Monthly Archive

I hit a real low today, for some reason. I got so overwhelmed by all these little things that have been making me upset and have culiminated into one big thing. I feel better now, although exhausted. I feel very disconnected from people, with the exception of 3 or 4. I think a part of it is loneliness, a lot of it is the last spurts of anxiety that were created towards the end of the semester.

I just wanted to say I read your blog a little today, and I’m proud of you for keeping one and getting all there is to be said out in the open for others to see. It takes guts. And self possession. Things, of course, I’ve known you’ve had all along… -Kel

That was the highlight of my day. It is the only reason I’m doing better now.
I’m in that sunken place where I’m going through the motions of my day and relaxing as well as getting things done. But my mind is somewhere else every minute of it. I keep trying to steer it back onto a steady plane but it hasn’t yet.

What happened to me? I feel like I was more in control of my life during the school year than I am now. All the things I brushed aside with “I don’t have time for this” has resurfaced in the last 48 hours and I can’t seem to think about anything else except those questions that are too big to deconstruct. Am I really making a difference. What am I doing. What kind of career or job do I want after school. What do I really enjoy.

I’m thinking of this time when Rhodessa Jones came to speak and read through some of the questions she asks the incarcerated women that become involved in the Medea project. The questions are broken off into groups and one of them was love. I only remember two questions in the whole series but it was “Who do you love? Who loves you?”
It used to be very difficult to answer the latter question. Aside from my parents and family, and a few good friends, I have never been assured of the people who love me. Suddenly it seems far more difficult to answer the first — or rather, the long list of people I assumed I had has become the same insecure list I had in response to the latter question: my parents and family, and a few good friends. I don’t know why this matters except that it reassures me of something I have always been afraid to admit has changed about me. I don’t trust people like I used to. And I don’t trust people like I used to because I know what it looks like to have trust abused. I see it all the time and it has and will happen to me. It isn’t that I’ve stopped trusting people entirely - the process of trusting has just slowed down considerably. And I don’t know why that matters either.

Someone once told me that I was bad at dealing with change. Looking back, the thing that hurt me the most was I knew it was true.

I want this to be a time for me to reclaim. Reclaim myself, my identity, my voice, my strength. I thought I had created that second semester but in reality, I had built a just-useable shell of that person to help me get through my months at Pomona. And now that I’m at home I want that shell to stop being hollow, because its wearing away and leaving only the panic and anxiety that was my first semester reality/identity slap.

I want to reclaim my anger and my passions.

There are a million of them of course. I actually realized this was one of my own - one I could never admit to myself, but ended up doing so completely at random in an email.

“It’s hard to love someone like me I realize - I have a lot of baggage. “

I was cleaning out my sent email - I only wrote this a few days ago. I didn’t think twice about it until the second time I read it. Everytime I read it I want to cry. I have cried. And you know what? That is the reason the quote that I posted gave me hope. Because it makes me believe that somewhere there are people who can love the ones with baggage. The ones who choose to value their integrity and their identities over any thing they see that ends with rolling credits.

You’d think its something I would have realized sooner, too.

Anyone that knows me well knows how much it meant for me to read this in Sonja D. Curry-Johnson’s “Weaving an Identity Tapestry”:

“In college, conflicts did not lessen, but rather grew, both around me and within me. Here I had to decide what meant more to me, the attention and admiration of men, or my integrity as an independent woman. Unfortunately, there were times when my willingness to find and keep a boyfriend outweighed my desire to live my life honestly as my own person. During these times, I often placed the needs of the relationship over my own. It took a few years and a few broken relationships for me to reassess the importance of romantic love and to realize that there was no fantasy that was worth my denying any part of my identity. I decided not to become involved with a man unless I was sure he was the type of person that would not only accept my feminist ideals but also support my execution of them in my personal and professional lives. That type of man, in my mind, was a rare bird indeed. No sooner had I resigned myself to a life without romance, that I met such a bird and, in perhaps the least-debated decision of my life, married him.”

I have a love hate relationship for this painting. There’s a part of me that hopes I paint it for the rest of my life and a part of me that hopes I wake up one morning and it just gets done.

You know I suddenly realized that in my plans this summer - art and reading and writing a paper and planning training and general processing my life and whatnot - it completely slipped my mind to do any writing.
Sometimes I worry that I’ve stopped writing because I’m not as angry as I was in the beginning of the year. It isn’t that I want to be angry in the way I was, because it was exhausting and painful — I think maybe I just have this urge to channel anger differently in regards to creative output — that I want to do it with painting.
I get to go art supply shopping tomorrow! I didn’t go as planned on Thursday. I hope I can find materials so I can stretch my own canvas — I think that might get expensive though so I’ll have to see.
I’m really tired of women being called too sensitive or emotionally high maintenance simply because they have standards. I remember when Pete once, very matter of factly, told me I was emotionally high maintenance — I remember trying so hard to not be vocal about things I was annoyed by, times I felt disrespected. I kind of chuckle about that now. Because Lord knows if someone told me that..it would be the end.
On a completely different note, I found a site today that eases my worry that children of color won’t have dolls/toys that look like them.

Like this one!

It reminded me that the baby doll I had when I was little was brown.

I promised myself I would go to bed earlier but it isn’t happening. I’m halfway through the Crooked Line. I like it a lot so far, and some obvious things going on in it, in regards to symbolism and feminism and all the -isms. I’ll talk about it way more when I’m finished.

ahh female South Asian philanthropists…

I thought I’d come home and I’d start sleeping off this exhaustion but it isn’t happening. I’m sleeping less than I did during the year and I’m still tired –
It isn’t even tired, it’s restless. I feel like I should be doing something all the time but I’m too tired to start anything. Between reading books and writing this paper and planning AAMP training, I could be doing work full time..I just still feel tired so I can’t start. I think I’ll start Monday.
I started The Crooked Line a couple days ago - it was written in 1945 and is only being released translated in the USA in June. It’s pretty “progressive” from what little I’ve read and heard about Ismat Chughtai — Sheri had mentioned her during the year and then my grandmother raved about her when my mom was buying the book in India, which made me happy because I forget that my grandmother had the privilege of extensive reading and growing up in a context that was Westernized in regards to education, and it was a nice reminder.
I’ve been watching a lot of television — all sorts of crap. I think I’m channeling a lot of shit to the television - seriously, everytime I turn on MTV I yell out loud in this empty house about how classist and racist and stupid the shit on it is.
I think I’m going art supply shopping tomorrow. Harrah!
I found a great shirt for my mom on this desi site