Jack-in-the-box

My midnight meditations bring me back,
front and centre,
To a lifelong impulse for brute force and tribulation,
What the mind witnesses in childhood,
The heart covets amidst a contaminated
coming-of-age.

I sprung forward, a languishing jack-in-the-box,
Arms wide open,
beckoning to the vexed troglodytes,
Promising a warm home, in me,
Despite swallowing the venom in their discharge.

Go away, they said:
A knife, blade propelling,
Slices the empty plastic bottle just a few inches in front of me.
Imagine, this was my only shield.
But my guts still spilled out in a hidden cavity called sorrow.
Or maybe it was titillation?

We don't want you, they said:
A head butt, sharp, stinging,
Leaving a violaceous stain
On tormented brow,
Made not from prostrating in prayer,
Plainly from a direct hit by the beloved tempest
An inconvenient discolouration,
I rearranged my hair.
Nobody noticed.

Your face is repugnant, they said:
My head dizzy after being tossed from the seat.
Huddling at their feet, I saw the tight stretch of skin on choleric knucks,
They came down, down, down,
A furious pounding,
A tantrum, kicking my huddled mass,
Exhaustion disrupted the battering,
Weak men tire quickly.

We don't need your consent, they said:
Because they were doing me a favour
Phallic protrusions breached tender portals of an unsuspecting body,
Igniting no pleasure, only exquisite injury,
That I would not call by its prescribed name.

Shush, they said:
Hands now encircling my nape, compressing, squeezing
Strangling the voice they cursed
Soliciting my annihilation, but breath lingered,
So, mighty walloping of the belly supervened,
Until sleep turned rage to rest.
I wept because I was still alive.

You see, I'd magically pop back up with arms opened wide,
Anguished smile in red maquillage, putting on the pretty
But they always saw past the simulated femme
Concealer, a failed camouflage
Woman, smile, they said.
But the creases exposed the mutant underneath.

This petrified their ego, but no harm in profiteering
From infatuations I diagnosed as love
They were men after all, anticipating their big break
Until then, they sought the prerequisites that would help pay their way,
By plundering their tenacious jack-in-the-box,
Limerence was free currency,
And biting the hand that fed them had no consequence.

Some random midnight insight...but good insight.

Why do people mistreat or hate those who help them?

Click on the link above to first read the answer by a commenter on quora, and then read my blog post below.

This is a very insightful response to the conundrum of being hated by others who we have helped. Many of us do what we do because we enjoy the act of giving, but then again, we may also be people-pleasers who constantly search for validation by helping others. And also, our help may be tinged with arrogance that we may not see in ourselves but others can. Haven't we all been there? I'm sure in experiencing someone's resentment towards us and wondering what we might have done to harm them may trouble us because we don't see any wrong in what we've done. Who knew that, in offering support to the friends/families we love in their times of need and who we thought would appreciate our support, we may have indirectly contributed to their feelings of helplessness, inadequacy, and shame? It doesn't mean we should stop offering to help them (or maybe we should stop?). Being aware of our privilege (education, skill set, etc) and knowing that we are all working within a classist, racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic and patriarchal system that is not equitable and is consistently discriminatory towards communities that have been historically marginalized could help us better understand why the receivers of our help are no longer talking to us because perhaps our help reflected something they painfully desire(d) in themselves that they have never had access to due to social/structural inequalities/life circumstances. I don't know what it would take to restore these embittered relationships. Maybe it would take each of us to be brave by self-reflecting rather than pointing fingers, and developing/strengthening what I learned in my friend's Connections course based on what Brene Brown coined as 'Shame Resilience'. But after this long and babbling self-reflection of my own here, I wish you all a peaceful and restful night.

Review: One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School

One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School by Scott Turow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

Thoughts so far on Scott Turow's book One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School

Reading the book One L by Scott Turow, I found an interesting passage that expresses human nature's constant conflict between the desire to achieve our full potential free of any social expectations and the necessity to avoid being "too awesome" because of our interconnectedness with others, and how our success/awesomeness may negatively impact them. And yes, even law school students, despite the intense competition among their ranks, may also relinquish their competiteness for the greater good in some classroom situations, according to this book. It's both sad and heartening to know that some of us have this engrained disposition to set in motion our own failure (even though we know we can do better) in order to appease others who may not be enjoying the same privileges we are due to the ways in which various inequities have affected all of us and our relationships with one another. So, we fall because our connection to others becomes more important to sustain than our own advancement, which may possibly be, both, an act of solidarity and self-destruction.