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Narcissism an abandoned Shell

My narcissism feels like the corse skin that is not bound to the flesh of the body. It's held by nothing except the dead carcass of the past impressions. (impressions of those around you, those you like to hold on to)

A puncture in the skin, reveals the hollow deep within. All attempts there after are at suturing... the puncture. It's too difficult to let the nothingness be seen.

But if nothing-ness is the flesh that holds the skin of narcissism together, is the only way forward to allow oneself to bleed? Would blood be a sign of flesh? Of substance?

This would require recurrent eruptions of the skin. Is this a fools attempt at proving substance from nothingness? No-thing-ness. The absence of the thing, the hole in the imaginary.

The attempt to create a thing, to have something, to be something. Or one that is open to the possibility of locating a being through the likelihood of a thousand cuts.

[polymorpheous]

Partial Knowns

This week I speak of what is known. I wanted to tell my analyst, that I know that I am caught and I act and react to the desire of the other. The confusion has been a confusion of whose desire. After the session I wanted to write, that I know I am always responding to another's desire.

I saw that this week when I told my partner, that I understood something about ideas and groups. I understood that part of task of working in groups is to allow for ideas to pass. In power structures, it comes with allowing the face to speak about your idea. This comes from an understanding that your idea is theirs too. Or that their idea is built on yours. It's also a position of dispossession. I on the other hand find it very hard to dispossess. I said I did not want to align within the idea of possession, but I find it very hard to be in the disposition of dispossession. I hold on to a possession including an idea. This in someways is connected to envy. An envy that I am still working my way around. An envy that I keep reliving in relationships. As if that is the only way to relate. Envy and disappearance.

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Re-soultions

This year I would like to leave the weave I started to knot last year. May be I tightening the knot last year, the weave started 8yrs back. It is partially undone at the moment. This year, I wish to get back into the playing field. To push myself to my limit. To move with the wind, and against it. That means getting out of the home.

This year I hope to pursue my passions in all its eccentricities, in all its nuance, take and carry the force of that passion. I hope to be able to take those risks. To fall if I have to and learn how to heal. This time quicker than the last. Time is important this year. It is not mythical. It is not unlimited. Time is the limit. But that limit is going to be my push. It's going to be the pulsion that I will use to get things done. This year I will stop waiting for another. I will do what I want for myself. This is narcissistic. I have to acknowledge it. But no point in pretending that I am doing things for the other. Especially when the others I am dealing with are imaginary. They are internal only available to me.

This year I will start dancing again, painting again, studying and writing again. This year I will travel far and learn a new language. This year I will climb a mountain. This year I will support my brother as he moves into his new life. This year I will put myself out there to help others and ask them what they need from me. This year I will put my body and mine to the use of others.

Welcome New Year!

[polymorpheous]

Random

If his intension is to get me to leave him. He is succeeding. His silence, his missing action. His difficulty to do what he says he will do.

The last 6 months have been ruminations surrounding a decision to leave. Last week, I got onto a dating site. That was indicative enough. How many more signs do I need to take the decision? I have anyway made this relationship a test. A test for the other to choose me, to go against his mother and choose me. He has on the surface made that choice. He tells me he is ready. But his missing action betrays this intension. The unconscious is not ready for this. He is not ready for it. I have known this for some time. And yet I insisted.

I wanted him to choose me. I wanted him to want to be with me on terms that I set. The decision to not marry was the test. It was a choice and yet a test of the other. Can he be with me without it? Would he want to be with me? He can only from a distance. He can with the idea of a relationship. Not really be in the relationship. It's all good from afar. From a different city. In what we tell others about our partners.

He needed the permission of an elder to take the decision to live with me. He is struggling too. I see it. But this is not helping him or me. We are both struggling in this relationship. We are both not getting what we want.

It is may be time to end this ruse. It is time to release him and myself. May be he can't leave because he broke off his last relationship. May be that why I will have to be the one that end this. That says good bye.

Goodbye R!

[polymorpheous]

Rationality and Irrationality

"Reason is always a region cut out of the irrational-not sheltered from the irrational at all, but a region traversed by the irrational and defined only by a certain type relation between irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, drift. Everything is rational in capitalism except capital or capitalism itself...The rational is always the rationality of the irrational."

