Cutting and Healing

Read the following words by either reading each column as two separate poems or by alternately reading verses from each column starting from the top-left.

I wrote this for someone special a year ago so that they know they are not alone, they are not judged, and they have someone to talk to when the urge arises.

Cutting, which is a form of self-injury, is a coping mechanism used for a multitude of reasons – for the expression of deep suppressed pain and sometimes to feel alive after feeling nothing at all. It is not conventionally associated with suicide, but is not a healthy expression of pain. Cutting is predominantly done by girls and women.

love

I’ve recently been thinking about love – the word, its many uses, and the different types of love. Before I think about the myriad uses of the word ‘love’, I must answer the most basic question: are there actually different types of love? Is love universal or is romantic love somehow different than love felt in friendships? The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that they are one and the same – love is love.

I definitely feel that there are different degrees of love, and that the love I feel for my long-term romantic partner is much vaster than the love I feel for a casual friend. But I strongly feel that love itself, at its core, is one and the same. We are taught, however, that love between siblings or between a mother and her child is very different that the love between romantic partners. And we are often discouraged from using the word to describe the relationship between non-romantic friends.

It is often our social conditioning that instructs us on how to interpret the words “I love you”. For some, the words have such potent confusion that they must be reserved for the special few in their life. For others, the words are contextual and their meaning is derived based on who utters them, to whom they are spoken and the situation in which they are used. It is also interesting to me how uncomfortable or how soothing the same words can be depending on the level of trust and on the clarity of the intent.

When I am connected to someone especially in emotional situations, I feel love for them with an intensity that may sometimes be simultaneously uncomfortable and overwhelmingly desired. Desired because being intensely loved is a rare but beautiful phenomenon that we all require; uncomfortable because intense love is relatively rare within our rigid society and also because it has the potential to be easily confused (either by the receiver or the giver) as romantic or sexual feelings.

Pure love and the romantic and sexual feelings have been so muddled together within our society that I can understand why innocent feelings of love can morph into these other feelings – or why the fabric of love feels so warm and pure in the moment it is bestowed but can grow so confusing later on. Recent conversations with a few people have sparked this question and I understand that due to our cultural and societal biases, care must be taken to avoid the morphing of love into something unwanted.

I firmly believe that decisions about romantic, physical and sexual relationships are made between people with our conscious minds, but until we are able to maturely differentiate between the universal love and these other feelings, we must be open and honest with each other. We must expose our feelings to the sun where they can be assessed in a mature and healthy way. Posturing in this case is the enemy of love.

siddhartha

In the autumn two years ago, during a party at a friend’s house, I picked up a book and started reading in a room filled with green plants and yellow light while the party hovered somewhere above me. I was lost in the words only to be brought back occasionally by the unnatural laughter of uneasy people upstairs. I did not finish the story that night as the party eventually tumbled downstairs with all the subtlety of a crashing elephant. Little did I know the effect that the book would have on me – my ongoing search for recreating that moment that I lived in the book and the story flowed in me.

“Om is the bow, the arrow is the soul,
Brahman is the arrow’s goal
At which one aims unflinchingly.”

“Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse is a wonderful story about the self-discovering journey of a young man. I was mesmerized by the river of words and its currents that swept me from bank to bank – sometimes gently and other times with a ferocity that jarred me. It had everything to do with the moment I was in – the room, the light, the smell, the fragments of music flitting down, the contrast of being alone in a crowded house. I have attempted several times to start the book again and to finish it in a moment where I am lost until the end. Maybe this holiday I will find that time again.

welfare and health

Doctor Roland Wong has been filling out special dietary allowance forms for a few people on welfare at his Spadina clinic. He recently came under fire after a complaint from Toronto City Councillor Rob Ford that he is breaking the law by authorizing the allowance without properly checking the facts. The allowance gives people on welfare an additional $100 to $200 a month for buying healthy food. Doctor Wong states that he follows all the rules but refuses to interrogate his patients and treat them like criminals.

“If you put it all in perspective and taking a look at what Mike Harris has done in the past, then you realize that poverty is pervasive. And we know that poverty is the major determinant of health. Given that. how can we just let it go on?”

I applaud Doctor Wong for his courage to sign the forms when it would have been easy to ignore the people. Welfare recipients have been marginalized in this province since the Mike Harris days when Mike and his party distracted Ontarians by finding an easy and identifiable enemy – welfare recipients. Harris had much of Ontario believing that every one of them was a “welfare cheat”. Without a doubt, there are welfare cheats out there and I detest them; they rob from the poor to become rich. But I also know that there are corrupt auto insurance claimants out there, but we don’t marginalize all drivers as a group.

