was a disaster. Very few people working in the music and publishing sector wanted to hear anything about my research experiences, thus they too became stored trauma that I was never able to heal from.
When people were interested, it was not to listen but to brag about their own knowledge, as the Middle East was becoming a popular social issue.
Men were particularly good at this.
For the first time in my life, I felt so alienated that even my fawning personality could not help me out of this social dynamic.
I could not control my anxiety and worthlessness. I lost friends.
Diana, Emily, Roger and Paul were different.
Most of my academic colleagues, on the other hand, were also horrible.
Because I am female, White and a seemingly able-bodied American, I was almost always viewed with suspicion by my peers in Critical Muslim Studies.
Especially the wealthy ones, which is insane.
I am not going into any of that here as it requires another post, but they often made me feel like an Orientalist and cultural appropriator.
And many are now in the full-time employment that I was denied, achieving this feat without having written any books (not to mention the quanitity and quality of articles and reports I also authored).
I am pleased that I left academia, as it made me feel worthless.
Anyway, all of this is why I went crazy yesterday.
It may have been silly, but the locksmith being late without letting me know put the very delicate balance my nervous system is currently able to realise into such a frenzy that I started seizing. The logistics do not matter.
I could not breathe in my own home and that was disempowering.
So, the locksmith doubly disregarded my lived experiences by not only playing down my health problems but also not asking a single question about Gaza, which will be the subject of my next blog unpacking.
I finally started physically processing all of this yesterday, but it will take time.
I do know that people care about me, but only in theory.
Because of my lived experiences, I really do feel unloved and even disdained.
I experience life like I do not matter.
What I am going through right now reinforces this narrative too.
This is because my injuries happened at birth. This is what not being able to self actualise literally, physically means – my preconscious body feels worthless because it does not know that healing is an option and every time that I reach out for understanding, things only get worse.
The koala, without realising it, almost made everything permanent.
But my friends are also a problem for me.
Luckily, my body is feeling the family bonds healing.
I still feel suicidal when in a seizure, but for the first time in my life I am also bodily conscious that this impulse no longer makes sense.
My preconscious is discovering the power of healing.
Society not only created my monster that prevented me from healing previously, but also unintentionally blamed me for that.
And it continues to do so, which is why I socially isolate.
This dynamic will never, ever stop.
No matter how hard I try to explain.
It just is and always will be.
The hurt I initially felt sending panicked emails to my lovely landlord is one hundred percent legitimate given my previous requests went unanswered.
My body is already in a state of panic trying to heal.
It may not seem like a big deal, but it is. Asking over and over makes it worse.
Please just fix the front gate to my property so that I can live in safety?
I need to feel protected enough to experience my pain now.
Because none of it is my fault.
I do not choose to be like this.
I am trying to heal from something indisputably tragic.
Last night, while crying hysterically to finally process this physical reality, my new mantra became: ‘Don’t let the crazies win’.
Because not recognising this pain is fucking crazy.
My painful body is exactly what it was and always should be.
Loveable.