Gilles Deleuze in an interview except compiled in Chaosophy

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Wish to write a Song

Today as I read about a man's journey from fear of a new belief a journey made through song. I wished I could write a song. I wished I had the ability to put my words in verse. And then I recalled the anger I felt. The anger which welled in response to a poet who was offended by my edits. I wondered why I was so upset with her words, with the spaces and punctuation I introduced into her poem. I let it simmer for bit, and then tried to find something else to focus the restless energy that was produced.

Today as I touch my wish to be write a song, a wish to covert my experience into art. I am confronted with my impotence. My difficult in bringing about this conversion. The conversion of what is known and unknown from body to word. Perhaps that is why I was angry. The poet reflected back to me by inability to convert my experience. She reflected back my impotence.

There were many other things though, that those interactions reflect. The relation between a psychotic and an obsessive, the relationship between an editor and writer, the power play between these relationships. So this is also to caution myself that there is more to an interaction than my reaction and the meaning it produces for me.

[polymorpheous]

Dignity when Silenced

How do we talk about dignity of dignity for all when someone is silenced. The act of silencing someone, now part of everyday practices within workspaces. These practices protect those in power, those who have the right to speak. In fact they are meant to protect them at the cost of silencing the other. Non Disclosure agreements are the fancy names for legal tools and contracts to bind people into silence. The worker who signs these agreements binds themselves to secrecy based on the stipulations of the employer. While most companies give their employees NDA’s at the time of signing the work contract. Some organisations give their employees NDAs at the end as part of the closure procedures. They are bound into silence before they leave. 

These practices usually stem from a paranoia. A paranoia that the worker knows something that the employer doesn't. A paranoia that one’s idea/ ones possession will be stolen and credit for this idea will be appropriated. This sentiment is very common. And the NDAs become a way for Employers to feel like they have protected. For some, despite the NDA’s this paranoia remains for after can an idea really be possessed? 

But what this produces is subjects who are silenced. Who are made to feel like they cannot talk to anyone. If they do they will be breaking some contract. For subjects like me who take contracts far too seriously (than I should) these contracts are like the barbed wire that pokes me every time I try to move. It can have the devastating effect of confining someone to their house. The employer did not mean this, and they will find every way to wiggle out of this accusation. But the truth is that the NDA and the force used to get an employee to sign an NDA at exit, as part of a closure procedure is part of a power tactic. This is a strategy to get the other to submit, to stay silent for a time frame. In my case this was 2yrs. 2yrs is the time that someone can take to get a new degree. Now of course I can't put everything on the Employer. They did not hold me into this position. Yet the effect of that NDA did just that. And I stay still under the weight of that agreement of that forced silence. A silencing that has changed me as a subject. That is making me question my politics. 

For how can one fight for the right to dignity when ones own has been stripped away by the very voices that amplifies this right? How does human rights activists justify the call for action against others when they themselves cannot respect and reproduce these acts of violence they demand of others. 

[polymorpheous]

Another bout of Sadness

I woke up today from a dream. I woke up with sadness. The conversation last night with a few friends reminded me of my lack. Of my inability to apply and pursue a PhD degree. I feel like a sham. I left work places telling everyone I was going to go do my PhD. Its been 7yrs and I have still not found my way there. The last two years I could have applied. But I have not been able to get myself to do it. My first few thoughts was a sadness connected to my mother. Who I somewhere hold responsible for this incapacity. For not making me feel like I could break barrier. And then I wondered about my family. A working service middle class family. My mother and father believe in doing hard work. That is what they taught me to do. To work hard for what I want. This middle class mentality only prepares to get ready to be part of the workforce. There is no aspiration to be more. The children too don't aspire to be any more. I see this is in myself and my brother. He doesn't have any ambition to do more than what is needed of him to live. I on the other hand had ambition. But I was castrated. My Big Other I was idealising and following, whose desire I was craving cut me down. She told me I was not good enough. I was not effective and could not deliver what was expected of me. Her words shattered me. Perhaps the word shattered was also to speak about the mirror in which I was seeing myself. And when that mirror was shattered the image I had of myself was also shattered. There was of course a blow to my narcissism. To my idea of myself. 

