“They call this elective surgery, but we all have died of this”

A line from Adrienne Rich’s Contradictions: Tracking Poems – number 11.

It has been ringing and rings throughout my experience of myself as a female. Having had problems early on with my body, specifically growing into a female body, I have always thought “if it causes so many problems, why not just get rid of it?”

The distaste stems not from my distaste for the female body. The distaste is for the restrictions imposed, the implications you are continuously reminded of when you have a body that can bear a child – as if that is the most important thing a woman can do. All actions revolve around protection of this ability – take your vitamins, drink milk, don’t partake in heavy labour, don’t forget to drink water, don’t drink too much coffee – all seemingly innocent, useful advice until it is implicitly related to (and it always is) the fact that I as a woman of child-bearing capability must preserve this capability or I will lose my value – I will become the barren, child-less woman, the lonely, crazy cat lady down the street, devoid of all trace of kindness or “femininity” as it is defined in heterosexual culture.

Having a vagina has always been a problem for women. There is the constant threat of rape, abuse, some sort of sexual domination in any sexual relationship with a man, the suppression of sexuality through both, forceful and coercive methods (clitorectomies performed on girls without consent vs. women being socially reprimanded for any expression of sexuality) and I wonder why it is this difficult. Why is it not possible to live without having to deny or constantly be in conflict with one’s femininty?

Giving more recent, culturally relevant examples, the crash-diet, thin as a stick with silicone implants fad. Three words – what. the. fuck? Around the age of 12 I feel into the trap of trying to look like a celebrity or what i thought was the ideal woman. I wanted to get it right, this being a woman thing because I get everything right. And so began the patterns of self-destruction. What first began as an interest in myself turned into a relentless self-loathing. My body was my enemy and I wanted to rid myself of it, monthly mess and breasts included. I remember having fantasies of cutting my breasts off – literally just chopping them off because they got in the way of things. Soon I realized the longer I starved, the longer I could postpone my period and so it went, me shrinking back to the body of a  6 year old with its connotations of purity, simplicity, innocence and all that bullshit.

The impulse keeps returning over and again – if it causes trouble, why not get rid of it? But the question also arises, is it my body that is causing trouble or the things I have been told about it? Thorugh meticulous self-reconstruction, discovery, a long process of taking responsibility for what I have done (and learning what I havent) I have come to where I am now – still being told that my body is a problem but vehemently refusing to accept it.

I wonder why we do not speak of such things. Why such incidents which I’m sure are widespread are isolated. Why is it that friends, mothers, older women who are in the position to guide children do not speak of this. To preserve innocence? And what innocence is this that teaches you self-loathing? Is this in fact the “ideal woman” that all women hope to be? The self-chastising, conflicted little girl that has not yet grown to love her body the way she loves it, but seeks to love it they way she is told by a patriarchal, heterosexual culture.

I wonder where we will go to now. Who we will become as people, as women so trapped in cycles of destruction and anger that cannot otherwise be expressed. I do it still, the occasional meal skipped, the nails dug too deep into my palm, the denial, the punishment for things I have not done, for things I have done, for things that cannot be done, said, believed… because we all have died of this.

An unexpectedly patriotic rant

Its 12:45 am. Earlier than my usual bouts of reflective melancholy. It is already quiet in the house and I’m thinking of pulling an all-nighter simply because. I like this quite in-between.

My room is a mess – the way it used ot be in KSA. I have been keeping it clean since I got here but with all this stuff…I’m wondering why I brought it in the first place. Its like burning a CD. you burn it with a certain mood and then after a couple days wonder why the hell you put those songs in there. What were you thinking? What was I thinking? I was thinking here would be so much like there. I was afraid here would be like there so I brought everything that I needed, might possibly need here. But here is a new place. I need to make space for new things.

I am thinking of relationships and death, and what Pakistan has come to. What we have come to as a people, as a race, as human beings. What has happened to us and where is that Pakistan I remember from my early years? Where is that possibility of life? I never classed myself as patriotic. But patriotism has become more of a love for the people than a love for the government. If it can even be called love. I detest the culture but I know it and maybe that is what makes me feel for it more than the goings on in Mexico or Sudan or Iraq, Afghanistan. I know what the roads look like, I know the smell, the dirt of that country and this mere knowing…it does something. There is so much potential there. So much talent. People like me who are willing to think, willing to put themselves out there, prove themselves, willing to LIVE and not just exist as secondary things among the political warfare. Collateral damage. I hate that term.

I have the urge, again and again, to pack up and go there. To live impermanently but to live and DO something. To change something for someone over there – to show them there is more to life than desecration and death. But I have no money of my own and money is everything. I do have a “network” there – what I prefer to call a group of like-minded individuals who are willing to be real enough to give some form of a damn about whats going on around them. And yes, we have a vision we are working towards – a vision of Pakistan as it once was, culturally rich, educated, a place to be proud of. The Pakistan that we remember from years ago when we were little kids, the Pakistan we hear of from even further back when our parents were kids. We have that vision and perhaps we can make it something more. Perhaps we can make it better.

This wasn’t meant to be a patriotic rant. I guess this is just what I am thinking of, more than I would care to admit. Maybe its some ridiculous response to being in this wonderful mesh of people and cultures that is the GTA. Maybe its some desperate grasp for identity. I dont know what it is but it has me thinking. I wonder what it takes to get other people thinking too.

Untitled

 

I go

about the house finding

new places

for old things –

my books crammed

in the last drawer

of my chest,

your words folded

carefully

in the one above –

the shelf unfilled

table empty

there is too much

and too much missing

from the weight I carried

with me to this land

 

Morning

in this neat suburbia

with its neat

rows of neat houses -

I dress

in the clothes

from a city that shrieks in the night

and by morning has died

and rebirthed itself

leaving the messy aftermath

of loss and creation

 

Morning

in this neat suburbia –

a cushion room

for the insane    we

who have

and have lost

too much

are in a little corner of

the world playing

with our own demons –

in these mornings nothing

happens

and nothing is real

 

In these pristine mornings

who

can say there is something

wrong

with the world

and who still grieves over

those wrongs?

And if

there is still grief

where nothing happens

and nothing is real

what does that mean?

 

You,

around whom

this foggy stillness shatters

and the world becomes

real

Tell me -

tell me upon which shelf

I should place this grief,

folded in what way

tucked in which drawer

Tell me

what have you done with yours?

Tell me

what shall I do with mine?

 

I go about the house

finding new places for

old things.