Day 6.
I.
"What does it mean to write about trauma in real time? Instead of going to work to avoid processing the loss, The Finder makes the processing her work. She's lost her narrative, but she's writing her story. She lets the loss touch everything, as if she has a choice."
I am in the forensic process of autopsying a cadaver. The event in front of me, laying flat, disgusting, beaten up, bruised, is another version of me that had perished, expired out of my present, some time ago. She had taken up a huge load of the wounds inflicted over the years by the stalker, the scars of which glisten on me now. I suppose I thought wearing beautiful coats would mask these damages. For a while it worked. But the ghost has rapped on my doors incessantly. The dead wants to be buried, it pleads. So here I am, looking down at her. She had demanded me to honour her. To celebrate her sacrifices and her pain. And so now, two years later, I am down in this basement, and I will.
II.
"I'm out with lanterns, looking."
It is a timeless fact of life - that the best way to move forward is to be at peace with the past. I've spent so much of these past two years looking for a way back. To my former, jubilant self. To a time pre-problem, pre-pain, pre-divorce from my former self. I had liked her, I had enjoyed her life. Yet she had gone through a brutal experience and has passed beyond my ability to resuscitate.
In the wake of this passing I am looking for guidance, for answers, for an easier path to remedy. I have tried sound healing, somatic exercises, counselling, sports, shopping, travelling, talking to the public about the experience, staying in my grandmother's rural village, hijama, writing, therapy, praying; All of which has helped easing the pain. But this time I am required to do the dirty work, to walk through the dark recesses of my own thoughts. This journey I am required to do alone.
I am out with lanterns, looking. I need to meet her ghost and tell her it's time to move on.
III.
The Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa writes about torma and don. Don - a ghost that causes misfortune, anger, fear, sickness. Torma means 'offering cake'. You offer the torma to your don // The pain forces your hand.
My don turns to me, implores me to look at her and tell her all that she has not died for nothing. I tell her I am sorry for not being able to look her, to even acknowledge her, because her visage has repels me so. I have refused, again and again, even as she was being hacked to pieces, to look at her pain.
Now I step into the cobwebbed room, and hold out a hand. I tell her it wasn't her fault. I tell her she had been so brave. I tell her she did so well. I tell her she is beautiful. I tell her she is kind. I tell her she has not died in vain. I tell her, ultimately, thank you. This gratitude, this torma, is my offering cake. I watch her eat, parts disappearing.
IV.
Why are you telling these stories? Why air your dirty laundry?
The truth is: The only way to clean it is to take it out and wash it.
The other truth is that: It wasn't just my dirty laundry, it was the dirty laundry of a failed social system.
The third simple truth is that: My laundry gave others hope.
V.
I keep trying to make sense of our history - as if sense is something to be fashioned, and from what? Notions of the truth, or time, or experience?
The questions why and how keep swirling inside my head, like a water in a sink that refuses to drain, clogging up the system. "It didn't have to be like that," I thud my head against the wall. Yet I know there was no other way. The only way was to flood the entire thing and wait it out to flush away. "The only way to save me was to tell my story to the world." This is the only life I know in which I am saved. There is no alternate.
VI.
Here, take it. Is this enough? This is my material.
It's a letter, as it always is. For now this letter is to myself.
VII.
What is my unanswerable question? How to remain myself.
The astrological sign Pisces, reputably the most empathetic, self-sacrificing star in the zodiac, is comprised of two fishes swimming in opposite directions. Like the fishes I have pulled myself into contradictions, hiding away from my past emotions even as I rap about my healing journey forward. I have deluded myself with distance, coercing her into a part unrelated to who I 'really' am. My attempts to out-swim my shadow fish, my twin fish, is a fool’s errand, if we were all honest. It is cowardly because I wanted to be spared the burden of her pain. How to remain myself when all I feel is disgust and blame?
My ghost hovers, hesitant. She touched our twin scars. Continuations of the same story. To remain myself is to wear these scars with honesty. To remain myself is to embrace all versions. Especially this one, the one I have denied, hated, and feared. The one whom I brushed away as weak, wanting, and emotional. I remind myself that she was the only one brave enough to throw everything in jeopardy so that I could be reborn. I remind myself that our shared wounds are two sides of the same story. I remind myself that even though to my eyes I am tarnished, it is the markings of a fighter. The astrological sign Pisces is a survivor, a winner and a warrior.
VIII.
I thought that I was vanishing, but instead I was only coming true.
- Clive James
I thought that to accept my dead variation would be to die, but instead it has given me a new breath.
VIX.