Now I have no idea. I don't know what I want to do, or what I want to be. Doing for me was being. It was through doing that I was constructing my sense of being. Because I am not doing I am not being. But then the question is why am I not doing. I think there was a push, a want to be over the last few months. Very small. It is challenged every day. Everyday I am reminded of my non being. 

[polymorpheous]

Lost Once Again

I thought I was close to the breakthrough

And eagerly awaited the meeting

But I struggled to find the words 

To express what I constructed as love

that a daughter received from her mother

Something shared by the two

Instead I revealed the desire for a mother

For a mother to know something about me

That emerged as the form of love 

This morning I woke up 

disturbed by what I had identified last night

The desire for a mother that could influence me

After the tears of not feeling good enough settled

I wondered if the transference that got me to the analysis 

was precisely an experience of being defying a controlling mother

Encountering the desire I had, a desire for a controlling mother

But what do I imagine I will be if I had a controlling mother? 

I want a mother who tell me that I can do much more than I was slotted to do

That I can break barriers

That I am not stupid

That I am beautiful

That I am strong

That I am something worth investing in

That I am of some worth to this world

It seems so simple, such small words, such cliched words

And yet at times to have someone believe that about you 

Can really affect how you see yourself

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Losing Identit(ies): Being and Not Being

If identity is a signifier, and the clinic is the space for unravelling the effects of the signifier on the subject. 

What I experience at this moment in my refusal to identify with anything, the impossibility of identification, which feels like a space of suspension. Hanging in the wind to be blown away, to be given an identity. For I don't want to identify as anything, not a student, not a professional, not a wife, not a daughter, not a catholic, not a mother. What I did not write is the implicit ways I do identify, as a reader, as a therapist, as Woman, as a partner, as a sister. In my suffering of a lack of identity, I begin to see the ways I did do indentify. So perhaps identity is is about how we position ourselves in relation to others. And I have positioned myself as not having, and not being. The ‘not’ in my case structures my being. I am structured by not wanting to be like another. And yet I need to understand myself in my relation to the other. And hence the comparison. But what I want to be cannot be understood without the not in my case, or can it? Can I think of my being without a ‘not’. Can I think of what I want without a not? 

[polymorpheous]

Grieving the Imagined Other: For Geraldine

It is a dull day, I woke up feeling better than I had in the last few days. The last few days were difficult for me. And yet I did not know why I was feeling lethargic, why I did not want to do more than binge on pointless television and get to bed. I thought it must be the indecissiveness I have been grappling with, an indecisiveness about the future; of not knowing what I wanted to do in the future. 

Suddenly, in the process of writing a condolence message to a colleague who lost someone close to them, I remember the death that I was grieving. That I had forgotten I was grieving. The death of Geraldine. 

Geraldine was the chosen name of my uncle who transitioned very late in their life. It is said that she came out to her immediate family after she finally got permission from a priest who saw her struggle in her being/ not being able to be. I saw her for the first time, at the months mine after my grandmothers death, when she walked into the church in all her glory, a shiny blouse, heels and chains around her neck. She became part of the gossip following the mass. I loved her entrance for it shocked everyone present at that small church. 

Today, I want to write about grief. In the last few years Geraldine was made to hide again. As I hid in my hole away from the world passing by, I heard about Geraldine having lost a case for her house and being asked to vacate the house she lived in. Geraldine had never worked, and now she did not have anything to sustain her. When asked to vacate the house she grew up in, she had no where to go. Her sister came to help her decide, but in the process, she also took decisions to sell Geraldines clothes. Geraldine had no place to go. The family started to look for old age homes for Geraldine. Her sister however decided to support Geraldine. But all these came with conditions. Gerard could not be Geraldine in front of his family. They had explicitly shunned her on a number of occasions. 

Coming back to today, today I burst into a sudden crying bout. I remembered that I did not go for Geraldines funeral. I wanted to go but I did not go. Part of my not going was connected to the rejection of my desire even before a plan was made. But in part I knew it was more than that. In therapy this week I revealed that “I did not want them to see me emote” I did not want my family to see how I felt. Through the crying bout this morning, I realised the depression of the last few days was a form of grief. This not wanting my family to see me, was in direct contrast to Geraldines wish to be seen. And the wish of others around her to not be seen. 

