{"id":92,"date":"2021-03-29T16:39:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T16:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.illinoisstate.edu\/euphemism\/16-2\/?page_id=92"},"modified":"2021-04-28T17:30:48","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T17:30:48","slug":"in-the-pursuit-of-existing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/16-2\/in-the-pursuit-of-existing\/","title":{"rendered":"In the pursuit of existing"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
Tiffany Fenner<\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\r\n

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TW: Self-Harm<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cSince we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, perhaps the real question facing us is not \u2018What do we want to become?\u2019, but \u2018What do we want to want?\u2019 Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven\u2019t given it enough thought.\u201d -Sapiens \u2013 Yuval Harari\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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As with everything there exists a beginning; moments to start from, a place that can be looked back on and somewhere to eventually meet an end. Yet then, there also exist moments before a beginning can be fathomed and anchored to life. These moments aren\u2019t meant to be remembered; they are brittle and blurry, only lasting to spark beginnings. The preparation before the start of a true moment in time. And with every beginning, this spark is how our soul came to be.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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In the void there is only she and I. Yet, her beginning presses and pulls away from the moment we exist in without time. Sadness overtakes me and squeezes at my heart, as I know it does hers as well. This moment exists as ours. Time does not move, nor does it separate and pull us away from each other. She and I simply exist in what connects us. I hold her close, wishing I could consume her and keep her\u00a0with me. In this moment of peace, the void morphs and becomes thick and heavy with our shared grief. I know I must let her go, but this moment made for the two of us stretches on.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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Regardless, her beginning needs to\u00a0come. As time can only wait so long before it leaves and continues on without us. Life is what connects us. Though it bends and breaks us so carelessly\u2014leaving scars and bruises that never fully fade\u2014I still must place her at her beginning to connect us once again. So, with a heavy heart, I look down at her\u00a0tiny\u00a0frame; so\u00a0slight\u00a0and fragile. Her beginning is calling her too early, already weakened before her life is set\u00a0to begin. She\u2019s too small to exist yet, too fragile and light to step into her beginning. Her breaths are slow and deep. She\u2019s so, so small. Yet with purpose and strength, she breathes slowly and deeply. Her eyes are still shut,\u00a0but her expression is peaceful and at ease. On her lips rest a small smile. I trace the corners of her tiny mouth with my fingers. Her smile reflects the peace she possesses in the moment. It\u2019s a peace that I desperately yearn for her to hold on to. Though I realize that beyond this moment, this peace will be too fragile to hold onto for\u00a0much longer. That the journey she will have to go on will be challenging\u2014and\u00a0at times\u2014will\u00a0hurt and devastate her.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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And although my heart wishes to protect and hide her away from the pain that awaits her within her eventual life and time, I know that true peace is devoid of delusion. She will go and I must send her into her beginning. So,\u00a0within the familiarity of my heart I place my forehead to hers,\u00a0and\u00a0lay my hand on over her heart feeling the tiny beating of it against my palm. In this I stretch our peace within the void just a few moments longer. I kiss her cheek and hug her tight one final time before I set her off to begin her life. Time is waiting for her, and soon so too will I.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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After life begins, we then exist. Existence has many forms. For some, existence is just a mere happening, without much control over how they exist within the life they were born into. For others they find their existence to be a vehicle for pursuing any and everything they dream of. Yet for those who fall somewhere just in between these two planes of existence, life is both an uncontrollable happening and\u00a0a vehicle for which\u00a0they\u00a0possess the ability to use the existences\u00a0they\u00a0were born into to pursue\u00a0their\u00a0greatest potentials.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I lie on the cold hardwood floor of my room. The bed, only an arm\u2019s length away,\u00a0is far less inviting. The bed feels ancient and worn. The springs almost poke out of the sides.