Shape-shifters

On my way back to Sognae Sunday night, nodding off on the train, I felt very low--utterly sapped--like I'd been sucked dry, tetra-box style. An Arab man sitting next to me seized the first opportunity of my blinking my eyes awake to assail me with questions—"Excuse me, where are you from? Do you have a boyfriend? What do you think of the Korean people's character? Where are you going now?—which I was not in the mood to answer. Every time I closed my eyes again, hoping he'd get the message (as though my barely monosyllabic responses weren't enough), he's start up again, keeping me conscious, not only that I was cognisant, but also of my increasingly budding irritation and of feeling more exhausted and rickety than I've felt in some time. Eventually, I just pretended to be in a deep sleep, head resting uncomfortably against the metal hand-grip attached to the seat I was lucky enough to have gotten.

Lately, I've felt so overcome by so many different stimuli; people, events and feelings. My temperament has always been a little extreme, I realize, but lately, I've been seized with a sort of zealous need to be involved, often beyond all physical capacity. It's most definitely a weird sort of mania, whatever it is I've got, that has me wanting everything one moment to wanting nothing the next; from spinning madly around a packed dance club and belting out songs at a nori bang one night, to barely having enough energy to stand straight the next. It's a weird sense of detachment (for lack of a better word) that comes over me and makes my eyes blur vacant. When I feel this way, I can't be convinced of anything; I am inconsolable; I robotically revert to a sort of mental autopilot, and I am conscious of little more than that there is something wrong with me and with my surroundings, where everything about me moves so quickly as though to spite my own sense of the tiresome slow, like waiting for the sun to rise in a smoggy, cloudy sky.

The strange thing is that when I am energetic and happy, smiling an insanely toothy smile for the cameras that will inevitably be pointed at me, that I desire nothing, so content am I to be seen and heard and dare I say, admired, even if I never talk to anyone in particular (any of my random commentary to the open room will suffice). When I'm like this, I feel almost special, like nothing, not warmth or food, neither flattery nor extra attention from random strangers, can make me feel more perfect than I do at these rare, luminous moments. It is then that I need nothing and am without care; I wish the night were longer—that this infrequently felt, practically alien sensation, would last forever.

However, the opposite is true of my alternative (there is rarely a middle ground, it seems) personality, which I know intimately and have grown to both loathe and need, which I cling to almost desperately in a sort of fearful paranoia—a fucked-up relationship if ever there was one. It is when I am most overcome by this sensation that I feel the tension in my neck, the throbbing of my wrists (I close my fingers around them tightly, wishing for the terrible feeling to stop), and the seemingly massive weight of my body (which all logic and a good set of scales would deem ridiculous, I know), as I plod heavily along crowded streets, discerning the stab of eyes through me, examining, curious, judging. I look down and avoid contact, blind to all who would attract my attention. It is then that I feel utterly empty and lost and alone. It is then that I need a hand to grab, a steady body to lean against, and someone to squeeze me so hard that I feel the pressure against my ribcage, a reminder that my bones do exist, as I do, and that I'm not just a disenchanted floating blob, a lonely buoy in the ocean nodding to the beat of the waves.

It is difficult for me to write this, as I've always felt rather ashamed of my self-consciousness, like any delving into my hideousness or feelings of irrelevance would be met with a laugh and a swatting of hands through the air, a "Don't be ridiculous," and a quick change of conversation.

Last year, in my Indigenous Literature class, I did a lot of reading on shape-shifters. The most interesting character is probably the archetypal "trickster figure." The Trickster has figured not only throughout many Aboriginal stories, but throughout myth in general. Some call him Whiskey Jack (or Wasaygachuck); others call him Loki; some call him Pan. In fact he has many names, but one essential personality that seems to figure so prominently in life, literary or otherwise. The Trickster can be perceived as good or evil, depending on the effects he has on the mortals he interferes with. Either way, his function is to influence destiny, to steer you on or off your intended path, to change you for better or worse, depending on his own inclinations. As an instrument of destiny, the Trickster can assume many different forms, reproducing the faces of those closest to you, because like they say, "seeing is believing," right? And in the end, ironically, it's our reaction to the shape-shifter that changes us.

I think there must be something of the shape-shifter in all of us too. Some sort of duality that never quite evens out. It's this character, I think, that fundamentally makes us all entirely unpredictable, flexible even, able to control the outcome of our respective destinies, be it for good or ill. We are malleable creatures, I've decided, able to go from one extreme to the next, expanding, shrinking, exploding and imploding. We can change and sometimes we are hardly recognizable.