At this point I am left pondering. Even if I concede to the aspect of grieving, I realise that I am grieving for someone barely knew. Someone I knew only though my construction of her, in the snippets of the stories of her from her cousins my family. A construction, that differed from what they felt of her, but a construction nonetheless, for none of us really knew her. 

This writing, is in memory of you Geraldine. And as a small apology for not trying to get to know you more when you finally came out to us. 

[polymorpheous]

Loosing Ground

What is the experience of loosing once ground? One of my clients referred to her loss of ground as the experience of falling in a well without any branches to hold on to. For me, this experience in the past has been like a black hole. This also got me to read more on the phenomenon of the black hole. And one particular children's book gave my experience some structure. This was of a slowing of time. 

This time around, this experience resembles the experience of trying to stand on water. The properties of water don't allow you to stand on it. You can stand inside it provide there is some ground. I have not been able to find my ground. I have been loosing my ground. Loosing the structure that I built to stand on. What is there is water or may be air. 

One way to deal with this experience, is to freeze the water to have some semblance of a solid structure, the other would be to allow oneself to drown. This drowning was something I deeply cherished earlier. Akin to the ritual of the baptism, drowning in water will change you. And yet this time there is fear. Fear of the change. Fear of what I will loose further as I change. That change has already started. The drop has started. I wonder where I will reach this time!

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Spill Out

This morning I had an episode of spill out. What spilled out was my anger. Anger that I was trying to contain. Now looking back I wonder if I wanted my anger to be seen and known. I wanted my friend and colleague to know that I was angry with her. At the time I did not know why I was angry. As the interjections kept coming I started to get more irritable. And acted on my frustration. The passive aggressive style of expressing anger started to emerge. I responded to the question on questions with reading out the questions. I did not give space to them to speak. 

She thought it was stress. She asks me if I was stressed. I tell her its not stress. She asks me if I am angry with her. I don't know how to tell her that I am, so I remain quiet and push it aside. Somewhere I feel I don't want anyone to see my anger and yet I want them to see it. I want them to know I am angry. But I also cannot express my anger to them. Somewhere I feel I am scared of my own anger. I am scared of what I do, how much I can hurt another with my anger. May be its the wish to destroy, and the guilt about having this wish. The guilt of having a wish to destroy everything in its wake. The guilt protects me from destroying, but it also protects the wish for destruction. 

This wish keeps showing its head, in many relationships, the patterns of passive aggression, guilt about it, keeps repeating. 

But there are other associations I have to my anger, associations that have to do with the person with whom I am angry. She doesn't know it. How could she? But it is something that keeps playing out inside my head. There is resistance that is building within as I keep comparing us. There is no need for comparison and yet it keeps happening. Earlier she would do it a lot more, now that she has surpassed me I keep doing it to myself. I feel inadequate with respect to her. I feel I have not done enough, I am not good enough, I did not invest enough in my education. It comes up in different ways, in small ways. But I ask myself is there a basis for this? Is there a basis for this sense of inadequacy? Objectively no, there is no basis. But within me the comparison keeps playing out: how I am not as good a researcher, how I am not adept at doing interviews, how I do not ask the right questions. The objective part is she is not doing it to me. It is not being done to me, but just in being herself in doing the work together I feel inadequate. So I know this feeling is something I am carrying, and it keeps getting recreated just by the spaces we occupy. That was why the difference is spaces we occupied was something that worked for me. And I do question at the core if we really can work together? Can we work beside each other? We started off as equals but I feel unequal in this relationship. Perhaps the constraint within the conceptualisation of equality itself. For may be judging oneself based on equality, is problematic, for we are not equal, out differences make us un equal. 

