the daily battles: ungrateful or ambitious?

“what do i want out of my life?”

this is the question i ask myself, almost every day.
and every day, the answer is the same: better.

reading this you might think that perhaps my life is in dire straits, maybe i am financially unstable, maybe i have too many broken relationships, maybe i have a terminal illness and i am searching for meaning. it is none of those things; i have everything i have worked for, and many things have been given to me.  yet, i can’t shake the feeling that i need to do more and be more. 

when i tell people that, they often tell me to look at the laundry list of achievements and be grateful.   other people tell me that i am ambitious, that i should be more content and happy. my thought, in response to that, is to wonder: when did we begin to equate gratitude with complacency? When did ambitious become unhappy?

 

you can want more things, be grateful for what you have, and experience happiness, simultaneously.

in fact, you should.

-e.j.

8 weeks.

The night before; it was the weirdest feeling.

She didn’t think there would be a feeling associated with it, naiveté spilling with every tear. Her hand lingered over the lower half of her abdomen, she thought if she touched her skin maybe it would change her mind. “How could there even be a connection”, she had never thought of it this way.

The morning of; a series of mundane morning rituals.

Even when big moments take place in our lives, they are punctuated with ritualistic, mundane, everydayness. She got ready, still making sure she didn’t accidentally graze her lower abdomen, choosing a dress so she didn’t have to button any pants. Her phone flashed, he was waiting downstairs.

It was cold, even for October.  Walking into the nondescript building they were ID-ed and brought into the reception room, which was trying too hard to be cheerful. Women of all ages were sitting, reading magazines and chatting. To her surprise, so many were middle-aged, married women with other children. Soon, they were called into an office, the doctor explaining the procedure, talking about anxiety and counselling, giving them a stern look when talking about contraception.  He held her hand under the table, the whole time.

It was like a relay race; from the doctor’s office, down the hall to change into a gown. “Why don’t these things have a back to them?”, she thought as she put on booties made of hospital-gown-paper. She felt like she was gliding towards the ultrasound room. Ultrasound.  A thing happy, married people did, when they wanted to see their baby. As the nurse powered the monitor and began to rub the cold jelly on, she turned away feeling a strange sadness for losing something that did not exist, that she did not even want.

Finally, at the end of the race, she could sink into the sleepy warmness provided by the narcotics flowing throughout her body. The doctor’s voice was talking about the process, “it feels like a vacuum, you’ll feel some pressure”, with a loud whirring sound acting as a soundtrack to this moment. “Why are the tubes transparent?” she thought, as she watched the clear tube become varying shades of red.

Ten minutes.

In the narcotics haze, she turned to the nurse, “how big was it?” breaking into sobs. The nurse, a warm woman, seemed unfazed by the suddenness of emotion in the room. “It was nothing. 8 weeks is nothing”. She sat a few minutes in another room, eating soda crackers with a can of Canada Dry. He waited in the reception, with a box of chocolates. They left, and he let her cry in silence the ride.

The night of; she let her hand mindlessly wander onto her belly button ring, and fell asleep.

-e.j.

on orientalism.

(this was originally posted on “The Belle Jar”http://bellejar.ca/2014/11/20/guest-post-on-orientalism/)

It was around 10pm on a summer night, a few years ago. I was waiting on Queen West for a friend. We were going to head out to a party like any other twenty-something on a weekend. A man approached me and asked if I worked in the ‘entertainment industry’. When I said no, he told me that I had a “really good look for this stuff”. He introduced himself as a film-producer and continued to tell me that his next project was looking for exotic, middle-eastern-looking women and that the pay would be really good (side note: I’m not middle-eastern). As I began to walk away while refusing his offer, he shoved a card into my hand and told me to think about it. I turned the card in my hands and saw that he was indeed a film-producer; he produced pornography, specializing in ‘oriental and exotic girls’. Feeling confused, my thoughts ran something like this: Am I really ‘exotic’? What does that even mean? I’d never thought of myself that way before so should I accept his comment as a compliment? Wait, or does he mean that I’m different; like a zoo animal, an ostrich amongst the crowds of pale-skinned blondes?

The idea of ‘exotic other-ness’, especially for women, exists in all areas of society where sex and sexuality are concerned. In the world of pornography, it is most visible, most at display, most lucrative. If you walk into any adult entertainment store, videos are often categorized by race and then broken down by category. A quick search online will give you the same results. Women of colour or racialized backgrounds are shown as hyper-sexualized and promiscuous. There is a sense of stereotyped fantasy based on old ideas about what a woman of that ethnicityshould be like: a black woman is ghetto and must have a “big booty”, a Latina is feisty, a South Asian must have memorized The Kama Sutra, and an East Asian is submissive yet kinky simultaneously. The plot lines, if present at all, revolve around racist imagery and situations. These fantasy generalizations also show women of colour as lusty and not having control over their desires. These are women who have to be liberated sexually and are willing to do anything. These are women who are different from the status quo, the majority of white women.

