Antidote to your Brand of Poison
I've always sought solace in the empowering female lead of Jessica Lange in American Horror Story. As she assumed the role of The Supreme in AHS Coven and the ringmaster in AHS Freak Show, she embodied this awe-striking engulfment of power and commanding prowess. I simply looked to her sass towards everyone else with dark admiration.
As my coven sister and I snuggled up to our obsession with her many facades of Fiona Goode and Elsa Mars, there were many quotes that carried me through this prong of hate (though said in rather questionable contexts and with twisted intentions).
I once came across a post on someone's blog "lol I can't be bothered if you wanna kill yourself...stop bothering everyone with your stupid weight loss *giggles icon*" Antidote 1:"I'll never give myself the satisfaction of me killing myself, I'll stay alive just to spite them." - Lange
Yes I've felt like death on those occasions and for the whole of 2015, I spent it agreeing with everyone who sent me similar messages - insisting that it was not even "cyber-bullying" because they spoke the truth about how shit I was. I agree that everyone in the community was struggling and had every right to oust my triggering self but I couldn't help but tear myself over the harsh diction, intonation and everything else between the lines with that pathetically weak state of mind I had back then.
It's okay to say it hurts even if you and everyone says that you don't deserve to feel the hurt you "brought upon yourself". Pain is pain, regardless. Antidote 2: The cauldron is a stirring but there are just a few more conventional drops of dewdrops and nymph tears to add "In this whole wide wicked world, the only person you should be afraid of is me." - Lange
Well, this sounds incredibly egotistical and borderline creepy hahaha but it does hold that fearless establishment of the power you have over those who assume that they have the capacity to strike fear in you forever. When you pass on that authority to someone else to define your capacity to neutralise these poisons, you relinquish your power to harness the strength inside of you. They become your new brands of poisons and these poisons in turn fracture your basic ability to function. Why should we continue to let it?
There are no teams and ultimately, you are on your own and you've got to be your own fire. Go forth, you've got this. "People say things meant to rip you in half but you hold the power to not turn their words into a knife and cut yourself." - Rupi Kaur Gone are the days I that I had spent pacing back and forth along the aisles of pen knives at bookshops; gone are the days I had spent scrambling around my old art sets to dismantle screws holding in place blades from sharpeners; gone are those days. I do not regret misplacing my faith of in these haters as easily as I had chosen to do before (I had divulged my secrets to them as I had entrusted their goodness to uphold my privacy when I gave them access to my password protected blog entries)
Although they were the ones who condemned me for my daily log of sad thoughts, who spread around my password protected posts with screenshots , it uncovered a strength I never knew I had.
It indefinitely hurt when I came across posts from links people who were "on my side" sent to me. Posts that had a group of people mocking how "f***king idiotic" I was on a platform they knew I didn't use. It hurt when I saw friends leave when they got tired of my toxic posts and shifted over to the other side (even if they hung around in neutrality). It hurt because I felt "betrayed" and simply isolated for being truly as shitty as my illnesses made me believe I was confined to for all my life.
There was so much hurt but I knew (as part of my urge to please others and stop them from hating me initially), that I had to make the change from within me to stop this prong of hate.
The ambush was too great. As it resurfaced at my shore with that hostile froth of a bite with every notification, there I was mirroring it with laceration to my skin.
No more
This "hate" was necessary and on hindsight, I'm incredibly grateful for it. I had so much I wished to enunciate but with the silencing clamp that that community unofficially hooked onto my lips and well (more like my fingers from typing out my true thoughts) - I couldn't bring myself to speak my story without the fear of the impending criticism. I felt that I was not allowed to speak the way I had wished to as part of my catharsis. I felt that I should just shut my trap and die for the welfare of others. My oh my, "die for the welfare of others" - boy, that was the Super Bowl rendition of all anthems of my life. Yes, it comes occasionally but as there are many waves, I've learnt to ride them in the only possible way I could cobble up. And I know that that is okay because progress doesn't happen all at once and it is simply what I want it to be in the patient permission of my healing. And truth is, I still feel this way as I'm typing this mediocre entry; as I speak up for mental health advocacy; as I feel like a hypocritical imposter who just seeks attention. But I will speak anyway and I hope it's the right thing to do. “No one has the right to judge you because no one really knows what you’ve been through. They may have heard your stories but they didn’t feel what you have felt in your heart.” As I sat on my mechanised bed last year, lying on my side in foetal vulnerability with my depression playlist reverberating through my eardrums like audio spasms, making me rock back and forth in all emotional instability,
it hit me.