There is yet another angle to this, the way these meetings go keeps placing me in the position of the subordinate. And technically I am that, my role is that of a subordinate, I am getting paid to do this work. And so I will be reporting to her. I am now dreading the future prospect of working beside and yet under her. Actually that prospect seems like a debt to me. All these prospects of work makes me feel indebted to her. It doesn't feel like friendship, even though I suppose partly it may be coming out that sentiment. She repeats female friendship. I hear it, I see it, opportunities are being created for me, it is out of a sense of goodwill and yet I feel indebted. I don't feel it is an act of friendship but an act of generosity. And while there is nothing technically wrong with generosity, one the receiving end of this generosity I feel I am indebted to the other for their kindness towards me. And that indebtedness reiterates the sense of inequality. 

Perhaps I am really struggling within me with the notion of equality, being equal, its relationship to kindness, generosity, friendship. Or may be the feeling on inequality that these acts produce for me. Acts in themselves, while offering a sense of community, also make one feel inadequate. Internally I suppose my own difficulty with debts, being indebted to someone, which is also a way of being related to someone is something that really bothers me. I wonder why, why do I get so rattled by debt. Why do I try so hard to not be in debt? Why do I look at the work through the lease of debts?

[polymorpheous]

Structure and Rigidity

We began speaking about fee, about cancelation policy. In conversation with a friend who exclaimed ‘you haven't set down the law!’. I had never thought about cancelation policy as law. In fact I never looked at a policy as a Law. Most of the policies I had come across until then were always plans, intensions but not laws. So hearing the policy as Law struck me like a bolt. I wondered if I had a difficulty with laws and with setting laws. Intuitively I reply I do have a difficulty with setting down laws. Within the clinic it has been a difficulty in setting down payment, a difficulty in containing the session to an hour. A lot of the clients keep flowing beyond the set one hour. And I find it very difficult to cut. 

The cut, to cut, meaning something within Lacanian work. I am beginning to understand that. I am also beginning to learn how to cut at a point the client says something that we need to hold. And yet cutting itself is difficult. Cutting has multiple signifieds for me. Cutting oneself I have tried. But only managed to do at the surface. Cutting oneself has been ‘accidental’ in the form of bruises and more lately burns. But the metaphorical cut is the cut in jouissance. The cut in the pleasure of speaking. My partner is adept at that. In our conversations he cuts a lot, I find it very difficult to cut him. In the same way I find it very difficult to cut my clients too. I enjoy watching them speak. I don't want to be the one to cut. May be I don't want to be the one that cuts them. Because somewhere I feel we are surrounded by cuts. That is not true and yet not true. I can see that with some of my clients. They cannot stop talking. The end of the session is a cut. I have not been able to cut. And when I have tried, it has changed the course of the therapy. So the cut works but there is a hesitation. 

The supervisors first question was, what do you feel you should have done for you to be paid? I talk about how I feel guilty about being paid for work not done. She asks me what am I supposed to do? I tell her I don't know. But the session is supposed to do something. 

Hypothesis 1: She ventures if its about me not engaging in the sexual act, an allusion to the therapy as sex. And my worry that they cannot impregnate me with their words and emotions. 

Reflection 1. If I see therapy as intercourse then may be this makes sense. But I don't see therapy as intercourse. I do see therapy as a dance. A dance which can be sexual but can also be playful. There is a back and forth movement of one and the other. What I feel at times is that I am not moving. This has been interpreted as my fear of moving. My fear of engaging in the act. 

Hypothesis 2: The question of policy is a question of setting a boundary for myself and the other. When I set the boundary in place and the desire to set it is also a way of wanting to control the movement of the other. Control the movement of the client in this case. This need for control is also a need for omnipotence. 

Reflection: I wondered if I was trying to control. In the moment I agreed to the suggestion. May be I was trying to control the clients movement. And may be this was representative of my desire for omnipotence. But I realise that I have a difficulty putting on the breaks for the clients. I don't feel any control. May be there is a problem with the word control? May be there is a problems in looking at everything within the clinic through the lens of control. The setting of the boundary could be a structure for movement. For with some clients, there was no movement. I am uncertain about this hypothesis of my omnipotence. I don't feel any potency. I do feel excitement, an excitement of moments when the theory comes alive. When I can spot things that I have been reading about. This excitement is understood as sexual pleasure. 

