Early last week I was at work as usual, trying to focus on my project and staying away with plenty of caffeine. The preceding days I had been going home earlier, as I wasn't feeling too well, but it wasn't really until I walked into the office's kitchen that day that I got confronted with my actual condition.
In the kitchen I encountered the cleaning lady - whom I often help out with small tasks - yet the moment she saw me she immediately commented on how pale and exhausted I looked, with dark rings around my eyes. After this she practically dragged me onto the balcony to get some fresh air and a break. It was her display of genuine concern which really got to me at that point.
Of all gestures and actions I know, kindness is the one which hurts me the most, even if it is in a good way. It tears through the countless layers of negativity, uncaring attitudes and the keeping up of pretences. At such a moment there is only a sense of... warmth, I guess. Like the love a mother feels towards her child, or the companionship between really good friends. A point where everything is all right and will work out.
Yesterday I looked at a new apartment and today I got the offer to sign the rental contract. I guess this should make me happy, that I can finally leave the place I currently live in. Yet there's no kindness to be found there. It's all just business. Whether I am truly happy in this new place isn't important. How I may feel about certain arrangements is not relevant in any way. I just have to follow a soulless, uncaring contract.
Emotionally it is easier to just deaden every feeling and emotion. Go through each day trying to be as soulless and uncaring as everyone else around one. Especially for me over the coming months, as I have to deal with the big change of moving yet again, not to mention face the roller-coaster of emotions that will soon come in the form of this reconstructive surgery which I have been working towards over the past twelve years or so. Merely most of my adult life so far.
I'm still working through things with my current psychotherapist, but it's becoming more and more clear to me that even after a number of sessions we have barely scraped the very beginning of my traumas and very complete collection of disturbing experiences and more. There's the surgery, yes, with me having found a measure of kindness in the current doctors who are treating me, in that they respect me as a person and are doing their best to help me.
I guess that the moving into the new apartment will work out somehow, by taking it one day at a time and using my sadly extensive experience on moving houses. Here I find solace in the thought that I can start probably next year on searching for a house to buy, after recovering from the surgery. A place of my own, with no responsibility to anyone but to the bank I got the loan for said house from. In my experience banks are more kind than landlords, if only in the sense that it's more beneficial to them to act that way.
In the end everything comes down to kindness. The way doctors, psychologists, police officers, politicians and many others have treated me over the past decade and some was anything but kind. I found some shelter in the respect I received from the media, but it's been so incredibly lonely and cold. It still is, in fact. Now I crave kindness and not feeling lonely more than anything else.
Yes, money would help immensely, but it cannot resolve everything. The horrible traumas which plague and torment me during my sleep as well as when I'm awake may lessen, but will not go away. It would be beneficial to confront these traumas in an environment which is quiet, free of stress points and kind, however. For this finding the right place to live is crucial.
Please, have mercy.
Please, be kind.
Please, be humane.
Please, be gentle.
Please, be human.
Thank you.
Maya
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