Living for Others
An urge I cannot resist, yet despise.
I cannot admit to myself how much it hurts, suffocates, and compresses me to relentlessly place myself in the background while tending to the emotional weather of others. To admit it feels wrong. A mistake. A selfishness.
A fiasco.
Those drenched in their own self-importance, whose private orbit and gravitational pull dictate the laws of their thinking, sometimes seem to open their arms to me. As if they are saying, “Come. You are one of us. Admit it now.” My fiasco becomes the ritual for an initiation ceremony. A goodness offered up as sacrifice.
One of my greatest talents is allowing “I don’t want to” to float upward in a thousand indirect sentences, circling in the air without ever quite landing as itself.
I don’t want to. I refuse. It’s ugly. It’s wrong. It doesn’t suit me. No. Get out of my life. Go. Go far away. Leave me alone.
These are my swear words. I have met them at last, like a nun forbidden from swearing. I am a nun who imagines her sisters in garters in the next room each night.
The people who weigh down the hem of my trousers. And the way I love them so fiercely, without tenderness. An egg smashed against the ground. A body dragged through mud.
Go there. Do this. Meet them. Yes, this is good for you. No, that doesn’t suit you. Yes, wonderful. Congratulate them. Be happy. Say something kind. Shake hands. Dress well. Your trousers look like a sack. Why did you do that? That makes no sense. You make no sense. You’ve put on weight. Be quiet. Don’t be quiet. Why? I don’t know, but do it. Don’t do it.
Manipulation has a shrill edge. A false delicacy dressed as care.
Sometimes the urge to leave grows very deep. It travels somewhere dark and strangely peaceful. It stretches towards the darkest parts of the ocean. A hollow.
I want to do nothing. Then I want to do everything. Every kindness the world places in my hands warms me, and I feel ashamed, like a waiter who has spat in the soup and still collected the tip. Like lightning, terrifying and beautiful all at once.
Unspoken things have already been thought.
Ali Baran Y.
P.S.: Please don’t worry. I’m fine. Just a little tired mentally. This week I wanted to try something raw. I’ve been thinking about raw writing, and this letter became both the victim and the sacrifice of those thoughts. I originally wrote it in Turkish. So, if some parts don’t make sense, blame the transition. By the way, I’ve finally decided what to work on after my beautiful Desponia’s story. Yes, it will carry some of that rawness.