Hypothesis 3: From the question of omnipotence or a desire to control. There is an assumption of not having experienced a safe space. The structures in the past have been brittle. And so there has always been confusion about structures and what they can offer me. And so when I do create structures I become very rigid. She asks me here what do I fear will happen. I mention I fear of what will happen after this. What the patient will do. She ventures that I may fear that they will not do follow the law/ rule. I say I fear I will be responsible for all that they will do. She asks me what is it that you fear you will be responsible for? She says its not the good things, its the difficult things. I say yes, I am worried about the difficult things that they may do that I will be responsible for. She ventured into the brittle- rigid- not flexible cycle.  

Reflection: This hypothesis makes sense to me. I did remember moments when I did not want to create structures, I did not want to stay and live within a structure. But when I was in the position of creating a structure I found myself wanting everyone to follow the structure as planned. And when they did not it would really bother me. I see my rigidity in this wanting my plan to followed in the way that I designed it. This conversation moved from control, the need to control because of a fear of breaking of the rules and boundaries I set, to a fear of the patient not conforming and breaking the structure and boundary, to an exploration into my experiences of self harm and if this fear with my patients brings up this fear of self harm for myself. The line of investigation is definitely intriguing. And emotionally there may be something there, my fear of dealing with self harm or what that evokes for me. The question of brittle boundaries. My memories of my childhood was not of brittle boundaries. I do have pictures of myself as a child where I look completely confused. Whether the confusion is because of brittle boundaries and not feel safe enough to play, which can be possible. The other is that boundary was too much for me. 

Hypothesis 4: she adds that its also about testing my limits. The boundaries and structures test my limits. And sometimes the fear is that when you set a boundary I have to also follow it and the other has to too. 

Reflection: This is one of my fears of creating a boundary. I don't know if I will be able to be there all the time if I set this kind go structure. And will I be able to hold on to it as I expect the other to do. Here is where my break takes place. For I seen myself challenging people who represent the structure for me. This has been in al parts of life. This was at the university, this was at the BT, this was at PRIME, this happens even in the current project. So even when there is no structure, I demand for a structure so that I can challenge it. Its like I feel the need to challenge something. And to me everything resembles structures. People in my life resemble certain structures. My partner’s wish to marry represents a wish to enter a structure. The one I had denounced as young adult but now feel ambivalent about. I have not agreed to it yet. In the wish for a desire to live an unconventional life. 

Session:

In my session I went all over the place and throughly confused my analyst. May be she was annoyed because somewhere I was taking the supervisors logic as real/ as truth. I kept saying something about my rigidity and relation to structure. She asked me if this has to do with money and time. I said it has to do with money time and boundary. She asked me what would I like to change? I did not know what I would like to change. I said I see the value of rigidity in certain parts of my life. It gets things done in certain way. I move from here to how I see myself as law abiding citizen, fearful of breaking the law. This is in examples of following traffic rules, 

But I also like the tension of wanting to break and structure and not wanting to. I don't think I break the structure, I fear breaking it. But I want to break it. She ends the session there. And before she closes she says we have a structure to the analysis. I knew that. But then she says I generally don't do sessions at the same time. This line really threw me off. It left me unsettled. Because it revealed that I had created this structure based on an assumption of what analysis was like. The analyst had not created this structure for me. I had created it. She asked me each time when we would meet next and I kept saying the following week. She never said we needed to meet each week. It was my assumption, but this assumption was also based on desire, and my financial ability to pay. I could not pay more than this if she had put down a structure. I would have stopped if that was placed on me. So this really was about my desire. My desire to have a meeting every week. My desire to set up a structure. My assumption that this was required of me. Which was learnt through my training and the stream of psychoanalysis I was exposed to. In the revelation of not generally following a structure my belief became an assumption and a projection. What I realised I had lost if my fight to challenge the assumptions based on which hypothesis were being made. The hypothesis could be used to explore different parts of me. But they should be challenged too. The assumptions based on which the hypothesis are made should be challenged too. And that challenging hypothesis is not challenging authority. Or if it is, why is there is a problem with challenging authority? That is what it is to challenge a system. And I do enjoy challenging a system. 

