I follow an artist who makes comics in a language I don’t know enough to even identify. But I look at her work & know that she is trying to say something kind.
I haven’t been feeling well. It too is in a language that I don’t understand. Papa and mummy don’t categorize into sickness anything that doesn’t bawl or yell, which only got included in the definition because of the unforgivingness of schizophrenia & I struggle to legitimize anything I cannot criticize. Neverthelesstheless I feel a pull in my chest, some weakness, but nothing that shows outwardly, except the time I cried while washing utensils & whatever made kaka think I was unwell over a videocall.
What happened? papa asks his daughter crying over a soapy saucer. “Nothing” I want to say: not the evasive “nothing” but the “literally nothing happened” nothing. What triggered this “nothing”?
Nothing.
These nothings are hard to defend & harder still to explain. So I learned a technique pretty early in life, to put up a smile on my face when my heart really isn’t feeling it. I assume everyone has a fake smile they keep handy but I can switch off crying like there was a switch to it. I try to unlearn this superpower a little each week in therapy.
Maybe it’s the Tachycardia, I tell kaka, the cause or the effect, whichever. I only learned this word last week. Something is making my heart beat faster than is acceptable. Maybe my medication causes it. Mental health medication is the drunkard uncle of modern medication, who is a good candidate for any blame. Maybe it’s the quarantine, the overenthusiastic aunt who is generally absent but over-participates in every event. If it is my ticking biological clock, the burden of awareness in a stoic society, my unresolved caregiver issues, low fluid intake, or the weight of the knowledge of a Macbook charger’s cost on my mind, I will know when I find the rosetta stone.
In its undeciphered form though, I can tell that my body is trying to say something kind. Something like “babe, you want coffee? This one is called the whistling schoolboy” “I did a dance party but I still can’t stop missing you” or “Think of it as a dance, not as a switch”