Gilded cages My tooth hurts It's one of my wisdom teeth that's impacted I was waiting for it Great timing of course I was going to cancel the septum piercing and go to the dentist but I dont think I can afford an extraction at the moment SO septum piercing and batata hug it is It's okie I have money coming in later next week Oh actually some freelancing money in a few days! Woopwoop! Next week I'll be comfy I put my savings in time deposit certificates which have very high interest which I live off It's convenient-- besides the currency devaluation chipping away at it every day which is depressing Its a big fuss to open an account in dollars So I just circle the drain with everybody else If I reeeeally can't stand the pain, I'll break one of my smaller emergency certificates Why is Baba not making it rain like in Sahel you may ask? No witnesses, so there's no point As I've said before, I started working and paying for my therapy as a teenager That extends to other physical care It's very strange to explain to people I live in an apartment in a beautiful villa complex that's gated with a garden There's a doorman/gardener, his wife And their daughter is the housekeeper/cook Her husband is the doorman for the villa next door but he runs errands for my father, in my car (because Baba's and Hassan's are too fancy) and I pay for the gas because fuck Sarah What else Baba pays for our membership to an exclusive club But anything that people don't see is irrelevant So we never went to the hospital as kids-- allergies, fractures, fevers were all walked off My siblings' baby teeth rotted out of their mouths The only reason I didn't have black teeth too is because of a dentists campaign at school with an effective film for the first graders called "the haunted mouth" Oh and my teacher had to write home saying your child can't see before they got me glasses Variations of stuff like that our whole lives Mama actually started coughing years before she died And there was the sporadic physical violence and torture But that didn't bother me as much as just not having caregivers when it counted Like I'm not as scared of getting beat up as I am of government paperwork My mother taught me to forge her signature when I was eight and I was expected to deal with school paperwork for myself and my siblings I thought it was normal And outside the house we were the Brady bunch so everybody else thought we were normal I self harmed all through my 20s and tried to run away But I wanted my education and I couldnt afford the best university in Egypt (where I was enrolled on a partial scholarship) And then ages 28 to 32 were the years of therapy breakthroughs I unpacked a lot Had two good jobs Two very spoiled cat children And then mama died And an asshole in California lovebombed me then raped me And I discovered that unsurprisingly all my paperwork is a mess Then COVID happened And I got locked in my head for three years Everything was blurry until I started writing here again Everything I understand now What my position is in this life, in this world It's documented And that makes me feel anchored I stopped getting sucked into my dream world Somatic therapy and EMDR and so many other things helped too But writing had the biggest impact as far as dissociating I'm privileged, very privileged But I'm not what people here think And as far as gilded cage stories go, it's not like I'm an Emirati princess who needs a yacht escape I'm just the daughter of a boring Egyptian upper class narcissist Eventually I got tired of people trying to help by pressuring me into doing this or that, knowing that I don't have the resources and knowing they weren't capable of following up or continued support It's messy, I never expected anyone to fix anything Ugh, especially the predators and their "solutions" This is a very long liberation project When I was younger, I rejected the money once I understood it was his tool to create a narrative for family/neighbors/community (That was when I lived in the shanty town with friends and the police tracked my phone) Then I realized being poor is not being free I realized I would have to be sneaky and my life was going to be a chess game And I cried on Sara's lap in the bathroom and was too distracted by this knowledge to understand she wanted me to kiss her (this moment is an example of one of the many unfolding narratives in my head) Not many people understand what my position is really like My former friend Noha, the comedian (the feminist, the animal lover) did understand but she didn't want to acknowledge it She eventually resented me for saying abusive things are abusive She called me crying every few days when they beat her or humiliated her And I'd say it's fucked up and not her fault And she'd say it's normal here, that I don't understand because I'm a fancy pants foreigner Then she'd call again Eventually I became inconvenient, she didnt understand why I wasn't cashing in on my social capital which she saw as her road to freedom Fame fixes everything apparently She's quite successful now, I wonder if she's happy Then there's Maru Maru also understands because his mother is Satan Satan in furs Every time he's around her his blood pressure skyrockets His sister is the golden child, she married well She's like Hassan, not so awful as far as golden children go But she does sacrifice him when it suits her Maru has a very rare genetic condition and shouldve been dead a bunch of times but I feel like he has the same mission as me Outlive the nasty old bats He also wants to be a sea granny Enough stories I should sleep I gargled with hot salty water which helped, I have panadol but I think that's bad for swelling Tomorrow (technically today) I liberate the nose! |