A selective Mind Part 1
What do you do when the place where you are supposed to be rejuvenated, empowered, and fulfilled, has become a toxic and unhealthy place for you? Our impulsiveness will tell us that we should simply get out and move away! “If a place does not serve its purpose, then you should change it!” I often hear; but what do you do if that place is you, what do you do if that place is your mind, your bedroom, your kitchen, …, what do you do if where you are supposed to receive life, is where death has made its dwelling for you.
This part 1 will visit what I believe had helped me for many years to not only cope with the uncomfortable places I had to learn to be in but also, how to continue to grow and be the best version of myself in an environment that was not convenient.
I must start by saying that being in an uncomfortable place was quite the norm for me. I have had to learn, very early, to navigate in places and with people where I felt unwanted and unseen. As a teen, I had to create a world where happiness, love, and peace were real for me though right outside of it, it was chaos and constant judgment. Very early, too early if you ask my opinion, I had to learn to make the difference between what was around me or what was said about me and who I really was. What do you do when all you hear is a version of yourself that you were not even aware of its existence? How can you disconnect from the lies of your reality and still, be present enough not to miss the collateral beauty of that same reality? One way that I quickly adopted and noticed that it helped me disconnect was the idea and anticipation of getting to my bedroom and living the world and life that I so much longed for.
My routine was simple, I would wake up around 5:30 AM, shower, get ready, and leave for school. My walk from Etterbeek to Woluwe St-Lambert, where my school was, took me about 45 min if I remember correctly (it has been a long time). I will go about my day at school and when it was about time to go back home, as I would walk back, I would already long to get into my room and continue my “other” life, a version of my story that was full of passion, love, and peace. Yes, I do understand now, that it was my way to cope with living away from my family and feeling quite alone. Yes, indeed, the 11-year-old me was quite alone and got shocked by some unfortunate realities of living away from family. My story is not special nor unique, children have had to leave the comfort (not necessarily in material goods, though that was my case) of their home to move away to have access or a chance for a better life. In my “A Mother’s Heart choice” blog, I speak about it a little bit more; about that hard decision that my parents had to take to give me an opportunity.
Now, back to my bedroom; anyone who has ever lived with me knows how I feel about my bedroom, it is almost a sacred place, not because of its grandeur, or valuables but really, it is because my bedroom has always been a place of refuge for me; a place where the real me could explore some most intimate areas of my creativity. So, I started making up stories about a new life, this other character would have, and I will live it, act it, and enjoy it as an escape to the reality on the other side of my bedroom door. Outside, I was Naïké, an 11-year-old who had to learn to live in a foreign country and navigate through all the challenges, but inside my bedroom, I was Summer, this fierce Hollywood actress who was conquering the world and had dance lessons with her friend Janet Jackson or again being pursued by Keanu Reeves, but hmm was not sure if she would date him or not. I cannot remember if one of the characters’ names was Summer, but all I know is that since I idealized and dreamed to travel to the US and be a star, I made sure that all my characters were Americans or at least living in the beautiful United States of America.
There are certainly psychological explanations for what I was doing but sharing a psychological point of view or opinions about this, is not the direct purpose of this blog, this is just a window to one of my most intimate experiences and a suggestion to understand how powerful and limitless a selective mind can be.
Some of my friends who were aware of my hardships, though we were so young, often wondered how I could handle living the way I was; and I will tell you that I do not know if I would have survived, or at least survived with a sane mind if I had not created those imaginary stories. Though I did not necessarily understand what I was doing, and frankly, I did not know if it was even healthy to do so; all I knew was that, in that world, in the world of my bedroom, in that world; all was possible and I was enough, I was desired, I was seen, I was accepted, and not constantly rejected or judged. So, I realized that having that place, where I could get my mind off of my reality, at least for a couple of hours a day, really helped me better cope but most importantly, it allowed me to disconnect from the lies I was repeatedly hearing and the constant rejection I was experiencing.
Somehow tapping into my creative world was a way to keep the “me” I knew, closer; it was a way to not lose myself in the unfairness of my reality. My dreams, the worlds I created in my bedroom, the imaginary stories, and the fantasy were the most authentic and truthful parts of my life. So, when I was called a loser or when I was told that my family had abandoned me in my reality; in my bedroom, I was called who I knew deep inside I was all along: a winner, a survivor. Having that selective mind, learning to select what to hold on to, what to believe and not believe, what to claim as my reality and what to dismiss, saved me as a teen; and though I had to deal with obvious damages in my young adult years, I must say that it could have been worse. Reality has a funny or not-so-funny way to claim its hold on you in a way that you cannot avoid nor deny it. So, time to time, my reality would be so brutal that the comforting arms of the worlds of my bedroom would not be strong enough to pull me in and allow me to rest.
As selective as I had trained my mind to be, a mind is such a complex place, and as much as the girl in the bedroom was not alone and knew exactly who she was and where she was going, Naïké still felt powerless, unseen, unwanted, and lost. Until something very specific happened, a pull that I could not refuse nor control, an epiphany that allowed me to tap into something quite exceptional.
To be continued…
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