[polymorpheous]

Attempts to patch up

Today as I finally get myself to sit down and write I realise how restless I have been. This restlessness has been part of me for some time now. However In the absence of an external evaluator, there is no limit to indulgence in restlessness. 

It started with an attempt to arrive at the question of community. My inability to arrive at a question of community contrasted the explicit desire to work and start a program in community mental health. My lifestyle and the isolation that I have placed myself in contradicts the notion of community or being and living within communities. This notion of course is an idealised notion of community life. The ideal interspersed by interactions and experiences of being part of different communities along the way. I ask myself how can I work and promote community mental health if I don't know how to live in a community? 

To answer this question of my relationship to community I will need to go back to myself. It was in this process of free association that I realised another defence. The restlessness was a refusal, a refusal to integrate those parts of me that I was encountering while reading. 

This takes me back to the question my analyst left me with this week, ‘How do I see man?’ I add ‘What is my relationship to men?’ 

To have a response to this question I need to go back, to see myself.  

I am woman. Woman does not exist. Am I then man? 

I have been in search for the Woman. In search for the desire of Woman, in its multiplicity. I say multiplicity because I don't see Woman as One. My association to this question of who I am and how I situate myself takes me back to the way I constructed myself as an adolescent. I saw myself then as a woman who was not woman. Who was different from the women around me or what I thought was expected of women around me. I constructed and tried to live like a man. The motor bike was the symbol of my masculinity. My male friends referred to their bikes with names, usually names given to women. The act of naming the bike a woman’s name was to symbolise the sexual act. These friends were riding a woman each time they rode their bikes. I did not feel the need to name but I rode the bike as if I was one of them. The denim jacket, the loose jeans were all part of the attire that allowed me to be ‘man’. And by being one of the men I was also in smaller ways different from the rest of the women around me. This difference was understood as that which women need not be restricted in doing. I saw the act of riding the bike as an act of defiance of the social norms for women. Women could not handle a motor bike. I was convinced this was a problematic assumption about women’s bodies and capacities and by riding the bike I was not only challenging the idea of man but also that of women. 

The attire I wore while riding the bike hid my secondary sexual characteristics. I could pretend to not have breasts and tie up my hair. I suppose then I did not want to be seen as woman. This was also acted out in different instances with friends. I would get angry with friends who would try to help me each time I had to hoist my bike on the main stand. I then saw this act of theirs as a comment on my body as woman. This did affect my relationships with them. For some of them did genuinely just want to show their care and concern for me. 

Was I always such a Man? 

As i child i wore a lot of dresses. All the photos I have of myself are in dresses I wore at the time. I don’t remember now if I wanted to wear them or if I wore them because my mother wanted me to wear them. I definitely remember her admiration for a number of dresses she brought for me. I guess I did not mind wearing dresses but I preferred wearing pants.

When I started playing Hockey, I suppose the hockey stick was the symbol of the phallus. While I did not think of it, I unconsciously played the role of a kind of male, something that I only realised through narrations of friends who knew me at the time and watched me. I was caught between dance and hockey. My fascination with dancing which started with imitation of Bharatnatyam and then with learning Kathak, let out the other side. The side that could be woman and man. Dance allows you to be both. But I was uncomfortable in the clothes I wore as women. I could not see myself as desirable in those clothes. I wonder if that is why I also started wearing more masculine clothes? 

I stopped learning Kathak when I was in the 9th grade. I chose to continue playing Hockey (was the choice to continue playing hockey a choice again in favour of my transition to what I am seeing as Man?). I did dance when I was in college, I learnt how to dance like a man in couple dances. I learnt how to be the male partner in a dance between the two. This too back then was seen within the discourse of masculinity and femininity. I felt I was challenging the masculine assumption of only men leading in a dance. And by being in the lead lead I put myself in the position of not being a follower. 