I received an email from my mother this week and in it, she expressed her regret that we aren't closer, that we don't have the mother-daughter relationship that I suspect she felt would just happen naturally, as it might for some offspring for whom reaching out and needing is not associated with shame, but with love or nature. As a teenager, sitting alone in my room, and reading as I tried to filter out the roar of the vacuum, the slamming of cupboard doors and the sound of my mothers' feet pounding heel first directly above my head, I was resentful that she never seemed to 'try' very hard with me.

That we didn't have the sort of sit-com-everyone-hugs-at-the-end-of the-show-relationship didn't worry me—I'm not that deluded. What bothered me is that she left it up to me to approach her if I had a problem or was feeling badly or needed to be paid attention. While this technique may work with less stubborn, more at ease children, for me, it generally meant nothing ever got solved. Needing anything, to me, grew to be almost shameful. Wanting—the occasional frivolous little mall purchase, that is—was fine. Needing, though, just seemed so much more intimate, personal, "of the body," something I'd been trying to deny the existence and urges of, and pulling uncomfortably at since elementary school.

When my siblings and I were very young, I remember this 'bit' my mom and brother would do; from the end of the hallway, Sacha would catch sight of her, and running towards each other in mock slow-motion, they'd hug fiercely, jokingly exclaiming how they hadn't seen one another is "so long" (at least a full two minutes). At seven or eight years old, I remember wishing I could do that, but I never said anything about it and would usually return to colouring and sipping grape juice with a spoon, slurping extra loudly until it became irritating and I was told to "cut it out." When this inevitably happened, slightly annoyed, I'd bring the cup to my lips and drink quickly, barely stopping to breathe or taste it. I'd let out a big "Aaaaaahhhh" for effect, and that would be the end of that.

My mother thinks I resent her, and I sometimes do, but I understand why she couldn't be the sort of mother I required. My mother spent my childhood going through the motions of being a parent to three very dissimilar children—she worked, she cleaned, she made frequent trips to the doctor's, dentist, the hairdresser and the shoe-store. And, I knew it was difficult. I remember how she used to keep a "budget," a blue Hilroy notebook on the dashboard of the light blue, peach-striped van that was constantly at the mechanic's or sputtering on the auto-route. It was all just numbers then, but I knew that my mother found balancing her money, not to mention her own life, to be somewhat of a challenge. She tries to explain it to me now via emails, as though I wasn't aware then. But, what I needed from her wouldn't have had to be recorded neatly on the light blue notepaper line and submitted to her accountant at the end of the fiscal year.

Years later, after I'd resigned myself to the idea of not needing and sometimes disdaining affection, it was awkward when my mother, her life vastly improved, would lean in to hug me and I'd stand there, stark-still, a little amused at the ceremonial hug 'good-bye' or 'hello,' but generally allowing her to go through what I assumed she now felt was necessary for a mother to do to her daughter. My sister, Maya, had always been warm enough, if not somewhat clingy with her, and having little else to compare me with, perhaps she was concerned upon finally reaching the realization that my desire to not be touched wasn't in fact an awkward adolescent phase, but a choice. Despite it all, I never lied about it, never pretended to be deeply affected or sentimental, and I rarely hugged back, as her embraces seemed too light (as if handling something fragile), un-practiced, like she was cautious or frightened, perhaps, of my reaction to her after everything.

When my mother reads this now, I know she will be hurt. That is not my intention. Though I do believe that most of life is cumulative and that the 'formative years' are dubbed so for a reason, I haven't lived at home for a long time at this point. That said, whatever I suffer now no longer has anything to do with her or my father or Bolton Center. In fact, all of these things have ceased to exist, not so much physically, but more in that all that truly remains of my parents and my early life, are memories. They are beings that have died and have become ghosts, warped versions of their previous forms. They're like photographs left out in the sun, grown pale with the corners curling up at the sides, hiding detail; very hard to decipher.

It's been nearly a decade since I've been to Bolton Center, the place I grew up and railed against and couldn't escape from. There, I used to climb trees and scratch bug bites until they bled, and lie in field grass grown waist high that hadn't been cut all summer, due either to my parents' lack of a functioning lawn mower, or their unwillingness to refute their previous assertion of being hermits.

