Diary
02
02
What it means to intimate.
Copenhagen, Denmark
I woke up from nightmares several days in a row upon my arrival to Copenhagen. They screamed for me and I would whisper back, I hear you, my pain, I will take care of you. I would caress my chest meeting the still darkened sky and eat breakfast right on my bunk bed because restaurants don’t serve granola at 4:30.
On the second night, a fight with my mom startled me to wake. The agony strained my breaths short and feelings dull. It was 3:44. I wanted to stay up, to get distracted, to not go back to screaming. At 6, I decided to rent a bike and cycled aimlessly under the gray domed sky. The early Sunday streets were empty and lazy like a beautiful, abandoned city. I rode, stopped, chatted with a stranger, then rode, gazed, and rode until noon. It was a day of no destinations.
On the second night, a fight with my mom startled me to wake. The agony strained my breaths short and feelings dull. It was 3:44. I wanted to stay up, to get distracted, to not go back to screaming. At 6, I decided to rent a bike and cycled aimlessly under the gray domed sky. The early Sunday streets were empty and lazy like a beautiful, abandoned city. I rode, stopped, chatted with a stranger, then rode, gazed, and rode until noon. It was a day of no destinations.
When the clock timed 16, I called Mom. Seeing her was my way of touching base with reality. I wanted to assure my body that my nightmare was a distant past, now I could share with her what’s lively in me and she would be there. I talked about my romantic life, my learning on womanhood, shame, and love. A lot of my ideas still challenged hers, many have and many will, but we have gotten past the short-sightedness that kept us fighting for years. Our reality has been one of healing and union for some time now. We could handle diversity, we could handle knowing each other well. We could be intimate.
bus ride from Aarhus to Copenhagen
My dear Juliana lent me the book called Collaboration Dialogue and Trust by Berliner and Enghoff (2019). It says executive functions are developed through concrete social communities where we practice empathy, emotions recognition, self-expression and emotional regulation, all of which allow us to solve conflicts and respect others’ singularities.
The word singularity lands on my mind with gravity. Dialogues begin when there’s a recognition for differences. Throughout the rest of the ride, I thought about my mom and how she did not have access to any concrete community. For 2 decades she struggled in isolation, thus forming aggressive attachments that took away her ability to differentiate herself from her daughter. My identity was monitored, controlled, and sculpted closely because I was an extension of her.
Seeing singularities is a skill that requires communal practice and can only be reinforced through healthy social interactions. When my mom became an active participant in her newfound communities alongside getting access to consciousness-raising conversations, the beautiful seeds of true love and care that had already existed in her are nurtured. Our relationship no longer suffers from ill-defined boundaries and dependent attachment. We could develop individual personalities and personal narratives while loving each other with emotional liberation.
Applied on a bigger scale, our failure to see singularities sets the ground for colonial thoughts. The language of domination and violence comes from the illusion that we possess the correct answers thus the rights to others’ lives. I grew up within the pop culture that promotes the colonial mindset without being questioned. We allow jealousy, emotional dictatorship, control and coercion under the name of love.
On TV, a handsome boy would pronounce that “I get jealous, I get mad, I get worried, I get curious. But that’s only because I love you so much and I don’t wanna lose you.” He justifies controlling his lover’s fate, transgressing his lover’s autonomy, dictating where they should belong and what they should want.
The word singularity lands on my mind with gravity. Dialogues begin when there’s a recognition for differences. Throughout the rest of the ride, I thought about my mom and how she did not have access to any concrete community. For 2 decades she struggled in isolation, thus forming aggressive attachments that took away her ability to differentiate herself from her daughter. My identity was monitored, controlled, and sculpted closely because I was an extension of her.
Seeing singularities is a skill that requires communal practice and can only be reinforced through healthy social interactions. When my mom became an active participant in her newfound communities alongside getting access to consciousness-raising conversations, the beautiful seeds of true love and care that had already existed in her are nurtured. Our relationship no longer suffers from ill-defined boundaries and dependent attachment. We could develop individual personalities and personal narratives while loving each other with emotional liberation.
Applied on a bigger scale, our failure to see singularities sets the ground for colonial thoughts. The language of domination and violence comes from the illusion that we possess the correct answers thus the rights to others’ lives. I grew up within the pop culture that promotes the colonial mindset without being questioned. We allow jealousy, emotional dictatorship, control and coercion under the name of love.
On TV, a handsome boy would pronounce that “I get jealous, I get mad, I get worried, I get curious. But that’s only because I love you so much and I don’t wanna lose you.” He justifies controlling his lover’s fate, transgressing his lover’s autonomy, dictating where they should belong and what they should want.
︎ death ︎ note:
i love you
so you should
love me
why don’t you love me?
did you have someone else already?
who is he?
how can I love you better? how can I make it right for us?
am I not enough for you?
FUCK YOU YOU PIECE OF SHIT WHY ARE YOU SUCH A BAD PERSON WHY DID YOU TRICK ME YOU SLUT WHORING AROUND WOMANIZER FUCKER YOU DON’T KNOW MY WORTH I DESERVE SOMEOME BETTER YOU ARE A SCAM WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT’S ENOUGH? WHY ARE YOU SO GREEDY?
To be intimate is the quality of being known for who we deeply feel we are, our “true self”. The ability to meet another being with liberation, understanding, unconditional acceptance, and trust; These elements are the Sun, water, soil, and air that grow a flower of sweet closeness to bloom. They invite the uncovering of a stranger’s singularities and promise to love all the folds that make them unique.
We cannot be intimate in the spirit of violence. Love is only possible through the transformation of domination into spaces for understanding another individual’s identity. Jealousy, control, distrust, manipulation, micromanagement and so on are the symptoms of a deficient of love.
In the anthropology field, the Ontological Turn in the 1990s challenged the belief that different cultures are mere representations of the same thing: there are different worlds, not just worldviews. Thus one must cultivate the unconditional acceptance of others as unique beings whose lives may forever remain incomprehensible to us. If we fail to embrace grayness, we dictate the law of another culture to which we steal meaningful expressions from them through exerting ourselves as the superior storyteller.
We cannot be intimate in the spirit of violence. Love is only possible through the transformation of domination into spaces for understanding another individual’s identity. Jealousy, control, distrust, manipulation, micromanagement and so on are the symptoms of a deficient of love.
In the anthropology field, the Ontological Turn in the 1990s challenged the belief that different cultures are mere representations of the same thing: there are different worlds, not just worldviews. Thus one must cultivate the unconditional acceptance of others as unique beings whose lives may forever remain incomprehensible to us. If we fail to embrace grayness, we dictate the law of another culture to which we steal meaningful expressions from them through exerting ourselves as the superior storyteller.