It could hurt like hell but I had too much to say that I did not want others to completely stifle me from voicing. There will be hate, there will be gossip but my inferno for writing was not about to be condemned to the ashen heap just because of these anonymous keyboard warriors.
They can take away my reputation, my happiness and my unmarred skin -
but they shall never take away my voice.
Truth is, they spawned the rebirth of the new voice that you guys read today - and I am immensely blessed to have had the old ways ripped away from me.
It was far from easy to push out these posts that seem to be derived from a point in my life when I was charged with "inspiring" positivity. However, I can tell you that most of these have been wrenched out of me with such force and effort, I just collapse in mental exhaustion right after publishing these posts. It is incredibly draining but I will not stop even if eye bags become one with my face haha.
This tiredness, this pain of forcing a positive side of me amidst the tears is far better than the helpless pain I felt as I unproductively engaged in self pity, revisiting the pain without any real purpose.
“Please stop destroying what is left of your heart by constantly thinking about things that have broken you.” Nikita Gill
In retrospect, I am seriously appalled at the ineffective and purposeless way I delivered my truth.
With every hateful comment, it hammered it in my mind that I was destined to a fate of being rightfully despised by the masses. Yet, I knew that with each exhausting breakdown, I needed to instigate that change to keep myself sane and, well, simply, alive.
So, it dawned on me change it - to what I wanted it to be.
I had spent too many hours wallowing in paralysing self-hate, blaming everyone and more importantly myself for being this universally hated person. I had to change the very thing that was holding me down. I needed to stir up my own cauldron of antidotes. Previously, I had wanted to remain silent and stop talking to avoid hogging the verbal space in this world, that shouldn't need to hear the screech of my unwanted opinions. As I said in my previous post "To the Girl Trying to Wash the Dishes"
"She tried again to shut her trap to prohibit her toxic verbal cesspool from drowning others apart from herself...." BUT "She (soon forced herself to try to be) an eccedentesiast; she went on so fervently with her ideas to change her life and the world around her." I blamed myself for opening my mouth because I felt that others' downfall was the outcome of my toxicity alone.
// "I am that combustion of negativity, like how my sheer spiteful crushing voice just resounds from your ears the sclera of your eyes. The once pure innocence sealed in those enigmatic hues were tarnished with burst streams of narrow nonsense that would erupt from my lips. My demonic and devilish whispers reverberates as it starts off as a tingling vibration to a violent audio seizure that send you into this maniacal hysteria that looks like I've penetrated your purity and delivered a nope blanket, neutralising all your calming strokes of white." // [wrote this down when my art therapist asked me to verbalise what was on my mind in session last year] You can bind me down by restraints with social judgements and fears of sharing my thoughts but I will never stop speaking. Never again.
I refuse to allow them to stop me from being me, "that comes through in what I wrote too. I can't face the world with a smile as fake as cheese in a can. That is not who I am. I am no preservatives, unfiltered, unapologetic, and real. I want people to trust me, and that involves telling the truth about where I've been and where I am. I don't want to contribute to a culture that only shows the highlight reel. Why? People have a hard time relating to me if they think I'm perfect. I'm not offering my true self in concealing my difficulties. We learn from the things we struggle against; we learn a lot about each other and ourselves. Hiding the darkness that comes before the light is like being a travel writer who only talks about the destination." I've come to acknowledge the pain in my pieces but to accompany it with this forceful anthem of alphabets strung together to indicate how bending doesn't equate to breaking. I will break, as I must and will, but the truth holds fire for the stubborn hearts who live despite it all.
To the girls
who have been disappointed by the stifling protest boards that seemingly prohibit you from uttering your truth, don't ever stop shining, don't ever stop enunciating till, you, little caged bird, can wilfully sing with the spiteful victory that will render everyone who clamped your beak shut. Don't silence yourself because you have a voice worth sharing - yes, you do. My wish for you is that you too can belt out the soprano rendition of your victories, yet reign it in with the humbling reality of "alto-nerte" transformations to improve on whatever version of truth you wish to announce to the world. That, you too will allow yourself to fall to the falsetto in agony when people hammer your volume several notches, only to rise to "attacca(k)" with the baritone of seismic shifts towards your killer solo.
Don't let them end your story because as you hold on, I know that the only thing emanating from you will be strength. Over time you will be the sun and not the moons because it won't be long before the haters will silicate around your orbit of positive change. And, hopefully, this my dears can be the antidote to your poisons as it was for mine. “Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.” - Bell Hooks
the people may see all that is broken but they don't know the strength that you harbour deep within that is waiting to exude out and emanate as a contagion of emergence.