It’s sometimes tempting to point at someone that we perceive as getting a “free ride” when our own lives are debt-laden and difficult. But anyone incited to this erroneous belief should try the welfare diet for a couple of weeks before solidifying their position. I have personally seen several families on welfare – their lives are unenviable except for the happiness many feel when sharing with others. It is an interesting paradox that the people with the least seem most likely to share the little that they have. I have witnessed this phenomenon equally in India and in Canada.

Today, several doctors in Ontario signed a letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons asking that no censure is placed on Doctor Wong. That’s a good sign; let’s hope that his patients also surround him with support through his ordeal for “bending the rules” to help marginalized people.

winter solstice

At 5:47 this evening, the Northern hemisphere of the Earth will reach its maximum tilt away from the sun and slowly start tilting back towards the sun. In other words, the days will get shorter until 5:47 pm and then start to get longer again. The sunlight is, ever so slowly, coming back.

This phenomenon was very important to people long ago who depended on the sun in a very direct way. (Obviously, we still entirely depend on the sun, but we like to pretend that we don’t). Festivals were created, gods were praised and fires were burned to entice the sun to come back. Music, and especially the drum, was often an important part of these celebrations.

Many major religions have adopted the solstice (both summer and winter) as dates for their major celebrations. The most famous being Christmas and Easter for Christians and Hanukkah for Jews. I will drum this evening to welcome the sun back into my life (because sunlight is critical for my personal outlook on life). Here’s to many sunny days this winter. Cheers. Happy Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or whatever you celebrate in honour of the sun.

standing on melting ice

my eyes are shut and the stars in their vastness
are playing with my soul
but there is no spark, no reaction.

I feel deadened, nothing seems to help me, move me
if the stars cannot move me, who will?
but I know. I was awake once. and alive.

the stars used to light fires. I used to dream and weep
and smile and shine. now I am dark
and confused. I am standing on melting ice.

it’s easy to abandon fire if you are standing on ice
I must take a step onto solid ground
so the fires can burn within me once again.

healthcare

Congratulations Barack Obama for doing what you believe. Not perfect, but a huge step in the right direction. There are lots of people upset at you, but that’s the price of conviction sometimes.

beauty

sleeping. sun glazing your graceful hair,
black as depth and shiny, always shiny
carved back, dappled in shadows and light
skin, bones and flesh. breath of my life. without desire.

purity. sun playing on your brown skin,
warm as Indian sun with its familiar scent
curved back. strong muscles carved long
skin, flesh and bones. beauty within needs no desire.

bad posturing

Posture may be good for the body but not so good for the soul. Posturing in relationships may be a symptom of our insecurity and our lack of self-love (not to be confused with narcissism). I do it when I’m feeling vulnerable or unsafe. I think I catch myself most of the time and try to really embrace being in a situation where I am at a disadvantage – where I’ve had to strip myself bare. I call it “embracing your discomfort” – the moment when you are the most open to learning about yourself, the others around you, and how you relate to them.

It is tremendously difficult to do though – who wants to be willingly embarrassed or humiliated? So we posture and feign, bob and weave, hurt before we’re hurt. How do we transcend this feeling of vulnerability and continue to be open to the people around us? The answer that I keep arriving at is by loving yourself – acknowledging your faults, accepting them or working on them without self-flagellation, knowing who you really are and what you really need when you strip away the cosmetics and look within.

With this comes balance, as a dear friend pointed out recently – we may not always be able to be this self-loving, this confident that we never need to posture. Sometimes posturing can be self-preserving I concede – because to bare yourself when you don’t have the foundation of self-love or safety can prove disastrous. I have to acknowledge that there are people out there who prey on the vulnerable.

Knowing and loving yourself is like learning something complex – the more you study the more you realize how little you know. And just like I wouldn’t want to send someone with a little boxing experience into the ring with Muhammad Ali, I wouldn’t want people to be that open, that vulnerable that they become an easy target. So my message to self is: maybe posture for self-preservation (as long as you acknowledge it) but never posture with someone you love – it degrades your self. And it’s harder to love a degraded self.

fragility

I have been thinking lately about the fragility of love and relationships. Everywhere I turn, I find someone I know ending a relationship that they were committed to a few years or even a few months ago. There has to be a better balance between being self-happy and making compromises in a relationship. While I agree that people should end relationships that are truly unhappy or unsafe, it feels like the scale is tipped in a very unhealthy way right now where the definition of unhappy or unfulfilled seems trivial.

In the end, only a person can know the truth about herself or himself and their particular situation. Lying to oneself in the long term may be accomplished by some, but typically not without the cost of physical or mental ailments.

And even more interestingly, I see how a few misinterpreted words can sow doubt in an otherwise stable and trusting relationship. It seems that love can sometimes be taken for granted, but must be nurtured like any other part of our life. Stable only if the participants are I think.