fetishized

Well maybe getting fetishized is not all that bad. At least it gives me some sort of attention. 

Even from creepy white men. Isn't it better than being ignored? Invisible? Why does it bother me?

But there is something about being fetishized that is disabling, belittling, infuriating. Those body and performance expectations makes me feel weak, unwilling and unable. I feel I am reduced to a fantasized arab male. I feel that I am a European dream in their desperate search to feel kidnapped, oppressed.  Deep inside they know they're powerful they know they have exploited us. And they want to us to take their revenge. To be humiliated by us. Spat at by us. Penetrated by us. I don't fit that role. I don't want to play your games or make your fantasies come true. I want to be myself.

I am angry at you maybe. Maybe that's why I don't care if I infect you or not. You should take care anyway. It's not my responsibility. I don't think I'm infecting you out of rage. But I don't care if you get infected. Why should I?

I am angry at your entitlement. Your privilege. Your passport. Your healthy body and your long lives. I talk to someone who's visiting their grandma or grandpa. Mine are all dead. Long dead. Most of them died in their 60s. You guys don't know how lucky you are. Even if you do. You don't stop your interrogations of us. Your violent curiosity. Your suffocating generosity. Sometimes all we need is to be left alone. Let us be whoever we want to be.

My refugee flatmate came to the brunch. I only felt safe with him. I felt understood. As if both of us saw the world for what it really is while nobody else didn't. I remembered a message a refugee left at our refugee organization office in cairo. Or maybe it was a quote from one of the refugees I met. It was "refugees are the only sane people in this world". I feel what he was talking about now. We always hear things that make us sound like we're crazy, that our suffering is not real. That we exaggerate. That it will get better soon. Thing is it can't get better or much better because once you sought refuge somewhere else, something is broken and it will never be fixed.

And then I don't know what is going on with my body. Is it the meds? Why do I feel so dull and bored? Where is the desire? The excitement? Why am I juggling between melancholy and numbness? Why can't I feel anything sometimes? Reminds of Joe screaming to her first and probably only love 'I can't feel anything'. I don't want sexuality to be alive and kicking because I want to use it. Just like I don't want to have permission to leave berlin because I am desperate to get out of it. It just feel like a prison. Like being tied down by a heavy stone. Tied down by a body that is unable to relate to other bodies. That can't see the beauty in them. That can't undress them with my eyes. That can't chase them in the streets or the dark corners. That can't go for long cruises anymore.

Oh god I miss cairo cruising.