I haven't seen my father since that night in Waterville four years ago up in my mother's room, as he sobbed pathetically about his poor health and how he'd been betrayed by everyone in his life. I listened to his stomach grumble painfully. Down in the basement, having locked herself in a spare room, my mother wept. I looked at my father and at his tear-filled eyes and long thinning hair and I came to the realization that the father I'd grown up under had already perished and been replaced by whatever or whoever now seemed so desperate and weak, someone I might have felt sorry for had I been able to emote at all that night.

The father of my youth was a massive, strong, terrifying man. Before bed, as a child, he'd hug me goodnight, and horrified of the contact, I'd quickly move my face away. He always used to joke how I gave him the back of my head to kiss. My father was a man whose fingers were always moving, either in rolling Drum tobacco, or in pounding them into an unsuspecting Charlie horse or rib cage for his own amusement—when he laughed, he made no noise except for a sort of uncontrollable wheeze that eventually sputtered out into a cough, as his stomach quaked aggressively. Contemplating my father that night, I felt he had disappeared and had ceased to be a source of fear for me. I rarely think about him now, except for the nights when jolting up in bed, I realize I've had a nightmare and am not in fact a child any longer. It frustrates me that I still not resilient enough to prevent my childhood monster from haunting me again.

I still see my mother when I am home and plan to continue to do so, but the mother I know from childhood has also vanished. It's strange, really, to see her, this woman I barely know, so changed is she, who still regards me with a sort of distance, like concern mixed with defeat and curiosity about her middle child, the problematic one who locks doors and pushes people away and gets headaches that make her want to disappear, not just pound by pound, but entirely and at once. This mother seems happy. In my youth, I'd tell her she looked angry and she'd snap back that that was just how her face was. This mother has had boyfriends and lives in a nice house and eats organic food. This mother laughs and wears dresses and pulls her hair back in a barrette.

For a long time after she'd become satisfied with her life, she'd tell me over the phone to 'forgive and forget,' which I feel is utterly ridiculous and something I do not feel at all prepared to do. When she would tell me to 'move on,' I'd grind my teeth; feeling the hypocrisy of her statements like a lead weight upon my heart. It seemed to be easy for her to say these things to me when she was happy, but deep down, I know she'll neither forgive nor forget my father, the undeniable source of not only so much grief, but of her own children as well. I honestly don't think forgiving anyone will do anything for me. There is no isolated incident to forgive. Forgetting is even more perilous. Forgetting is to make oneself vulnerable. I wonder which adage is more cliché?—'to forgive and forget' or 'if we don't learn from history's mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them.'

Anyway, it's interesting, this duplicity—this ability that humans have to change, warp, shape-shift. As a child, you never really expect your parents to be any different. If they were unhappy, tense people when you knew them best, changing your opinions of them is not at all a simple endeavour. However, I also realize that it is somewhat arduous for parents to behold transformations in their children, especially when they are possessed of a fundamental bias that strives to deny passage to the darkness and negativity that somehow always manages to creep in through the cracks. And, it's this darkness and negativity that can break one down, gradually, but all so effectively.

Today, I read a story with one of my classes—a traditional Korean folklore about a brother and a sister whose mother was eaten by a tiger on her way home from buying them buckwheat puddings to eat. The tiger is not only hungry, but cruel, devouring pieces of her at a time while she is still alive—first an arm, then a leg and so on—because he seems to enjoy her suffering. His hunger still not satiated, the tiger finds their house and poses as the mother he's just killed, persuading her children to come outside. When the children realize what has happened, the tiger tries to kill them too, but they run into the forest. In the end, they have to escape the tiger by climbing as high as they can up a tall tree. But, the tiger starts chopping down the tree with an axe that has unluckily been left behind, and desperate, the children pray for help. Miraculously, a ladder from Heaven is provided for their escape. Taking pity on the newly orphaned children, the God turns the boy into the sun and the girl into the moon (prior to this, these celestial entities did not exist, apparently).

Though they made their escape from the monster—the murderous tiger—the girl soon grows unhappy with her new life as the moon. She exists for many years in the dark, alone and cold, as we know the moon to be. She lives this way for so long that when the God finally consents to let the siblings switch places, the girl has difficulty adjusting to her newfound brilliance as the sun. She is modest and is unable to contend with being stared at and admired and loved by the people down below. To remedy her self-consciousness, she makes herself so bright, so intense, that people need to shield their eyes from in her presence or risk blindness. Having gone from one extreme to another, shape-shifting as she had, it is the only way she can cope.