I wish to forgive, so this is aspirational. I write this aspirationally. The way you'll be remembered is the way you're living now, I tell myself. If you don't like it, change it.
I want to forgive, but first i need to feel everything that stands between me and forgiveness.
The frank truth of it is that it didn't strike me until last week that I needed to forgive myself. I had shrouded myself in such a thick layer of denial that it wasn't an occurrence at all. Now as I look down at the cadaver, writing these notes, my ghost is sitting next to me, conspiratorially nodding along and cracking a few smiles with her bloodied lips. I am not so scared of her now, I think, I could look her in the eye and not flinch. I could cradle her and we could weep together, and I could accept that she existed, exists, that she is a part of me that was perhaps one of the bests of me. No fight in this world leaves us unscarred, no wins exist where we are unscathed or unaltered. The ghost will hang for a little while yet, at least to see the cadaver be fully buried, somehow - this small ceremony I must find a way to do. For now I am feeling everything that stands between me and forgiveness. For now I am honouring her life.
In between the tedium this month;
The glass half full version of this is: I’ve so many hobbies!
The glass half empty outlook would’ve been: I do so many things but I’m not mastering any of them.
Regardless, I’ve finally learned how to play chess.
A quick snapshot of the week, 3-9 March
My small European city ennui forgotten under a periwinkle sky and the glittering snow. Landing in Krakow, a 2 hr ride to Zakopane, then an hour’s ride to the high ranges, suddenly finding myself in between two countries looking out from a powdery peak. At certain small(ish) ski resorts, time seems to have been frozen and you’re treated to views out of a vintage postcard. I genuinely didn’t think I was up for a rural Slavic getaway, but Zakopane was a welcoming hug, a festive carol. Some favourites from my phone. Thanks, M, for constantly being there to hold my hand as we explore the world.
In these echoing, cavernous bath chambers, so far removed from the rhythms of my daily reality, I found an immense sense of presence and calm. It felt as if a fluid weight had been sunk into me, coaxing my body to be buoyant of all its senseless worries. Perhaps it's due to zodiacal coincidences that water has always been my most healing medium. Similar sensations have washed over me - from the glittering sea in Comino, and now to the heavy, steaming liquids of a Budapest bath. The watery haven enveloped me, almost cloying, entreating me to stay still and let its warmth find a path to heal me.
It had been a while since I felt such a vivid response to a new experience. Over the past year, the curtain of misfortune had cast a veil over my travels, causing me to approach them tentatively, as if through a haze. But something about those hot pools, the decorated saunas, and the icy baths commanded my full attention. In those moments, I was not just present; I became truly aware. I have carried this sensation with me ever since, clutching on to rthem in a sense of marvelling wonder.
In those baths, I came back to life.
On a pale buttercup morning in November 2023, you’ll wake up from the comforting cocoon of your bed, in an apartment in central London. The day stretches on promisingly ahead, chilly and welcoming, a perfect brew of winter warmth. Though you’re late, you manage to hop into a black cab to get to your office in Belgrave Square. There isn’t much on your to-do list for the day, as an Information Officer for the Malaysian Embassy, so you spend the morning finishing your 28th book of the year, an intriguing tale of game designers. It concludes by noon, and you swing by to an impromptu party for a colleague on the third floor, where someone offers you an ice cream cone, then dash out for lunch with another colleague. Spontaneously, you both agree to dine in Knightsbridge, at the infamous Nusr-et steakhouse, and spend a languid 2 hour lunch eating and chatting in that seemingly sumptuous setting. By the time you finish, the day's curtains are closing to twilight, and you both walk back to the office, passing through the crystalline streetscape of the city’s Christmas. You pack up for the day, and grab the tennis racket for your weekly course at Hyde Park. You leave your bags at the office and depart only with your coat and sports attire. The weather’s dry enough that you decide to walk the 25 minutes. Jordan Mackampa’s What Am I Supposed To Do plays in the airpods your bestfriends gifted you, and the capital’s 5pm hubub mingles with traffic, people, and lights. Tennis goes decently, even though your performance was a little lackluster this week, and you chat to your friends and flatmate on the way home (maybe your weekly Muay Thai is getting in the way of your tennis movements?). Back home, two adorable cats jump on you, demanding love and attention. You relax on the couch before cooking up spaghetti bolognaise, watching an Indonesian series on Netflix, debating on the merits of cinema. There is an option to use your favourite gel skincare face mask, but you opt for a L'Occitane serum instead, before diving back into your bed.
You grant a silent prayer of gratitude, and give a nod to 2020 you, to 2004 you, and say my love, my darling, you’ve made it this far.
