Narrating myself to myself

Sharda Patasar

Day 9: Before the story of us, we must first begin with the story of "I" while "You" too uncover your own story.

As the psychotherapy continues I begin to thread out aspects of myself. I go back into memory this week.

I remember visiting a colleague of my mother’s who lived on our street, and discovering in her library, an encyclopedia collection. Whether it was the Britannica or Americana, that memory eludes me. But I began reading Abraham Lincoln’s biography. There was a story of a book-borrowing incident that highlighted his honesty. That story remains with me to this day. I wanted to read more at the time so I lied (ironic) to my mother saying that I had "research" to do and insisted that it had to be done immediately. I was dropped off at her colleague’s home armed with foolscap paper and pen. I visited for about three to four days until I had transcribed in my eight-year-old hand, snippets of the stories of Lincoln and Washington. I stapled each into booklets and stencilled on the covers ABRAHAM LINCOLN and GEORGE WASHINGTON. They found a place in our library at home.

The home library consisted of philosophical works ranging from Marcus Aurelius to the commentaries on the Bhagavad Geeta. I read over the years, latching on to the concept of detachment as the key to being untouched by emotions and change. Eventually, frustrated, at age eighteen or nineteen, struggling with the concept of detachment in the movement towards self-awareness, one day I wrote, or rather etched, in my journal in bold, capital letters, "I AM NO @$%&* LOTUS IN A MUDDY POND! I am in the world and I cannot be anything more at this point!"

Relief.

It was a moment of vulnerability as well. Private, yet vulnerable, admitting to myself that detachment was not possible through reading. I hadn’t lived sufficiently to internalise it as yet. I was also not, at the time, in possession of the knowledge that the awareness I had been searching for meant acknowledging my vulnerability. Strength, we are taught, comes from hiding emotions or putting it aside. Rarely are we taught that it is OK to feel what we feel when experiences provoke emotional responses from us and move past it by acknowledging that they exist in those moments.

This week’s homework had been to figure out how I formed attachments to people. I wondered where my therapist was going with that exercise but I started anyway, eventually coming to the point where I realised that it really was about understanding the values that drive me, the ones that I put on relationships and how I nurture those relationships. I realise through the Lincoln-Washington memory that, despite the falls and betrayals, trust and truth are still high priorities. Belief in myself hasn’t been destroyed but rather strengthened. One individual’s actions do not determine the shape of the world.

Hurt and pain are natural emotions. Allowing ourselves to feel them and acknowledge the fact we are susceptible to hurt, is fine. We are emotional beings. Acknowledging our vulnerability in a society that thrives on ridiculing what they perceive as weakness opens us to manipulation and the ridicule of others. This is the risk we take. But it also places us in the powerful position of self-awareness. Change is inevitable. How we manage it is the key.

I said to one of my tribe this past week that I felt like I was speaking about the same incident again and again and I didn’t want to burden my people with the story again.

She said to me, "But you have to understand, that we who are here for you are actually honoured and happy that we can give to you. Don’t take that away. You have every right to feel the way that you do. Each time you tell the story, you uncover something new. It means that you are beginning to tie the pieces together and make sense of yourself."

It is really about that – narrating our stories to ourselves to find our own centres so that despite changes around us, as long as our centres remain undisrupted, change is manageable.

While I pick apart myself, I cannot help but think that this is a useful exercise for each individual at some point in their lives. The healing of the nation can only come about as we each begin to understand how our experiences shape the people we become. "I" before "us." Only when we each begin to pull apart ourselves and find our centres, can we then move into a situation of "us." Until then, "us" will always be a shaky concept, susceptible to political manipulation.

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"Narrating myself to myself"

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