Many argue that this is just a venue for people to experience or live out their fantasies. The problem with that idea is that this is not the sexual reality of black, East Asian, South Asian, Latina or other women of colour. People who watch porn regularly argue that they recognize it is not reality, they recognize that real sex with real women is different, and that they can draw the line between sex and porn. As a woman of colour, I disagree with them. These ideas about racialized sexuality and the fantasy find their way into real-life conversations about sexuality and discussions with friends, causal hook-ups and even people you regularly have sex with. These race-specific genres of porn muddle expectations, the ones men hold of potential sexual partners as well as ethnic women themselves. It adds another layer of questioning to already present complexities women experience in asserting their sexualities. Besides thinking about what society will say about our sex lives and how our bodies look from various angles, now women of colour have to think about if they are ‘mysterious and different’ enough, if they are meeting the expectations set by porn. With so much going on, focusing on pleasure and what they want can potentially become secondary.

For the remainder of that night, I couldn’t help but wonder if every guy there saw me as ‘exotic’; that man’s thought had found its way into mine. In the years that followed, I came up against this perception more times than I appreciate. I find this frustrating because it is a fabricated element in my reality; it changes the way people experience me. Simply put, it creates an aura of objectification in every aspect of daily life. However, It’s hard to say which influences the other. Is it the seeping of porn-ideals into mainstream culture, or is it mainstream ideas finding their way into porn? I think they are two sides of the same coin. Mainstream media saturates us with objectified ideals and stereotypes of women of colour; but these ideas are limited to interpersonal, ‘regular’, or daily situations. Characters like Gloria from ‘Modern Family’, or Latika in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ speak to what life is supposed to look like for women of colour, but doesn’t really explore their sexualities. This gap is filled by the porn-industry, which provides a glimpse into what the sexual lives of these women of colour is supposed to be like. Combined, both these powerful mediums present a completely fantasized version of a woman of colour. The danger lies in the fact that when a fantasy is presented to you, already complete, it is hard to imagine it as existing otherwise.

-e.j.

opposing permanence: a narrative of temporary.

one of the most beautiful and tragic things in life is the myth of permanence. we fall in love, thinking that it will be forever. we make friendships for life. we make financial plans based on the idea that there is a more. these plans bring us joy, make us sad, and make us feel that we belong to an ongoing narrative; that there is a beginning, middle, end to our stories.

the opposite of this idea is to be temporary. this is a revolutionary thought. working as a psychotherapist, i often find that people come up against seemingly immovable walls made of the idea of permanence. it becomes an obstacle in their path to recovery. this is because they feel that this is how it will always be. that their sadness will last forever, that the happiness they seek is a permanent ending. a slight shift in thinking, towards the belief in temporary, becomes essential in building hope. once we begin to see that every feeling state that guides our moods and actions is temporary, we are able to see beyond it. it begins to build the foundation for resilience, managing expectations, and sets the stage for change. it also causes the most important shift of mindset, of knowing that you have more control over your situation than you think.

so the reality is, one of the most beautiful and most tragic things in life is the narrative of temporary.

-e.j.

mornings.

she is waking now.
stirring, lascivious, turns;
slowly unfolding.

-e.j.

moon and light.

we continued to walk the path;
you reached the moon,
stepping on the stars.

we continued to walk the path;
you illuminated the road,
glistening on the water.

we continued to walk the path;
you tempted the waking sun,
concealing yourself in daybreak.

we continued to walk the path.

-e.j.

doors and hinges

sometimes things are completely broken.

a door rests on its hinges. but hinges will begin to rust and crumble; the metal will turn into a dust, weightless in air.

no matter how ornate the carvings on the door, how glossy and rich the hues of the paint. no matter how sturdy the Adler wood of the door. As it slips off the hinges, it stops being.

the beauty in all of this is that the door can be put on another hinge. and it will be alright.

ej.

Is there a place in the world you never want to visit? Where, and why not?

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “No, Thanks.”

solitary confinement, because interaction is the nourishment that keeps us meaningful.

ej.

her illusion of intimacy.

she had this way to creating the illusion of intimacy with any of the men she met in her life. watching her from a distance, one would think that she is especially close with the man of the moment.  in my lonely hours, i’ve found myself thinking about why — or, more importantly, how? how could one imitate such a genuine human feeling? i know that was something beyond my capacity. the more i thought about it, the more i realized that it wasn’t about the technique of replicating intimacy but  about her. perhaps this type of intimacy evaded her, through circumstance or luck. maybe she carried a mirror — reflecting her wants onto whomever she could, each night. this is how she could participate in the dance of human desire. she could receive something she wanted for herself. it didn’t matter at that time who stood on the other side of the mirror.

ej.