Attraction

I was not attracted to a lot of men growing up. In fact Im still not attracted to a lot of men or women for that matter. I did like one boy in the 9th and 10th grade but before that I guess the only person I had a crush on was Cliff. While I thought he looked good, his relationship with my cousin and his mother changed the way I looked and felt about him. I remember being angry with him after that one summer that he spent at their house. I realise now that the anger I was feeling was my identification with my cousin and his mother who were both hurt by Cliff when he went back to the UK with another woman. Its so strange that I have never told anyone about my affection for Cliff and the boy in the tuition. My closest friends dont know that part about me. To them I always presented my self as ascetic with no sexual desire. I think I actively consciously repressed my sexual desire or any kind of desires for anyone growing up. Partly that had to do with my mothers repression of her own desire and that of desire itself from the house. She absolutely did not like any reference to kissing or sex in the household. 

Things changed a little after I went to the city of Bangalore for higher studies. There the dress code for women forced me to acknowledge and give up on certain part of the masculine identity I had enjoyed. I still rode my bike but now with a Kurta. As I started to go out and go for parties I began to see myself more as a woman. The experiences in Bangalore also made me feel more vulnerable. The experience of living in a convent hostel. The experience of being touched by men in places and in ways I had not been accustomed to made me acutely aware of my body as a female body. Going out with the girls involved a lot of dressing up. And while I did not indulge as much as the others I did begin to look at my body as sexualised and may be I wanted to as well.

Going to Delhi took this shift further. I now started to actively dress the female part. Reading Butlers theory of performing gender I began to feel more comfortable in performing the feminine role. I enjoyed it and yet I saw it as a performance and not a fact. Going to Bhopal allowed me to experiment a little more with this performance now in a work space where I was surrounded by men and only one woman. I let down my hair, and wore clothes that fit me in a way that revealed the shape of my body. 

But I am still trying to think through another question. A question that my analyst  left me with at the last meeting. ‘How do I see man?’ What is my relationship to man? 

My immediate association was to the men who have been part of my life. My father, my cousins, uncles and brother. Father has always been quiet and an unconventional man. He does not lay down the rules in the house. My mother on the other hand is the rule maker. She sets down the law. Although I did wear a few of my fathers pants when I was younger. I thought I looked good in his pants. Father was there and not there. He was a presence who is loved but his impact on me was subtle. It almost seems like I related to father like I would to a mother and I related to Mother like I would a father. So when I am trying to understanding Man, I am trying to understand my relationship to man in the woman. The woman with whom I have a very explosive relationship. 

The relationship with man is almost like a relationship with woman.

[polymorpheous]

Na-layak / Un-worthy

Growing up the word 'nalayak' was a common cuss word used towards us. Mother used it to describe us when we did something that she did not approve off. Back then the word was used for any kind of action. It did not have specific significance in its usage that would in turn give it specific meaning. As children we saw this as her way of expressing her anger towards us. And we laughed about it after the fact.

Today, as I sit in front of my mirror, at a crossroad in my life, I can only think of the word 'nalayak'. Translated in English the word means to be un-worthy/ un-deserving. And that is what I feel about myself. I don't feel I am worthy or of any worth. Not worthy of praise, of acknowledgement, of love, of affection, of friendship, of fellowship, of association, of family, of community.

That seemingly non significant word, has creeped it's way to become an internalised description of the self. Rationally, it does not make sense, for I ask myself worthy of what? Worthy of whom? And there is no response to those questions. That is the power of a word that is used consistently, without specific association to anything and everything one did as a child. The psyche forms it's internalised associations even when you dont form them consciously. It's effects seen in your inability to accept your own achievements or even accept those around you who want to offer you comfort.

For in reality, each person is of value, each person is worthy of love, affection, companionship. But we do need to see how these words of our childhood shape us, constrain us.

[polymorpheous]

Non Identity

As I read about an interview with late Marx, on life being a struggle, the tears start erupting. The eruption brings with it images of the day before. Of being recognised as a nobody. Every introduction a reminder of a non entity or may be an entity that is in someways smaller. For even those that struggle for class equality distinguish people based on the position they hold. The performance needs to be explicit. We need to be seen performing, speaking to perform how much we know or what we know. Can we contribute to their knowledge? Can we match their intellect?

But that is not only true of those within the class struggle. There are glimpses of this in your partner. Who speaks to you for an hour only when you relate to him on subjects he is intrigued by. You begin to perform as well. You need to feel worthy of this relationship, of this association, and so you flutter your wings. But you are nothing. You have nothing. And you know it.