\u00a0While worn gray tape\u00a0is poorly slapped on to keep the springs securely within the\u00a0mattress, keeping\u00a0me from hurting myself. The room is nearly empty,\u00a0besides my bed and the few stuffed animals and dolls I have thrown around my room. Even with these few toys that I have, I found lying still on my wood floor\u00a0and\u00a0staring at my ceiling to be my favorite way to pass time when I\u00a0am\u00a0alone. I\u2019m alone a lot. I\u2019m alone even in the moments when others are around. It\u2019s been this way for as long as I can remember. I think I like being alone. When I\u2019m alone my thoughts become clearer and my feelings are no longer hidden away. In these moments I exist fully in the moment, without obstruction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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Last month,\u00a0I turned seven years old. It felt different than when I turned six. My mom wasn\u2019t sick when I was six. When I turned six, she threw me the biggest party and invited everyone in the neighborhood. I even got a ballerina cake. Although,\u00a0I never really liked ballerinas,\u00a0but\u00a0Mom\u00a0did. She even dressed me in a pink dress that looked like something a ballerina would wear. On that day, my\u00a0Mom was\u00a0the\u00a0happiest I\u2019d ever seen her. Seeing her existing so happily\u00a0brought me joy\u00a0too. Her smile on that day is one of my most favorite memories.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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When I turned six, she even gifted me a baby doll. She said she got it because she thought it looked like me.\u00a0The doll\u00a0even talked. I never had a doll that talked before.\u00a0She would say a prayer. The same prayer my mom taught me. My favorite prayer. So, after that day I would take my doll to bed every night with me and right before we would sleep, we would pray. Together we would say, \u201cNow I lay me down to sleep. I pray the lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the lord, my soul to take. So, wake me when the sunshine breaks.\u201d And after the prayer my doll would say \u201cGod bless\u00a0Mommy,\u00a0Daddy, and everyone.\u201d And I would always end my own prayer with asking God to let my Dad know that I loved him\u00a0and that I wanted him to\u00a0come and visit me sometime. But that was when I was six.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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When I turned seven my mom stopped. My mom was no longer happy. Now she only sleeps and stays in her room. Now that I\u2019m seven she only ever yells or cries, but never smiles. On the day I turned seven she spent the day talking to herself. She\u00a0talks\u00a0to herself so much, she\u00a0no longer talks to me.\u00a0She no longer sees me.\u00a0So, when I turned seven, I stayed as quiet as I could. I\u2019m still quiet. Now that I\u2019m seven I no longer pray with my doll. I tucked her away in my closet. After I turned seven, hearing her say \u201cbless Mommy and Daddy\u201d seems like more of a curse than a prayer. After I turned seven, God showed me that he didn\u2019t listen.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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\u00a0But in the moments when I am alone, that is when the lady comes and lays beside me. She never shows me her face and when I reach out my hand to touch her, she\u2019s never close enough to reach. After I turned seven, she came to be alone with me; to lay beside me in the quietness of my room. To listen to the thoughts in my mind and to feel the emotions I only save in these moments for she and I. After I turned seven, I found that while God was too busy to hear me, she existed to be with me; to be alone with me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cWhat you said about hating yourself and feeling sorry for yourself. What if you were to replace your harsh judgments with some genuine curiosity about why you do what you do? What if you use drugs because you’re afraid that you can’t bear the pain without them? You have every reason to feel hurt after all you’ve been through. It\u2019s\u00a0not a matter of fucking up. You just haven’t found any other way to cope.\u201d \u2013 In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts\u2014Gabor Mat\u00e9\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I dig my nails into my arm, willing myself to not let anything escape out from within. I feel my throat tightening and my breath getting shaky. I will myself to not allow the stinging in my eyes to overtake me. The others around me laugh and carry on with normal conversation. Everything is normal for them. It\u2019s a normal night, and we\u2019re all normal teenagers, hanging out like we do. One of the boys says something that causes everyone to laugh. I try to join in, but my voice feels frozen in my throat. My stomach feels knotted and queasy. I want to throw up, but I\u2019m almost home.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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\u00a0One of the boys throws an arm around my shoulder, hugging me close. Like friends\u00a0do because\u00a0these are all my friends\u2014at least that\u2019s who they claimed to be. The other girls giggle and tease as we continue walking toward our neighborhood. It\u2019s late at night, way too late for a group of 14-year old teens to be out. But as I said, it\u2019s a normal night out for us. The weight of the boy\u2019s arm around me feels suffocating. I don\u2019t want him next to me. But everyone carries on like normal. I have to act normal too. We\u2019re almost close to my house; just a few houses left to pass. I can make it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I close my eyes to steady my breathing. The lady who exists alone with me whispers to me in my ear, but I can\u2019t make out what she\u2019s saying. The laughter from those around me drowns her out. I\u2019m starting to feel but I don\u2019t want them to witness it. Not them. We make it to my front yard. I turn to leave but one of the boys grabs my hand. They all say how\u00a0fun<\/em>\u00a0tonight was. I want to pull away and run to my room and lay still and alone on my floor. I want to forget this\u00a0fun<\/em>\u00a0night; I hate this night. I hate myself in this moment. They ask if we\u2019re cool. My voice feels shaky as I say yes. The lie tastes rancid as it passes through my lips. But I want them to believe I\u2019m ok, that we\u2019re ok. They\u2019re my friends after all.