Yo fam, not gonna lie, life’s been a bit mad lately. I’ve missed writing newsletters, though - I’ve also missed having the ability to write (relatively) well, so don’t expect that from this letter. Words have failed me as late which is abit worrying, since it’s a. my livelihood and b. the only outlet I have to release negative emotions from my body.
Heart palpitations are something I experience now and again, but they became a constant recently, my heart skipping, jumping and thudding while my body tensed, bracing, waiting for the heart to collapse. Eventually, I got scared. So many of my family members have died from heart related woes - deaths by misadventure, heart failures - that I got on a bus to a&e on my own, too embarrassed to tell anyone. Waiting there with a tube in my arm and ECG stickers stuck to my chest, the fire alarm went off. False alarm, probably. Then I saw the fire engines roll up, fighters coming out with their ladders and fluorescent jackets, patients being pushed out of the sliding doors rolled on stretchers and wheelchairs, throwing up into those brown paper bowls, blood trickling from their foreheads. I went up to a paramedic.
“Can you remove this? I want to go home,” I whined, pointing at the IV tube buried deep in my ulnar vein. “Sorry love, ya gotta wait,” the guy said, and he wasn’t sorry at all, and I didn’t blame him, actually. But my heart palpitations picked up abit more, running a marathon with nowhere to go, jumping over hurdles invisible as I stood in the dark in a hospital parking lot, blue lights flashing on the floor.
I debated pulling the tube and watching blood spurt out, thick, red, beautiful. The human body is amazing, isn’t it? Let me see the blood. Let me remind myself I’m only human, because right now I feel like I can feel the weight of the universe, and that can’t be possible. Maybe watching my own blood flow out of my pierced skin will remind me that I’m just one human, and it’s never that deep. God, give me perspective. I traced my finger over the IV tube and decided not to be an idiot yet.
The doctor called me in eventually. Iranian, short, smiley, the uncle at the function that is actually a pleasure to speak to. “So yeah, you’re stressed,” he said, before running through my family’s mental health history, the suicide attempts, the medications I’ve been given over the years. “Time to get you back on the sertraline,” he suggested, before wishing me well and letting me go.
But I didn’t want the sertraline this time. I want to be able to live without aid. Around this time I started to think ‘wow, my writing is fucking shit’. So what am I here for then? I’m working it out and boy, aren’t we all right now. So I stopped writing for a bit, stopped caring, stopped taking care of others in the way that I’m used to. I haven’t got the capacity to sacrifice myself for others anymore, in any way.
Studies on how the pandemic warped our worldview, ripped away everything we ever knew, ripped away physical contact and routine will be studied intensely, and I wonder what it will say. That we were pushed to carry on for the ‘economy’ (who even is she? don’t you think it’s mad, that our lives are defined by abstract constructs that actually do not exist in any tangible way?) - eat out, don’t eat out, stay home, but go to work, carry on as normal, but nothing is normal. It was never normal in the first place.
So yeah, clarity and perspective is returning to me, slowly, surely. I see it in my view and my hands are reaching out for it. I’ve been working on a few newsletters and I can’t wait to release them - I’m getting married in five days though, so maybe after that, lol.
I did write something for i-D last week though, and I’m really proud of it. I wrote angrily about the male gaze and modesty, sustainability and how vulgar excessive luxury consumerism really is. You can read it HERE.
Also, I wrote a piece a long time ago about what it’s like to be a person of colour on public transport, which you can read HERE. Something reminded me of that piece lately - I went to a shop to buy some wedding bits and I was spoken to so abrasively it reminded me that wow, as a woman of colour, I’ll forever be treated like I’m a little rough around the edges. I’m used to it, but I’m so tired of being spoken to aggressively, like less than a woman. People of colour are trained to be resilient because we have to be, but I wish I lived in a world that would let me be vulnerable. But I don’t, and I think I’m only just coming to terms with that now. There’s strength in stoicism. That being said, I refuse to let the world we live in take away my optimism. Can’t come and let myself be defeated, never G.
Anyway, see y’all real soon.
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Stay strong girl 💪🏽❤️
❤️ here for you always.