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.