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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After being alone for so long, you start to look for friendship any and every where you can find it. But I learned that in order to keep people in your life after you let them in, you have to give them whatever it is they want in order to keep them with you. No surprise there. Tonight, I learned that boys and men are one in the same. I learned that when you let them close, they hurt and bruise you without any acknowledgement for your existence. The value of your\u00a0being\u00a0goes ignored in order to suit whatever it is that they want or don\u2019t want from you.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I walk away from my group of \u201cfriends\u201d as I head into my house and up to my room. My mom doesn\u2019t say anything as I enter through the door, but I can tell she stayed up for me. Once I come in, she heads toward her room and shuts the door without a word. I too go to my room and shut the door. I go to my old worn out bed and reach a hand under the mattress, pulling the small sharp razor I hid underneath. Although I didn\u2019t bother to turn on the light in my room, the action was far too familiar by now. I lay on the cold wood floor of my room.\u00a0 In a matter of seconds, I feel my body release all the pain and shame I had suppressed not only that night but throughout my life.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I try my best to cry silently, yet the pain within my heart takes control. In my pain I feel the presence of the familiar figure. Yet, unlike other times, she doesn\u2019t merely exist beside me in this moment. I can feel her embrace me. She holds me close; so close that I can\u2019t tell whether she\u2019s\u00a0melding\u00a0into me or if I\u2019m losing myself within her. I begin to feel my emotions rise and I feel them even deeper than I ever felt them before. In my pain, I feel my existence fully in this moment. As the woman holds me within the darkness, together and alone. She\u2019s here existing with me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cI cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one\u2019s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be\u00a0useful since\u00a0it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.\u201d -22 uses of Anger \u2013 Audre Lorde\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I read over the words on the page again. My heartbeat slightly quickens, and my breath deepens. I focus intently over the words I\u2019ve become transfixed on. I find myself in a moment, that unless you\u2019ve experienced it, is unexplainable. My mind is ablaze with wonder and amazement. The words on the page articulating thoughts of my own that I\u2019ve never been able to understand. I grip the book hungrily in my hands. I want to consume these words and have them only be for me. I connect to them so surrealistically; they feel like they were written for me.\u00a0Solely for me.\u00a0Within Toni Morrison\u2019s Beloved is where I found the voice of my healing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I sit in my room on my floor. No longer the cold, hard, wooden floor of the room I grew up in; but now replaced by soft carpet. On my floor I lie and think about Morrison\u2019s words and how her characters argued about what love is or isn\u2019t. The male character pointing out that love too thick suffocates. While the female character believed that thin love just wasn\u2019t love at all. And within this conversation between the man and woman is where I saw my parents. My Mother\u2019s love has always been too thick. Giving birth to me when she never had the ability to be present for me. Loving me so much but not knowing how to give that love to me without me becoming lost within it. My father\u2019s love was simply too thin. It was the kind that just couldn\u2019t be enough for him to be there for me when I wanted him to be\u2014needed him to be. \u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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Inside of me exists a little girl, once hurt and confused by her existence within this life. Love being the primary culprit that brought scars, regardless of if the love was too thick or thin. In that love I found anger. Anger at not being loved the way I needed or wanted to be loved. So, I learned to bury my anger in my comfort of being alone. Yet, ironically in my solitude I knew I wasn\u2019t fully alone. The woman, whose face I could never see, was always there with me. In these moments, I could be as angry or hurt as I wanted to be, and she would continue to be there beside me. Her love was the kind of love that felt\u00a0distant; and\u00a0although I could feel\u00a0it\u00a0in times where I felt most alone, I never could hold onto it. I wanted to exist within her love. Allow it to cover me and hold me within the comfort it brought me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I\u2019m no longer a little girl anymore. At this moment in my room, I am a woman.