Issue XXV: Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve

(25/10/24)

As most of you know by now, after long consideration we have decided to let the curtain fall on the incredible journey that has been Dis-Order. As such, this will be the final issue of Dis-Course. You may have also noticed that I haven't published an issue in quite a few months now. This long gap coupled with the knowledge that this issue will be that last has made writing these words carry a weight that I find difficult to shake. This being said, it is important to me to take the opportunity to say goodbye. Because whilst I haven’t actually published anything in this time, I have been writing to you and thinking of you often.

The last few months have been some of the most challenging of my life. After a while of not knowing up from down, the dust has somewhat settled and I have come back here, to my keyboard and Google Docs page, and feel as though they are old friends. We haven't always gotten along, but I appreciate them all the same. Over the years, they have urged me to be better. They have pushed me to be more eloquent, more critical, more open, and have taught me to trust the process. I’ve done something adjacent to my best to be these things in my time writing Dis-Course, and when I’ve failed to do my best, I’ve tried to be kind to myself and my work. -As I write these sentences, I realise how I’ve missed the tapping of my keyboard and the thoughts that flutter from between my ears and land as words at my fingertips.-  

I stepped away from Dis-Course without knowing how long it would be before I came back, because I no longer felt equipped to write what this newsletter had become. I am so proud of the work that has gone into each issue, and sometimes I read back on things I’ve written with amazement that they came out of my mind -I won't feign humility here for anyone's comfort; I’m proud of this thing!- But sometimes things happen and we lose sight of ourselves, at least for a moment. I had lost my confidence in my own judgement and didn’t feel, in good faith, that I could be giving out advice on how people should think, feel, or live when I had no idea how to do those things myself. Then again, the primary objective of Dis-Course was never to tell people what to do. It was to help people feel seen in the experiences of humanhood. What it meant to be a person and the weight that it comes with, and to provide comfort in being known. I hope we achieved that, at least a bit. I digress... I built something that I was proud of but with that pride came a pressure to live up to my own expectations and the pressure, coupled with my lack of conviction at the time, brought upon a paralysis and disconnect; in the thoughts between my ears and the words at my fingertips. I now realise that the voice telling me I wasn’t equipped for writing my articles, for my newsletter, which I had already done 24 times over, was not my own. That voice is gone now, so here is issue 25, building on the attempts that came before. So bear with me, dear reader, one last time as I take you through some of what I’ve written in these months.

1- Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve.

-Written as a frenzy of thoughts, this section came from a sense of urgency of fitting in everything I would no longer have the time to say in Dis-Course, a last will and testament of thoughts and odd comforts.-

(06/06/24)

Approach the world with an open heart. It makes us more susceptible to getting hurt, but without the risk of hurt, we will never truly feel. Live uninhibitedly. Expose yourself with authenticity and you will attract the type of people you want to have around you, not the people attracted to an inauthentic version of yourself. Observe people, for who they are – not who you want or assume them to be. Embrace your own vulnerability and do it unapologetically; accepting our humanness allows us to recognise, accept, and embrace the humanness of others. I can embrace the petulance of a child, because I can acknowledge and work on accepting the petulance of the child I once was and still sometimes am. Knowing yourself allows you to know others better. We become kinder people to the world when we accept our vulnerabilities not as faults but as virtues. Softness requires strength, as compassion often comes from pain. But kindness is a choice. Calluses of the past can lead people to resilience and to compassion, but it can equally breed apathy. You don’t need that in your life. 

See beauty in the softness of others. I used to resent people who were soft. I saw it as being fragile, or “meek”. To me, this word was the ultimate insult. “Take up space! Be loud, abrasive, obnoxious!” I thought. “Screw the rest of them!”. I found fault in vulnerability because a large part of who I was was moulded as a reaction to the harshness of the world. We are born tender into a world that isn’t always kind to us, so we develop harshness as a survival mechanism. Don’t let the exoskeleton you developed to survive make you cruel to those who are unreserved enough to show their soft underbelly. Whilst trying to be empathetic and kind, I have also been guarded and defensive. I must have at least succeeded in kindness, evidenced by the gorgeous, loving, loyal friends I have made who have been the scaffolding to my spine in times I’ve felt too tired to stand up straight by myself. I am now working on being soft; on not being perturbed or intimidated by the gentleness of myself or others.

