A Review of Prose Bits That Inhabit My Eternally Active Mind, Thoroughly Guilty of Overthinking

Your heartbeat keeps time, recording the moment of your first screams of newborn terror and your last shaky, relieved breath. Who cares if there's a heaven or hell anyways, once this life is over and done with shouldn't we just be glad. Sometimes, I think that I can't wait for my last breath. 

~

I love you because you've saved my life a number of times. I am scared of what I consider doing to myself so I talk to you because you're quiet and you never try to fix me. Let's sit here, have an animal cracker, or a tic tac and let's watch this YouTube video and don't try to hurt yourself because I care. I am your friend. 

Without you, I would be lost, yet I can never say a word to you about what's on my mind because we never see each other anymore and I'm supposed to have other people in my life who can represent what you mean to me. Sometimes I wish I could rewind back to the day where we watched all your favorite episodes of Spongebob (a show I hate) and I laughed because it was funny and we lay in your bed, our heads close together and our breath synchronized with my beating heart, my need to feel loved, my need to never be alone.

When I see you now, you smile. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I suppose. The last time I called you, with the intent to spill another drunken secret, you hung up on me. Or I hung up on you? I don't remember, but I remember that afterwards,  I walked what felt like half way across the world to the room of a boy who had turned me away. 

Reminiscing, It was like being at a fork in the road. I chose one path but was pushed off of it. It wasn't meant to be. I drank about four bottles of his bottled water, and curled up in his bed, hating every bit of myself for not knowing when to take "no" for an answer and move on. Poisoned by bad decisions I lay there knowing I was making a mistake, and that I was only hurting myself but I couldn't stop whatever trajectory was laid out ahead of me. 

What would have happened if you took me in.

Would I have ever gone back to him?

I never see you anymore.

~

I don't believe in fate. I believe in coincidence. 

?

~

Will I see you in three years at our reunion? I hope you've grown up. I never think of you anymore unless I'm forced to.

I almost told him about you once, explained why I was too scared to love men. But there isn't much to explain really. It doesn't matter anymore.

~

I write about my memories more than I write about you. Maybe I'm scared if I put you into print and read you off a page I will idealize you, a condemnation.

~

The hall was quiet with the absence of sophomores who belt Taylor Swift or sit in their rooms lamenting their habitation of the friendzone. If that night hadn’t been so tactile, you could have probably convinced me that it was all a dream. A child’s dream. Romance and love are for children right? Although I’m too old for fairy tales, I’m too young to deny reality. The scent of birthday cake candles and the tiny flicks of light  illuminated his face, casting a shadow across all of his angles. I submitted my mind to him, although I normally flinch at the idea of intimacy. As his body lay on top of mine, he made love to my every imperfection, kissed away my depression and thrust insecurity out of me.

Kiss me again. I don’t want to go. I need you to make love to me until I forget what it’s like to be a normal girl who must get up in the morning and go to class, and go to work, and pay medical bills and have migraines and doctor’s appointments. I want to be yours. I want us to save the candlelight in a Mason Jar and tonight in one of Rowling’s pensieves. I want to revisit this night when I am unhappy and you are far away. I can’t put it into words. I am uneducated and dull with a word processor and even worse with a pen.

I've I undressed before him innumerable times, but this time; I was slow to let my clothing hit the ground. I felt no incredible rush to have him immediately, despite staring at his fully nude body, incapable of hiding his arousal. I wrapped a towel around myself and as the two of us stepped into a gross dorm room shower, I felt as if I had stepped into another universe. Our world became a pristine microcosm, inhabited by just two people dominated by something more compelling than sex, but certainly not void of it. Hot water made rivers down his chest and plunged into the crests and valleys of his abdominal muscles. His arms and chest heaved and sighed, creating chasms in my body, blankness in my thought. This is the most beautiful person I have ever seen. My hair matted down my back, as my eyes locked in with his. 

~

How can I summarize my year.

I can't.

My mind is wiped blank.

A series of analyses

and medications

and emotions

It's tough to grow up

It's tough to be an adult

You start to view things differently: your family. your friends. love. happiness. life.

~

I've kept track of all of it here, on this blog. I've written about countless things both fleeting and semi-permanent. I've made friends because I've found that some of my old friends no longer belong with the new person I'm becoming. I've shed pessimism because it isn't cool to have ungrounded angst. I've gained an appreciation for life and an appreciation for my culture, my looks, my heritage. I'm learning and growing. There are people who can keep up with that and there are people who can't. I try not to let things get under my skin as much as they used to. I can be more tolerant, I can be better. I can live without medication. I can find myself among assignments, due dates, obligations and stress.

Breathe.

Open your eyes.

Look around at the bustling hoards of undersexed super-rich and remember who you are. Remember that you deserve all the good things in your life. Remember that you work hard and you need to be happy. Keep your head up. Propel yourself into greatness with the force that has been lingering inside you. West Indians have this innate ability to adapt to our surroundings. But while doing so, remember to remain true to yourself.

