The past two days have been very productive. My mind has been clear and focused. I’ve caught up on most outstanding items on my list and even done some writing. I just woke up on Tuesday morning and my mind was clear.
Today, this discovered strength was tested to an inch of its robustness. I had a particular conversation with my family and I witnessed the effects it was having on me, real-time. I felt my chest contract and my mind started to slow down as if someone shoved a pipe into a cog.
The question of identity came up in a natural way, mid-conversation. It’s a topic that just makes me sigh and then be silent. I don’t know what to think or know about that subject. People have such defined views of what constitutes an Egyptian, regardless of your efforts and intentions. I gave up on trying to figure out who I am, although I still wrangle with the questions inside. It’s not just about Egyptians, I’ve noticed the behaviour in all the different countries I’ve lived in. In their mind, it’s simple. In mine, it isn’t.
From that platform, we launched into orbit and I finally could pinpoint the exact point in my mental cosmos where I started to regress back into myself.
It was the point when I realized I’m on one side and they are on another. Where I would talk and talk, silence sucking in my words and spitting out awkwardness. A burp. A long, putrid one. At this point also is where I lay things down as they are and my audience are never ready to just accept them, even affirm them. I say the situation as I see it. I doubted today though whether I’m a objective emotion journalist, reporting on my conflicts and tensions accurately. I started thinking maybe all the isolation and ostracizing are distorting my memories of events. But no. No distortion. It is as I see them.
After that difficult conversation, my mind grew murky and thick just thinking of future interactions with my family. I had to shake my head a few times, the symbolic action to help me achieve some hidden purpose. I had to shake off the mental patterns bearing destruction for the rest of the day.
I have to be forced to talk about trivial matters and topics, or topics that interest them. It’s become pretty obvious over the last couple of days. If it’s not a topic they can talk about, it’s either lectures or “advice”. I tell a story from London, an anecdote, something I did or achieved with regards to filmwork, or just a random thought, we somehow regress back into a child-adult relationship (instead of adult-adult, as I once dreamed) and it goes nowhere. This box I have to live in is inducing death.
I came home and I was fighting off the thoughts, trying to kick away the rabid dogs from my door.
The dogs finally ran but I felt the damage already done.
While I was in the car, having that conversation, I had to accept something. And this was very hard to accept because it goes against a long-running principle to never give up, to never give in, to never stop the fight.
I just have to live in my own world away from my family. Engage with them on their terms and preserve my still frail sense of wholeness. I have to stop bringing up the past and the sensitive subjects that end in that voracious blackhole, which never get dealt with and just quietly shoo’ed into there.
This offends all my sensibilities because I’ve wanted a different relationship and future with my family. I’ve now accepted, truly accepted, the reality that this will not happen. And I won’t pursue this dream anymore because the more I do, the more I get hurt and the more time I lose on escaping and trying to make sense of the darkness that burgeons in me when I try to enter their world.
My family are the most generous, loving people, but they just don’t get me. They are not ill-intentioned but they can’t condescend to my level and speak a language we can agree on. They love without abandon and care as if I’m still in my mother’s womb, but their care makes me gasp for air.
I seem to bring out a side in my parents that my sister doesn’t. That pained me today as it struck me, as we couldn’t find common ground for what I was telling her. It pained me but it prompted me to wake up and hear the wind, calling me to not awaken the urges of familial bonding ever again.
It’s a sad day and a pivotal day as well. I have to look out for myself and my health, which is too much pegged against my family: past, present, and future.
