perhaps rearranging the furniture is not what is begging to be done right now.
it is sunday and my brother gives me a call early in the morning, he claims to not be feeling well. in my state of not quite yet awake, i ask him what is the matter, and he goes on and rambles off something or other about gauss's theorem. i love mathematics, i love physics, but for crying out loud, why do i have to deal with gauss's theorem on an empty stomach?
while my brother's struggle and worries are real, i can not but prevent the thought that i wish that all my troubles were to have forgotten about gauss, his theorem, or anything to do with mathematical physics. in our last call we had just discussed his discovery of line integrals...
but what troubles do i have?
let me count the ways, not. it was a rough summer, and it was a good summer. the kitchen sink got unclogged, and all the backed up garbage got regurgitated right on to my face. it has not been a pretty sight, and it feels wonderful to get rid of so much doubt, frustration, and plain suffering.
perhaps i have yet to find out why i am such a damned altruist, but what i have found out is that i once was seven years old, and that my instinct served me like god could never have dreamt of serving me, it protected me from abuse. the other nasty fact here is that although having escaped major physical abuse, i did not escape the psychological trauma of the situation. it is easy to look at my life and admire the wonder of it all, and see nothing other that some wonderful academic laurels, a pretty face, and a young looking slim body. freud here or there, once again, a silly dead man, but the ego, the id, and the superego seem all rather useless in trying to somehow just come to terms with what is an old and deep psychological injury. it is a bit like a fractured bone that never healed properly, you limp along, you also get places, but hell... it gets only worse with time, not better, it hurts, each day it hurts more, you get used to the pain, you think it is normal, and then one day it gives to the strain, it breaks again, and then you can not walk at all. in unclogging my proverbial kitchen sink this summer, i re-broke the bone, now i am trying to mend it all together so that i can again walk straight, or answer the question of what it is that i want and go on to achieving it.
i got another call this afternoon, one that i had much looked forward to, and i found my mind too preoccupied to do the other due justice in listening. the other was preceptive enough to, in my tone of voice, discover a certain reserve. it is true, it is there. he asks what it is that i am doing this week, and i know what i need to do, and i do not feel like doing any of it. first i have to screw together that re-broken bone that was first broken when i was seven years old.
at the ripe young age of 48 she finally decides that she wants to settle down, and make no compromises on the way. this whole exercise of considering the possibility that perhaps i have a choice, is being more of a challenge than i had expected it to be. i suppose that i am not quite as cool as some of the characters that i create in my fiction. in the process i end up having to face the question of "what do I want?" and frankly i have never had much of an answer. i am discovering aspects of my being that i had no clue were there, and that sometimes I wish were not there. sometimes I think that psychology and trauma is the sort of thing that others deal with, and that I somehow can run away from it all. somewhere along the line I decided that I needed to be perfect, the reality is however that I am damned human and full of imperfections. i personally do not have a problem with my own shortcomings and handicaps all so natural to being human, but rarely have i found another human being capable to live, really live and accept, not just tolerate, my ways.
i know my dreams, but i do not know that person with those dreams. it is somebody whom, just to survive, i have not given much space at all. i am a woman whom i do not know. until just a few weeks ago i was a seven year old girl looking for shelter and protection. born with only one endowment, a faculty for critical thought, i stand here naked.
naked i am, and since last thursday i decided that i want to live, really live, not just survive and get by, and struggle on the plane of unconscientiousness. when is it that one knows that one has taken the decision to live, and to do so responsibly?
i do not know about your answer, i know about mine. two years ago in a moment of total emotional confusion, i took action contrary to my values, i had unprotected intercourse with someone without knowing either his sexual habits nor the status of his HIV test, if any. clearly knowledge and intelligence offer very little protection, still my total inconsequent behavior left me wondering what was going on inside my head. i can rationalize my actions, or weakness, on that moment two years ago with all sorts of good arguments about the fact that he must care about his health too. but how can i be certain of that? but shit, it is my life! do i have a secret death wish that i have not yet dealt with? if you ask me, yes, that is what i must have been walking around with for the past two years or so. for the past couple of years i have been walking around with a death wish wrapped up in a beautiful smile and articulate speech. welcome to my reality!
in trying to mend my very broken self-esteem, that bone so badly mangled as a seven year old, i decided that it was time to ask myself the question of who am i. who am i?
i know that i am honest, courteous, benevolent, loyal, courageous, honorable, but where on earth has my integrity been?
because of the various contact sports that i have practiced for over ten years, i "used" to regularly take an HIV test and practice the required hygiene to keep them negative. my last test was in the year 2000, and since then some unhealthy inconsequence in my hygienic practices had been lurking in. this is rather basic hygiene, like taking care of one's feet and avoiding mycoses, it is all about physical hygiene, and it seems that without a good healthy doses of psychological hygiene that i call egoism, it is not possible to maintain integrity. when last thursday during the 15 minutes it took the test to reveal the result, i was very present to what a fact is, what my life is worth, and that i really want that test to be negative. it was. my life is worth nothing, i want to live, i got books to write, i have love to share, and i want to die spent, loved, and in integrity with my being. a fact is not an argument, it is not conjecture, it is not inference, it is not a wish. a fact is just that, plainly so, the test was negative and in the past four months i have been back to safe hygienic practices.
it is not always as binary as with that test. however it is easy to walk around with a death wish when all a being remembers of growing up are messages that it interprets as it having no right to being alive. it is merely there and tolerated, but it would please just shut up, in case it ever has anything to say. should the being have dreams and share them, then it gets told how utterly ridiculous the dreams are, and that dreams are not important. the girl loves a part of her family and the other part tells her that they are bad and criminal. she knows them both, and abuse she has only experienced on the side that accuses, not on the side of the accused. she wonders how that can be. she identifies with the figure head of the criminals, her paternal grandfather, at his funeral she feels the pain of having lived so long away from him, and to have had so few occasions to talk to him. he had been one who had listened to her dreams, he listened and he had given those dreams a right to be.
my muse, do you understand fluage now?
rearranging the furniture is going to have to wait, i am too busy screwing together my broken bones.
Technorati Tags: abuse, alone, choice, fact, fluage, freedom, fuzzy, integrity, jihad, life, results, words