Nugget #4

I've been overwhelmed with feeling for the past few days. I need to free my mind from chaos and return to peace. I can't say I miss these depressive episodes. I can't say I don't appreciate having someone to listen to. It's difficult though. I feel like someone is always trying to fix me but it's not possible. And it makes me feel worse knowing that I may be unable to live up to someone's expectations for how happy I should be.

I want to be back at School so that I can be free of all this pressure and negativity. I want to be sure of myself and have the ability to remain grounded and sure that I'm truly capable of happiness.

Patterns

Gotta get rid of these old patterns. I try to convince myself that I can do it on my own. You are strong. You are smart. You are important. I'm so tired of having to be the only one who thinks this about myself. I am tired of having to repeat it over and over and feeling like every time I happen to hear these words from someone else, I need to hear them again and again and again to believe them.



Excess

Pull yourself together. Stop being this person. You were meant to be better, you were born not to need anyone. Undo this destruction of your psyche. Stop being so hard on yourself. (Catch my irony?)

I am trying not to be driven insane by what is equal parts loneliness and being overwhelmed by connection. I need to feel like I am in control because I haven't been in control for so long. So I may pinch my skin past the point of being able to take it. I may write until my fingers ache from typing and my back aches from hunching. How do I avoid the urge to destroy? How do I mimic destruction without actually accomplishing anything just to satisfy my urges to return to depressive thinking or worse, depressive actions.

Keep calm, right? Remember that you are not totally composed of the mean voices in your head. Remember that people care about you. It's so easy to forget, when they're not sitting here, constantly reaffirming their belief in me. Insecurity is wrapping it's shriveled fingers around my neck with deceptive strength. Breathe, sweet ego. I want to resuscitate you, but I'm slowly forgetting how to as each self-confident breath comes closer and closer to being my last. Loosen your fingers. Loosen your mind. Prepare yourself to accept that sadness is only temporary.

I need to talk to myself here and force my insane ramblings upon you because no one else understands. No one else is really here. I need to protect everyone here from my voices, from my urges, my constant neediness. I should really protect everyone in my life I guess... but it's more important to protect my family. They are too chaotic to deal with another bit of my chaos thrown into the mix. They need peace, and calm, which are things that my mind never has.

I crave too much. I need to much. I want

silence
peace
love
silence
time
thoughts
blank
blank
silence
love
love
love
love
dreams
sleep
happiness
love
peace
peace

Do I get to be done with depression for good?

Another chaotic fantasy.

Home

I'm sure I will publish soon. I wrote a post that brought tears to my eyes (the happy kind) a bit earlier today. I may edit it and post it or write something else to satisfy your ever-interested minds. I am incredibly tired and I need to just take some time and knock the fuck out. I also need to buy a new toothbrush tomorrow (weird, because I totally packed mine). 

I'm taking lots of low-quality iPod pictures with instagram filters and I'm somehow going to have a ridiculously fun collection of photographs. I will greet and acknowledge the world here tomorrow. For now, I'm just savoring the fact that everything smells like home. I love it. I've missed home. I've missed every crack and sigh of this hot roof and sleeping half naked just to avoid the incredible humidity throughout the night. I've missed hot hot coffee and cold showers and getting burnt brown in the ruthless sun.

I miss my boyfriend though. I will miss kissing him and touching his face and being my complete self around him. I know this vacation is short, and I desperately want to see my family, but I can't help but wish to return to his arms and feels his lips on mine and delve my fingers into his hair and listen to his chest sighing as he sleeps. 

Try not to ache. It's only for a little while.

Nugget #3

Every time I want to write something ripe with emotion and gushing with naïveté, something reminds me of my place in the world and how insignificant I am to people. My mind is clouded with my little whisperers; I can feel their tiny hands grasping for something to destroy. They are always lurking, waiting for me to be alone, reminding me of why I should stay closed.

Pressure

I am generally horrible at being supportive when people tell me what is on their mind; I feel as if I have a tendency to talk about myself as a method of relating that really comes off as being self-centered. I am working on this tendency. I think in the heat of the moment, people tend to appreciate "I understand" more than receiving your whole life story. I worry that just saying "I understand" may seem hollow. Many of my friends are under an extreme amount of academic pressure. This pressure can originate internally for many of these people (myself included) but families also pressure their children more than they realize. West Indian parents have a particular kind of pressure that I previously believed was unique to my family, but now I understand is far more common than I expected, especially through meeting people at Middlebury and interacting with other West Indian students studying in the United States and England.



Once a child is viewed as "high-achieving", pressure to succeed doesn't decrease, but increases over time. Older children in families seem more susceptible to this pressure than younger children. I am making these observations based on what I have seen regarding the psychological impact parental pressure has on children's performance, and I'm growing to believe that this external pressure from parents can be increasingly harmful over time.

When you are younger, and school is simpler, like it was for me before I moved to the United States, parental pressure worked to my advantage. When you are pressured to be the top of your class, and then you actually achieve your parents' wishes, you are rewarded. Receiving rewards as a child is nice. Toys, more television time and more time to play outside is a wonderful incentive to perform well if you are already naturally intelligent. I performed well with ease as a child and parental pressure had no real negative effect on me early on. I knew what I had to do to succeed; I understood that my academic value was tied to something that I could easily accomplish.

