cancer season contemplations

hiba
hiba
Jul 23, 2017 · 3 min read

I.

i have gotten used to dodging my reflection and only looking in the mirror long enough to discern if something is wrong and fix it, or to apply skincare products with the promise “it gets better”. so, when i sat down last week for a trial of spontaneously (how out of character is that) filming a series of failed youtube videos, i was overcome with, if i could put it nicely, displeasure.

i ask myself why do i flinch when i see my reflection sometimes, is it because i notice how i look nothing like who i am on the inside? because, as early tumblr feminist slogans said, we are not our bodies. but i’ve been trying to escape from my body for too long, by staying in my head and existing neck up, and when i look in the mirror i feel like a foreign entity. and i’ve made it a habit hard to break.

II.

i’ve been deeply interested in astrology lately and learning about who i am, and i detected a pattern in my interests. it appears whenever i am thrusted into a new experience, in this example going to university, i fixate on the Self. this being that i seem to be missing. the sense of an individuality. i become so immersed in trying to find who i am, that i forget that it essentially doesn’t matter if i can’t describe who i am unless it’s like a job interview or something. i can’t describe myself, but i can describe what i enjoy enthusiastically. i can enjoy things pretty well, and if i can’t find out who i am, and what are my Core Characteristics™, i’ll just remind myself that i am too mutable to ever become one thing anyway, and people’s view of me, just like astrology, depend on the descriptor and their subjectivity.

III.

one of my goals this summer is to keep the promises i made to myself. i like to think that i’m diligent enough to remember what anyone asks of me and to do it in the best way possible, but i don’t do that to myself. see, i think unconsciously, i don’t think i matter to myself that much, and to keep promises i made to myself or to break them in principal matters, but i only use it as another reason to beat myself up about it, not fix the problem at hand.

there’s no reason for me to not do the things i want to do consistently like waking up earlier, eating healthier, writing more, etc. but i don’t care for myself, that’s why i don’t do these things regularly, and when i do them and stop, that creates a whiplash of self-hate and the cycle continues.

to combat this, i thought that, temporarily till i can think of myself in a better light, i can think of these promises as binding as if i am making to someone else, so if i want to wake up earlier, i wouldn’t keep scrolling through twitter, i force myself to think that i must wake up earlier because i (me in the present) made a promise to myself (me in the future) and how that would make me (in the future) so much happier if i kept it. imagining my satisfaction in the future keeps me in check.

IV.

i keep thinking of phoenixes, as everyone does (i think?) when they’re going through something tough. particularly the rebirth of a phoenix, the second phase of the cycle after being engulfed in flames and rising from the ashes, how in that moment they are so raw and small and exhausted, and i think i’ve been in that stage of rebirth and starting anew for as long as i can remember, and whether i will ever be strong enough to grow, and whether growing is a choice, or being strong is a choice, or are people forced to survive and keep going no matter what. and how i have the language to keep nitpicking at every thought process i have, and i think of the women before me, and whether the life they were living allowed them the breaks and lazy contemplations, anxious as they are, that are a staple of mine and maybe i owe it to them to keep thinking of ways of being the best i could be.

hiba

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hiba

chapter 4. attempts at self actualization

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