It's a simple story, but one with many layers, I think. Basically, no matter how much one alters, some small part of one's past always gets left behind whether we can see it or not.

Patterns

It's a very ironic thing to contemplate the utter excesses of this country, especially after a night of soju and noribangs and watching the sun come up on some steps in a bar-district where people continue to stumble around well into working hours. Surrounded by garbage-filled streets and puddles of vomit, and laughing about my earlier rendition of "Oops, I did it again," while I scratched out star-shaped patterns in my denim-clad knees, I felt extremely happy, like I'd finally found people and a life I could tolerate, if not grow to enjoy.

Those in the know might mistake my tendency towards excess as a bad thing, an addiction, and in a way, it is, as my inclinations to absorb completely and yet, be broken down so entirely—erosion on fast-forward—assume so many different forms, pervade so many aspects of my life, and have the ability to thrill me or shut me down absolutely. The odd part is, the differences in what sparks feeling one way or another, are practically minute, if at all decipherable.

I've always believed in the dual nature of individuals, who contribute to a collective that is even more dual, if not outright deranged. However, despite my recent desire to be sociable and to be accepted and entertaining, I say goodnight and end most nights feeling distant, an enigmatic variable unsure of who the hell that person leaving the bar really was and why she was talking so much and so fast, like there'd never be another chance to find a friend who'll listen and laugh and enjoy her company. With people, I feel my energy being consumed by my laughter and my stories and my many opinions. But later, alone at home, when the last cigarette's been smoked and it's no longer any fun, and all I've got is dirty laundry and dishes, I feel so alone and I crawl into bed and try to dream, falling into layered stories--which will maybe never be written down—that pattern and spin themselves, spider-like, around my memories and desires so beautifully and so terrifyingly so, that they become lost forever in my catapulting, see-saw mind, an unfortunate victim of duality and the excesses of my body and my thoughts.

Being with friends is rather new for me. I'm used to feeling so abandoned, and here, on the other side of the world, I find myself growing very much attached to certain characters. I'll miss them terribly when they leave or when I do.

I made it home at 8:00 Wednesday morning, and by myself for the first time in about twenty hours, I felt extremely isolated, like I was the last flower in an empty field and entirely without protection from the elements. Swaying back and forth with the wind, or rather, my air-conditioning, this run-down little Lily fell into a very deep sleep until late in the afternoon when there was a rooftop barbeque to go to, and more drinks to be drunk in commemoration of the national holiday as well as a day's respite from sticky little monster-children who think their shrieks and interruptions will intimidate me into letting them play games or sleep through my classes.

Wednesday afternoon was not the best day to be outside. The sky was a smoggy shade of white and the wind was blowing sparks from the fire dangerously close to flowing skirts and loose hair. It worked out in the end, though for at least half an hour, we wondered whether there'd be a monsoon. Later, we moved the party to an apartment where British comedy, music and literature were discussed with great relish. I love that people here get my references, as obscure as they have a tendency to be. It became yet another all-nighter, where no sleep was had, but being surrounded by people is practically a sociological experience--and one that I am happy to have--for me.

However, I'm mildly afraid that the extreme happiness I feel when I'm out sets me up for a really depressing low; like the higher one gets, the harder and more traumatic the fall will be. It's like when I was really young and would become nearly maniacal after supper, an odd tendency of mine that either had me shrieking and laughing in hysterical, choking staccato gasps, or feeling overwhelmingly head-splittingly bad. I cannot explain this nearly violent 'reaction' to food, but considering it now, as I sometimes do, I view it as feedback (pun definitely intended), hostile as it usually was, to my lifelong opposition to being controlled, be it by good-"yes-daddy"- behaviour, or by silently being guilt-tripped into finishing my plate of food ("because there are starving children in India"), all the while secretly imagining with no small degree of bitterness how much happier I'd be if there were less of me. And, until my extreme behaviour was finally instigated into an angry frenzy by siblings, which was of course only to be reprimanded by annoyed and screaming parents, I'd be like this, though honestly, most of my evenings culminated with a general sense of injustice as I sobbed into my pillows.