My parents' (specifically my mother's) treatment of my academic success led to a burst of self-esteem regarding my intellect. I am intelligent. I am successul. Academics are associated with positive emotions as long as you continue to succeed. Parental love and approval seem to be achieved easily and you feel like you can have the freedom to enjoy your personal life, have whatever friends you like and engage in whatever distractions you see fit due to your success. Enjoying yourself is permissible once you perform well and bring home good grades. Parental pressure seems supportive when you are successful and young. "You will go to Harvard!" "You will become an important doctor!" all appear to be statements of support early in your academic life, even if later they cause unnecessary additional stress.


There is always an undertone of negativity in this parental pressure. Parents treat their children like future avenues out of poverty and this makes an impression on them early in life. Like I mentioned earlier, older children are more susceptible to this treatment. For example, I have always been encouraged to pursue a career where I would be financially successful whereas my sister has always been encouraged to pursue writing, despite the fact that it is rarely lucrative. Luckily, my wishes to become a doctor aligned with my parents'. I wonder what my emotional state would be like if I were not so lucky. Many West Indian children, especially those sent abroad to the United States to study, are pressured into careers like Law or Medicine. Business is not as encouraged as it is not seen as being quite so prestigious, but it is the third most acceptable avenue.

At an affirmative action panel held at my school a few weeks ago, an elderly white professor made the claim that "[College] is a time for leisure." This may be the case for the scores of middle to upper-middle class white men and women who attend this school. Have a West Indian boy or girl make this suggestion to their parents and see how far that gets them. (Answer: They will be on the next flight home.) White students here have the luxury to pursue "social entrepreneurship" and other lifestyles that will probably satisfy their desires for self-righteous morality, but leave them with a small income. West Indian students don't possess this luxury. We care too much about our families and the pressure they place on us has become so internalized that we cannot imagine doing anything else. I would be interested in doing statistical analysis of the West Indian students studying at prestigious universities, and analyzing what sort of graduate studies they pursue. I would be willing to bet that even the ones that claim to want to do something different end up in law, medicine or business. Having an ambiguous career is frowned upon.

Sophomore year is a turning point at most colleges and universities. We decide our majors. We consider minors and it is the last time to try something new. This is where we choose to continue the pursuit of our dreams (or our parents) or we decide to do something totally different. I personally have already dabbled with the idea of quitting my premedical pursuits but every time I think of a future without medical school, I feel totally lost. What would I do with myself that would make my parents proud? Why does it matter what they think? The second question is a very American question. Well bred West Indian children would never consider asking this. We are raised understanding the sacrifices our parents have made to send us to colleges like Middlebury, and in many cases, high schools like Groton or day schools of the same caliber. Due to the idea that we owe our parents for supporting us, and setting us up to be more successful than our peers, we tend not to defy them. Their wishes are ours, our academic success is theirs.

A part of this can be dehumanizing sometimes, not as dramatically as something like slavery can be dehumanizing, but often times, West Indian children can feel like we are only our accomplishments. We may feel like we become trophies to our parents rather than actual living, breathing people with the capacity for love and making mistakes. We become the sum of our accomplishments: she is premed and she takes Arabic and graduated from high school with honors. 

I have come to the point in my life where I no longer share my GPA with my parents, and I have tried to detach them from academic decision making processes (like dropping Arabic). A part of my ability to do this comes from having a white, American parent to balance the pressure of my West Indian mother. One of the times I felt like my value lay solely with my academics was on the day of my graduation from high school. I had scraped into graduating cum laude rather than magna cum laude or summa cum laude. Instead of congratulating me on an accomplishment I was ecstatic about, my mother said, "Don't worry, maybe in college you will graduate summa cum laude." I had not been worried previously.

West Indian children tend to be grilled when calling home about whether they are eating right, sleeping right, or healthy enough so that they have "time to study". My parents have cut back on this since I have been away for so long and I tend to be sarcastic when I am annoyed by their questions, but even last year, I remember a lot of emphasis being placed on whether I had time for academics rather than whether my social life was successful or fulfilling (it wasn't.) If my parents knew my GPA now, I cannot imagine what their reaction would have been when I told them I was dating someone. Personal relationships, that may actually make children (young adults?) happier are devalued because they are viewed as being at the expense of academic success. Not only are we made to feel like machines and trophies, but we are often times denied emotions in the world view perpetrated by our parents. (Note: It would be interesting to explore how colonial legacy plays into this.)

The pressure that West Indian children feel is unrecognized largely by society. Stereotypes about parental pressure tend to be about Asian parents (although the term "Asian" is so broad and the stereotype so racist). Yet, the West Indian children scattered around the United States feel the effects of our parents on our psyche every day. We think about it with every bad grade we have to bring home, or with every job or internship rejection we receive. We think about our futures and our families constantly and receive little recognition for our resilience. So, to those of us out there, struggling to get by and struggling to make our parents proud of us, remember that we are not alone. There may not be many of us, but there are plenty of us who understand and can relate to what we feel. Sometimes, just realizing you are not alone may be enough to keep you going.