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Walking out of the shadows.

Sometimes our shadows are the things that own us, rather than the other way around.

Massage the dark parts, and replace it with light.

This picture was taken in Taiwan six years ago.

I was really lonely, then, felt really lonely, was really lonely. I didn’t know what to do about it.

I didn’t really know what the definition of a human being was. I think in this picture I was still terribly lost. I think the construction of a human being is complex:

There are so many ways to make a human. Out of their complex trauma, and maybe out of their self emerges a real sense of who they are, and it could take as long as twenty or thirty years before this happens.

We can act out from a place of hurt or a place of cold, ad that was where I acted out from for the first 29 years of my life, from 0 (I don’t remember, really) to 29.

TRIGGER WARNING: Content NSFW and for people who have abusive pasts

It’s birthday month. For me, birthdays, since 1986, lasts from August 8 to August 18, and it’s not something I can change.

I never change it, though, and I don’t know why. Instead I just celebrate two birthdays.

My panic attacks have been getting worse. I like to relate this to my ‘fear of the clock’ but I am not sure. It just occurred to me that I have never liked to get my nails done- that feminine act of sitting in front of someone for a really long time- I’ve always preferred to do it myself.

I realised this when I was with my aunt the other day. She has always tried to live her life perfectly- following all the rules. I think this is the reason she dislikes me- I’ve decided to follow none of the rules, and I don’t seem to be apologetic about them.

I think this is the reason I hate being labelled. The tight grip of my family, the demented way in which I had to perform a Self. THERE IS NO SEPARATE SELF, my family seemed to bellow.

I’m as sick as they come. I think people close to me are going to die. I peep through the window when they’re home 1 minute late, I used to sleep on the floorboard outside my parents room in case they died in the night. Why do I think that?

If everyone I am close to is going to to die, then wouldn’t that make me alone in the world?

I had hardened my heart to this reality. I had been abused, too, at a young age. I guess for a long time I had accepted this- not the abuse, but the fact that things were never going to go well for me. In the words of my therapist, I had lived in a basement, a dark place, literally because that was all my parents could afford as immigrants, but I also had a dark place inside of me.

And I liked to keep myself there.

The work I’ve had to do over a lifetime is to get myself out of there. This obsession that I am not loved, liked or appreciated, which becomes a recurring cycle all by itself.

I experience Love as Tragedy. We’ll give you everything, but you are ours. You can never leave. You will never leave.

My grandma expects perfection. She does/did in all her children. My aunt never saw me. For some reason they were also touching me, caressing my hair without my permission, putting an arm around me without consent…

Her obsession of me and big cats: Sending me pictures of cats and tigers,

This is why I have been vigilant for so long in my life.

That kind of hyper-arousal doesn’t help anybody. The cauterized heart doesn’t help anybody. And if you had my experience with women, you probably wouldn’t trust them, either.

Except my therapist is trying really hard for me to trust her. She wants me to know that our relationship isn’t just about money, that something about us has connection. I don’t want that to be the case. That is one scary thing to acknowledge. Yet, when she posed the possibility that she could die, I became depressed.

woof it’s been a lot

The stories that I want to write and the voices of the characters, seem to swarm me almost into madness when I am on deadline for something else, in this case polishing film subtitles for a Canadian director.

I feel like the world has successfully put me back into a box, put me back in my place. It’s very good at it. I remember when I first started to do Yoga, CrossFit and training for marathons (yes it’s hard to imagine I did all of that!), when the world stopped take take taking from me — asking me to give give give —

I think this is a woman’s problem — giving so much that you can no longer give anymore. And who puts down the brakes, who brakes it for you at all?

In some ways I realised how lucky I was to be living with my grandparents each and every summer. It is the most glorious of places to live– to live there with them. In other ways it was horrendous. The separation, the anxiety– all of it. The going away, like a gutwrenching pain. (I guess I have to explain this pain somehow.) Part of growing up with grandparents as parents? Death!! Death of course. Early death, early death.

This was a draft of a piece I had written for the New York based magazine n+1 and I guess I had continued to write on the draft. The bit that intrigues me the most is the “early death,” part, and it’s something I’ve been thinking on the past few days.

I haven’t written because I connected Google Analytics and saw that there were 1000 visitors through the time I was blogging.

That’s a lot. I hope to resume the blog in July, if you’re reading. 🙂

My aunt sent me this photo over Children’s Day. I’m almost 34.

Thought I would post a picture of me in Amed, Bali, Indonesia, during the first quarter of 2018, when I still had blue hair.

I had travelled to a cottage on the tip of the island, to stay for 4/5 nights, alone. I had gone to Bali alone, stayed a few days at the Yoga Barn in Ubud, and then taken a car to the fishing village. I had just started CrossFit, plus doing about two years of running (including half-marathons), I felt strong.

Once I got there, it was raining. And I remember the Indonesian housekeeper motorbiking me to the market for vegetables, and it was pouring down with rain. The rain soaked into my backpack and my laptop (I had put a plastic bag around my computer) and she was alarmed, but it was fine.

The other ‘gardener’ stayed in a shack in the garden. There was almost no one around but there were expats nearby in a villa, so I felt safe. I locked up myself every night. There was a pool that was just next to the ocean, and I fell asleep to the waves from the ocean every night.

Why had I gone? I had wanted to finish writing my novel. But as it turned out, I had only started it.

When i was growing up, i didn’t understand this.

Sometimes I find stories that are similar to my own. This one, where the person grew up in a religious cult, is not that dissimilar to mine.

What is it that is similar about being in a cult and my family? Is it the boundaries where you are not allowed to step outside the box and define who you really are for yourself?