Thursday morning, at home and nursing a very bad hangover, not looking at all forward to my day at work, I sat at my window and had I had the energy or fluid enough in my system, perhaps I would have shed a few tears if that sort of thing was less of a challenge to me as it is. By myself, in the light of day, without the neon lights vibrantly painting the city electric, I realized I had no distractions to rely on, that until work started, I'd be stuck with the worse companion a girl can have, an insulting, compulsive, lecturing excuse for a brain, or a mind, rather, my invisible, un-trappable, habit-former, problem-maker, that so often tempts me so close to the figurative ledge and forces me to look at the vertigo-inducing aspects of my life that come up, so to speak, and bring me so down.

Work was terrible on Thursday. Head spinning, I forced myself out into the sunlight and manoeuvred down the crowded street, avoiding sidewalk driving, motor-revving scooters and kids on bicycles, their friends perched perilously standing on the back wheels' metal carriers. When I got to my hagwon, the mail was still in the door handles and the cleaning lady was sitting on the steps to my right. No one was there, the doors were locked, and I spent half an hour hunched against the wall near the bathroom trying very hard not to breathe in the urine vapour (an inevitable aspect of life in a country that doesn't flush toilet paper [too many people and an inferior sewer system, I suppose], preferring instead to deposit it in waste-paper baskets that are uncomfortably close to one's legs, given the airplane sized dimensions of most washrooms here. By 2pm, I'd had enough and my nausea was more than palpable. I told the cleaning lady via dramatic hand gestures and eye-rolls that I was annoyed and leaving and that I would come back later.

At home once more, I put my head down near my laptop and closed my eyes, feeling myself becoming thoroughly depressed. This week has been a bad one for me in this respect. I feel entirely isolated, a pattern that has certainly resonated quite strongly and painfully in my life. My boss has hired a new teacher (the third counting myself), a man who despite teaching English, can't seem to utter a single syllable to me, let alone acknowledge my "hellos" and "goodbyes." The principal has started having weekly staff meetings where everyone, including the secretary is involved. Or perhaps "everyone" is the wrong choice of words, because when they're all at the meetings, I'm alone at my table in the teacher's office. But then, who am I to call myself "someone," given what a tricky little thing this concept of my existence poses to me so frequently.

So far, they've changed the timetable around, decided on all sorts of changes together, go out for lunch meetings to which I am not invited, apparently—God forbid they involve the teacher with the busiest workload, a barely existent supper break and a monthly struggle to even get paid on time (as of today, despite having reminded the boss, my deposit is late once again).

In any case, I sometimes thoroughly hate my life and no matter how good things are sometimes, I suspect they'll always be this way. I am so tired sometimes and feel so used up and I don't know what to do but despair and complain and I suppose, let the worry gnaw on my brain, stiffen my shoulder-blades, and press so hard and so cruelly against my temples that my head feels about ready to pop.

I feel overwhelmingly sometimes that I and everyone around me runs around in patterns, concentric of course, much like frost on frigid car windows. No matter how much I strive to purge cathartically by writing or speaking about myself, I feel that as soon as feelings of sadness, frustration and disappointment return, I am helpless and unable to be consoled, even by those I care about. That in turn, causes more disappointment and frustration in the hearts and minds of those around me who wish me well, which leads me to feel even worse that I can't be so easily convinced that my life isn't as bad as it feels sometimes.

The idea that we all just repeat our actions, inevitably, or the actions of our forebears, is not a new one: "The sins of the father…" and all that, right? I feel so cornered and so obsessive some days, like how sitting bored in the back seat of the van as a child, I would count telephone poles and then the yellow lines in the road, silently in my head, wondering if there was always the same number of broken lines; if there was a set sequence that road painters followed before returning to the double-no-passing-under-any-circumstances-unless-you're-a-dangerous-jerk-in-a hurry-stripes, or if it really all was just random, an estimate. Perhaps I was just wasting my time and making myself carsick. I wouldn't be surprised, as it all sounds a little too familiar, anyways.

I remember how in the car, on frigid winter days, when the windows were all decorated up and down with pitches and drops, like kaleidoscopic diamonds (or other such icy jewel-shapes), made counting impossible, I'd trace the patterns in the frost slowly with a warmish finger, not relenting despite the inevitable numb that froze me. And I would quietly watch for the lines in the road as the upward pitches in the frost would roll down to the bottom of the window in a speeding, drippy tear-shaped drop that destroyed the whole pattern as it all fell apart.