Havenze

Starting over

[havenze]

[havenze]

[havenze]

[havenze]

@zulifestyle sneaked a little love note in one of the pages of my lifebook and, being the fanboy I am I had to frame it with red hearts washi tape 😂 (and swatch some heart stamps around it) This spread is funnily very representative of my two moods. Depressed hollow hypersomniac and comedically over the top groupie. Being aromantic, I never wanted to be in a relationship. It always seems too much of a hassle and I didn't see why I would choose to depend on another person to make my own life choices. Even now, even if we all know I'm madly in love with my fiancée I still consider love like a foreign language I still have to study in order to understand. I'm not the kind to believe that (romantic) love is the ultimate goal of one's life and that one day prince charming will come and make all your problems go away. But I also know that (and she hates me saying that) I wouldn't be there if she hadn't been there. Even before we started dating she was a lifeline, a safespace for me to go home to through messenger where we would roleplay and write fabulous stories together. I wasn't really the kind to share my problems but I kept coming back everyday even when I tried to distance myself, because it probably was the only place I felt like I belonged. We work well together, we build great things together, we understand how the other thinks and when we don't we're curious to learn, help and grow together. It seemed almost natural for us to continue on building the rest of our lives together. It was so logical to me that it was only after some year of officially being a couple that I started wondering "well, maybe I am in love ?" Romantic people tend to imply that you'll know when you feel it. Love at first sight, butterfly's in your stomach, heartbeat going up... To me it looked more like being constantly anxious about her wellbeing, wanting to be there for her 24/7, being super angry when she faced hardships and overall a deep powerful desire to care for her and protect her. I think you could feel that for any very close friend or family member which is probably why it took some time for me to understand 🤔 https://www.instagram.com/p/CQ5IpgvoLr_/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

Don’t know if I have anything deep to say about this one. It’s just an honest observation I have about my interactions with others. I know I’m much more comfortable interacting with people via text/chat on internet than I am talking to people in real life. I’m a big introvert and I’m more of a listener than a talker and in social situations I just tend to want to blend in and disappear. It’s probably because I lack self-confidence but I also know that it’s also at least partly because I’m a control freak. Whenever I manage to have long conversations I always tend to regret having talked too much afterwards when I replay the whole thing back for analysis. In writing, I can pick my every word, how I phrase things, I can go back and correct things before I send it. One other thing I noticed is that interacting live drains my energy so much faster than through texts, even when it comes to listening audio messages. When reading a message, I can go at my own pace, go back if I missed an information or forgot something, I can assess at first glance if it’s just a short message or a very long one that will need my full attention. You don’t have that leisure with voice messages or live conversation. I feel like I need my entire brain power to process the fast influx of information in real time and it’s just so exhausting. I know something that would help me would be to not be so hung up on every little details or being afraid to make mistakes, say dumb things, make people repeat themselves or talk slower. And I know I really need to stop needing to over-analyse every interaction I have. But in this day and age of social media, internet and global lockdown, it’s hard to encourage oneself to go out and talk with real people when it’s so much easier and less anxiety inducing to do so from behind the comfort and security of a screen. https://www.instagram.com/p/CQxaQ1SoYsM/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

Tw : mental illness, suicide

I have a very conflictual relationship with medication and mental illness. In my youth I used to think only ‘crazy’ people saw psychiatrists. It was a recurrent joke to tell someone “careful, the doctors in white coats are gonna come and take you away and give you a nice jacket and lock you up with a room with padded walls”. When I started getting depressed, I was scared to death that someone might think there was something wrong with me and send me to the asylum. I was scared of disappointing my parents. So I pretended everything was okay, for years, until they had to figure out themselves. It was almost too late, had we not been on a road trip in the US together. When they finally find out, it was like my worst nightmare come true, a fate worse than death. Good thing was, since my ego was shattered and I couldn’t go lower, I didn’t fight when they asked me to seek out professional help. I played along, did and took whatever I was prescribed. It’s probably what saved me in the end. Today I feel much better and I’m on a sure path to recovery. But everytime I feel like things are looking up, I’m reminded that I’m still taking a lot of meds daily to be able to achieve that. I know they’re here to help me and to lessen the risk of putting my life in danger, but to me it’s a constant reminder of how ill I am. I try not to feel ashamed of that and to be proud of how far I’ve come, but I know I’m still waiting for the day I’ll finally be meds free. https://www.instagram.com/p/CQncX1ZDWoP/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

FYI : I’m French and I’m not white. I’m asian.