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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A woman who accepts that the hurt little girl she once was will always live somewhere deep within her, but is not the only thing that makes her who she is. There are many things that I do not quite understand about myself or the world I have existed in for more than 20 years now. However, as I\u2019ve gotten older, the desire to be whole has given me the ability to seek the answers to the questions buried deep within me that I was once too afraid to ask and accept\u00a0within myself. The woman who once brought me comfort as a little girl no longer comes as often as she once did. But I still feel her presence in those moments when my bruises that still cling to me hurt the most. Yet in this moment, in my room I exist alone, truly; and for the first time in my life I feel the true serenity of peace.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cYou can\u2019t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.\u201d \u2013 When Breath Becomes Air \u2013Paul Kalanithi\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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To truly value existing, you must accept an end. To understand that just because our lives will someday meet an end, does not erase our time spent\u00a0living. The end gives us appreciation for the past, value for the present, and hopefulness for the future. Merely feeling sadness at the end of\u00a0an\u00a0existence and only happiness at the beginning of it, takes away from understanding who we can grow to become during it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I\u2019ve grown more tired these days. I no longer have the ability to move as freely as I once did in my youth. It\u2019s funny how they say do as much as you can while you\u2019re able to still do it, because I\u2019ve come to see for myself that this is true. Now my bones are so brittle and aching, covered by skin that is worn and wrinkled. I touch my left\u00a0hand;\u00a0the thinness of\u00a0the\u00a0skin\u00a0feels\u00a0like delicately worn\u00a0silk. My hands are cold;\u00a0every day\u00a0they grow colder. Today they are colder than ever. Though I have lost my youth over the years, I do not yearn to have it once more. My life has been long, and with every year I have learned more than I thought I could,\u00a0following\u00a0the last. To wish for the return of my youth would betray the life\u00a0that\u00a0I\u00a0have\u00a0experienced up until now.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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Looking back, I am reminded of every emotion I once felt. And now, looking through this moment,\u00a0all of those emotions hold value to me. Early in my youth I was always looking for something that would add meaning to my life and who I was. However, as I lay here in my final arch of life, there is only one thing I have come to realize: the importance of fully existing. Out of everything I have strived for throughout my life, it was finding value and appreciation for my existence, regardless of whether the bad times outweighed\u00a0the good. This\u00a0has proven to be the one truth\u00a0that has\u00a0followed\u00a0me all these years.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I lie in my bed alone. Not from lack of friends and family. So many have given me companionship and love, even up until now. Today, is different, however. This day I am surrounded by the peace that has followed me past my healing. On this day, my peace is everlasting.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I close my eyes, surrounding myself in this moment of peace created just for me. As it washes over me, in the distance I see a familiar figure. She moves closer, surrounded by blinding light. Her hand reaches out to me and I grab it. Our hands merging into one. Unlike the times she came to visit me as a girl, she is no longer faceless. I look into her eyes and hold onto them with my own. I smile at her, as she does at me. At the end, it didn\u2019t take for me to see who she was. In my soul I had always known, she has been a part of me since before the beginning.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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I embrace her and hold her tight, letting her melt into me. She rests in me, as if she is drinking in the experience of the life I lived. And so, I hold her closely, in this moment that\u2019s been created for us. This moment\u2014not\u00a0an end\u2014but\u00a0the essence of an existence shared between the both of us. She waited for me after the end of my existence. Before long, I too will wait for her return after her beginning. Yet as of now we exist in this void together, once more.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tiffany Fenner   TW: Self-Harm   \u201cSince we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, perhaps the real question facing us is not \u2018What do we want to become?\u2019, but \u2018What do we want to want?\u2019 Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven\u2019t given it enough thought.\u201d -Sapiens \u2013 Yuval… Continue Reading In the pursuit of existing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-92","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/16-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/16-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/16-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/16-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/16-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/16-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":751,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/16-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/92\/revisions\/751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/16-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}