You and I need to talk. I need to figure out my relationship with you. I
am in touch with my feelings right? I interrogate and analyze my behavior
constantly. No wonder I think lowly of my psychologist, or psycholotherapy in
general. What more can it provide? I do enough interospection all the time.
I know and recognize that you now have a hold over myself. You cloud my
days with this huge grey cloud. You darken my days. You steal energy, desire
and pleasure out of my life. I do think about death more often. Even though I
don't always crave an exit but there are times when I do want it to switch off,
or rather get switched off, sometimes by me.
I wonder when did you take it away from me? I know a certain deep seated
fear entered my life when I was raped. Something was broken even though I'm not
sure what. This terrible shake that still captures me when I think of it
sometimes. Or when I'm triggered by everyday consumption. But did it start
before that? Or after? What did listening to the stories of rape survivors who
are also refugees do to me? Did it make me angry, cynical and detached? Yes.
Was that you back then? Or was it your hands trying to snatch me into your
darkness?
the blows in my friendships were strong blows, and the subsequent phase
of being addicted to dangerous sex was probably an aftereffect. Maybe I was
trying to prove that I'm strong again.
That I survived the rape. And in the
process exposing myself to more rape, violence and theft. Oh and also HIV.
I think a lot about that time in my life after I became positive and my
goodbye time to Cairo, to the place I called home, that I had given up on
giving up on. Why do I think at that time The knowledge of departure tore me. Is
it a certain resilience that I miss? i miss a kind of resolve and determination
I felt. That my next mission was to save my life, and to save my family from
the pain of having me arrested or exposed. A certain humor I armed myself with
against the horrors of the world.
It was my arrival and lack of arrival that broke my spirit. Being
attached to a body hated, regulated and wished dead. I lost my confidence and
my sexual desire. I lost the ability to care for myself. To find peace in my
skin.
Why do you sink in now? Is it because the struggle to survive back in my
home was hiding you? Are you a privileged problem? I can't claim so. Maybe
something did break.
I cry and I have nightmares. I struggle to do normal activities. I don't
enjoy the things I used to like. I am desperate for understanding. I'm
desperate to explain my layers of pain. I'm so exhausted. I wish we can build a
better relationship with each other. One that is based on understanding and
appreciation. Should I be grateful for you for something? Perhaps you help me
too. Perhaps you help me take a break. Or center myself. Or something from
those gratitude selfhelp books. My friend said that it is a struggle to
'succeed' in white countries.
That we need to make it. At this point, I'm not
sure what success means, probably surviving. To survive you.
