This year, I will be twenty six. There is a discomfort with that number, because being a twenty six year old is planting your one step for mankind in late-twenties territory.
I’ve been thinking of writing something for a long while, but my fingers have been hovering over the keyboard every night with no juice flowing through them.
Even as I’m writing this, I’m tabbing out to Instagram to mindlessly scroll around posts when I’m stumped on what to write-
Oh, I’ve just got a mental foothold-
All I’ve ever strived for in life was the feeling of safety.
When you laugh, which I do lots of, you are indicating danger has passed.
When the world pins your worth to your grades, it cultivates a fear of abandonment if these grades are not met. Abandonment is unsafe.
When dad crunches his face into a distorted scowl if he cannot understand you, he inculcates a deep fear of being misunderstood. Misunderstanding leads to disdain. Disdain leads to abandonment. Abandonment is unsafe.
When your joke bombs, when people criticise you, when you are overseas with others and you suspect people don’t like you or when someone you like so much as breathes the same air as someone else… These are fertile grounds for abandonment. And these are unsafe.
I don’t know what started the whole abandonment thing. Maybe an uncle touched me.
Never take things personally. Don Miguel Ruiz. An all encompassing statement to minimise suffering.
A lot of my anxieties and insecurity come from a general need to be safe. Somehow, my parents (surprise surprise) didn’t accord me that favour.
Most times you can draw explicit parallels from your parents’ behaviours to your own quirks and issues.
We inherited meanness towards mom.
We inherited a shame of our poor living conditions, a toxic shame of failure and a biting fear of everyone else.
Kor inherits dad’s hunched gait as he returns home, his short fuse! His “self-sacrifice”. His resentment when nobody acknowledges this sacrifice.
I’m tired. You’ll have to make do with half formed thoughts, sorry about that.