For a long time, I chose a version of openness that I had control over, -such as writing a mental health newsletter- that exposes a lot, but only what I want. I choose now to crack my chest open and let people have a look inside, if they so please. To put my heart on my sleeve for those who may be curious (and deserving) to see. To live earnestly, rather than packaging every bit of my hurt in a pun or witty line, under the false pretence that humour would disguise it. This disguise, while protective, also inhibits connection from those who care to see you. Be selective, of course, with your vulnerability. But be bold in your openness when it is earned.

2 - Stillness

-Stillness was written as the other side of the coin of frenzy. It comes from a place to remind you, as you read it, that slowness is a tempo too. One that possesses its own virtues.-

(29.08.24)

I’m sitting at the park near the bird cages, near that bench that irks me every time I pass it on my way to town. An ant just ran across my thigh and the sun patch I initially sat in has now moved into the shade of the massive oak tree behind me. Her shade is welcome in the 32 degree Dutch summer afternoon. A moment ago I was laying on my bag which contains my water bottle, my shirt, some salted almonds, a bottle of factor 50, and until I had this thought, the book I am now writing on the back pages of. Perhaps my thoughts will bleed into the margins. I don’t particularly mind this idea. I feel that there is room to share. I also find that the margins of a well-written book bares much more space for musings than one might anticipate. 

As I have laid here, a flock of birds flew overhead, a couple of wasps came by to see if I was of any interest to them (I wasn’t), my phone rang once, a child tried to hoist his brother up to reach one of the branches of a tree. They failed. I didn’t intervene. The breeze picked up a couple of times, a big red ant crawled over my inner arm and tickled the small hairs on my shoulder. I noticed earlier that the students have arrived in the city. You can hear their excited chatter in groups of three or five in French, German, English, Dutch. Giggling as they swap stories of the summer or they make the unmistakably eager, slightly desperate-to-impress introductory small talk before they find a more permanent group of friends. It often goes that way in the first weeks of freshman year; people start off with interim groups to fend off the loneliness of a new city until they find people they have more of an interest in getting to know. It sounds bleak, but it seems to be an unspoken universal transaction. A law of the land.

The smell of someone's joint just wafted in my direction. The slight disturbance to my little bubble on this grass patch made me realise that so far no one has started to play their own music over a speaker, and the sound of water in the nearby stream and the breeze in the trees remains undisrupted, for which I am endlessly grateful. I am taking immense pleasure in the stillness of today. I am not having any profound thoughts or Eureka moments, or maybe they are brewing in my stillness and remain unknown to me for now. I thought about worrying, as I lay on this grass. I contemplated using this time to plan, and mull, and create checklists. However, I am simply not interested in that kind of thought today. I decided instead, as I have been reminding myself lately, to “relax and ignore the false sense of urgency”.

I think that we feel constantly rushed, toward a career, health goals, life goals (marriage, mortgage, children). Even in enjoying ourselves there is a hurry. Earlier today, I thought maybe I should do my groceries and go home, but then I found myself worried about missing the sunny day to relax in the park. What an oxymoron, to put pressure on pleasure. Ultimately, I will run out of pages and margins to write on in this book and I will have to go home. Billy Joel said it best; “Where's the fire? What's the hurry about?”.

 Anyway, why am I here, all of a sudden, to tell you about the ants in the park and the breeze in the trees? The short answer, I realise, is that I needed some stillness. Stillness that I am actively learning to embody by lying here and taking note of the birds and the wasps and the sounds around me. Mental health, no matter how much you think, talk, and write about it can still be an incredibly difficult thing to surmount and sometimes, this is due to factors beyond our control. In these months, I was standing still for a while and to me and my worrisome mind this felt eerily like stagnation. I see now, the difference between stagnation and stillness is awareness and choice. As my life, in all of its aspects, halted against my consent, I panicked and floundered for solutions and action. I know that sometimes this is the only way we can react to turmoil. Inaction can feel like paralysis or defeat. But after a big crashing wave knocks you over, it’s okay to take the time to allow the waters to calm, to let the tide return to itself, and to simply float. So here I lie, floating in the grass and the salty sea, as the bugs and the earth and the fish and the moss caress my skin, and allow me to simply be. 

It's okay to take a moment to be still.

 

—

 

I’ve written about gratitude in Dis-Course before, but I cannot stress how incredible it has been to have this platform to play with, to make my own, and to hear how it’s spoken to you in different ways. So thank you, to the Dis-Order team without whom there would be no Dis-Course. Thank you to Stijn and Toni for encouraging me when my keyboard and I didn’t get along. Thank you to my friends and family who inspire so much of what I write. And thank you for bearing with me. To be loved is to be known and I never feel more known than when I am read.