“Where did this emptiness come from?” I ask myself, playing the role of the therapist. I’ve been to so many, I’m at number 12 and still counting, I have the jargon down, the intonations, the gestures and the facial expressions. I smile at myself compassionately.
“Well, I guess it’s because I wasn’t nurtured by mother” I state matter-of-factly, devoid of quivering lips and tearful eyes. Well I must have said this a million times. To at least 12 different therapists, constantly repeating the exact session with a different therapist
Sometimes it would be repeated with the same therapist. I guess, sometimes they run out of paper, or pencils and don’t take notes and just don’t remember
I raise one eyebrow in response, “What about your lovers? Don’t they nurture you?”
“Well, yes they do”
“So?”
I reflect on nurture. I hate nurture. I crave nurture. I hate it because I crave it, I resent you when you give it to me, because I want it. I don’t want to want it and most of all I don’t want you to give it to me.
“What do you mean by nurture?”
“I don’t know?”
“What does nurture feel like?”
“Warm”
I recall nurture, radiating warmth. Abstract, far, different in every context. Different from one person to the other. In a sense it is not there, cannot be boxed. Fills up and assuages chronic feelings of emptiness. Recall, reminding my cells how it feels to be in contact with your cells. You being, the last 3 people I thought I was in love with. Allowed our cells to communicate. I recall and the screaming emptiness is pacified. Temporarily. Appetizers, leaving me somewhat satisfied, but craving, more, cellular communication, cellular warmth.
“Is there a way to completely fill that emptiness?”
I go back into my memory, my grandmother nurtured me. My father nurtured me. I feel grateful, but I am looking for something else. My mother, a mixture of holding me close and pushing me away. Cliché? Maybe. I feel insecurity. I remember insecurity is not a feeling. I feel insecure and helpless. I feel warm, then I feel empty. I feel compassionate. Something happened, I want before that time, before the ambivalence. Before she would love me and then push me away. I feel it, fleeting an instant. Recall, the instant where the infinite regression halts. Where I am no longer searching, I hold onto it. My mother, no cigarette between her lips, fresh soapy smell. No smoke hanging around us. She can love me because I just am. She can love me because the fucking therapists can’t label me. She can’t label me, she can’t judge me, because I just am. I am filled.
Infinitely regressing. I let go of this fulfillment, I want to go deeper, I am curious about my birth. The glaring lights. The latex gloves. My mother holds me, takes me in her arms, exhausted. My father holds me up. My memories are tainted by cognitive biases induced by captured Kodak moments. I remember the pictures, the one where they handed me to my mother, the one my father holds me, and the one my father passes me to my grandmother. I cannot recall, but I can pretend I do. Somehow it seems important to remember the moment I came into the world. To recall, why it was I made this decision to come here, that there was some life affirming drive. That I wanted to beat all odds to come out of my mother and live. There had to be a choice to live, and I had to have taken it. I need to recall that choice, affirmation to live. A deterrent to recurrent suicidal ideation.
The contractions in her womb scared me, every contraction reminded me of the choice, I can choose to stay or I can choose to leave and live. Every contraction I had to decide. Every moment of indecisiveness led to a surge of oxytocin and another contraction prompting me to make my choice. My mother said I slipped right out, her contractions were short I came out with ease. In the last minute I try and stop coming out. I wrap the chord around my neck. Her vagina opens easily, like the trapdoor on a hangman, the chord tightens around my neck as I slip out from between her legs. Till this day I can’t bear to have anything around my neck. I can debate whether it is because this is a constant reminder of my utter failure at my first suicide attempt, or a life affirmative survival instinct.
“I didn’t know I was pregnant till the sixth month, when I was going to lose you” Many times my mother has told me how she didn’t know I was there till she nearly lost me, many times I’ve told this story to people. Hoping someone would find some significant hidden meaning. I hid in her womb for 6 months. Recall, warm, encompassing, private. A secret sexually transmitted parasite. The panic is unleashed, not mine, hers, her adrenaline passing through me, widening my vessels and pushing my thimble sized heart to pump faster. She was losing me, she didn’t know she had me, but wanted me when she was going to lose me. I wasn’t scared.
I was being private, curled up secretly in my mother’s uterus, another survival tactic, maybe. I was being secretive when my fat ugly maid Rabha, which means breadwinner, would pull me by my ankles, the fat rippling on her arms, her breasts sagging down lower than her waist. She would pull me by the ankles off the bed. I would hit my head. She always smelt of a mixture stagnating sweat trapped under synthetic material, Samna baladi and Lemon fragranced Prill. She takes me into her arms, she’s sitting cross legged. It felt good her body soft and squishy. Arms enclosing me, layers of flesh covering me like blankets. No matter where I would lay my head, it felt like a soft breast. Recall, warmth, nurture, a spoon between my legs, arms enclosing, warmth, my glow in the dark plastic sword pressed on my clit, rubbing, raw. Recall…
Infinitely regressing, my undeveloped neurons do not fire to the external stimulus. I don’t feel the warmth, I do not feel. Recall, I am aware of my physical body, tiny floating in her sac. Aware but cannot feel, no decisions about living, just hanging there.
I wait for the split in my consciousness. The zygote regressing to an egg and a sperm, to an “n” and an “n”. My consciousness splitting into an “n” and an “n”. My consciousness remains intact, perception, sensation and awareness of the physical do not exist. My consciousness does, remains, as is. No more infinite regression. No more regression, no more progression. Just my consciousness. Recall, infinite chronic feelings of emptiness.