For my entire childhood I rejected everything tied to my chinese origins (except perhaps food) in hopes that it would make me more French. Every joke, every remark, every racist cliché, I would prefer to align with the white centered racism as if being like them, mocking people who looked like me instead of being mocked would make me whiter. I was born in France, I grew up in France, my native tongue is French. Because I rejected my origins, I barely know any Chinese and for a long time I resented China. I’ve always hated being seen as an outsider in my own country. Today I know I’ve come a long way from that but I’m not yet to a point where I could say I’m proud of my origins or am able to embrace them. It took learning more about racism through the fight of black people and black pride for me to realize how much internalized racism, hate and self-rejection I carried within me. Most importantly, I had to face the face that in my own racist mind, being French and being Asian was somehow incompatible and in order to be fully one, I had to erase the other from my identity which was utterly impossible. What I should’ve tried instead, is to be able to reconcile these two parts of me and understand that, I have nothing to prove. I am French, I always have been and hating other Asian people does nothing but hurt and alienate myself futher. So I started looking for Asian advocates from diasporas and I try to learn from those who know who they are and make no compromise. Doing so also made me realize that, part of why I always had a hard time believing I could be French and Asian was because of lack of representation. Everything around me was by, about and for white people. For a long time and still to this day many people think French means white. When people ask me where I’m from, where I’m /really/ from, it’s because they too don’t believe you can be Asian and French. And I’m tired. I’m tired of living in a white-centered world of white narratives making me believe I’m part of a minority when in fact Asians represent 60% of the total world population. https://www.instagram.com/p/CQfjTC0D57H/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

I like this quote, reading it from a trans perspective and looking at my past.

People who knew me tend to be surprised when I come out to them because I wasn’t really a tomboy or conventionally ‘masculine’. I had long hair for most of my youth, I didn’t like sport, I liked Tokio Hotel. I was a theater kid, I did ballet and horse riding. When my mother encouraged me to be more feminine I listened to her, I wore heels, mini skirts and makeup, briefly dated boys and I felt good because I felt pretty and appreciated, like I achieved my full potential. Even today I am proud to say I made a convincing and damn fine woman. But it was never me, only what others expected of me and I was the biggest people pleaser ever, especially when it came to my parents.

But ever since I learned there was a difference between being a boy and being a girl, I wished I was born a boy. I didn’t know why at the time because it wasn’t as if I was forbidden to do 'boy’ stuff. I lied previously, I was a tomboy or as French people say a garcon-manqué (literally missed-boy). Before highschool most of my friends were boys and we would play pretend as dragonball character (I was always Trunks). I took pride in being the one who ran fastest. Then highschool came and I was made aware that while boys played football or video games, girls sat on benches and talked. I didn’t know what we were supposed to talk about but I knew that’s where I was supposed to be. So I befriended other girls and talked, join a girl’s gang and grew apart from my former geeky male friends. It lasted awhile before I realized I really felt more comfortable with my male friends. I tried going back to them but it wasn’t the same anymore. I was the girl in the group of guys. That’s when I tried dating them, desperately trying to find my place, to fit in, to belong. Of course it didn’t work because I quickly had to realize I didn’t like them that way.

I never really looked or acted as a boy because I was always told that I wasn’t one and was never gonna be one. So I tried my best being what I was told I was, which was a girl. But I never stop wishing and dreaming, if only had I been born a boy… https://www.instagram.com/p/CQNhAR7DAZX/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately… I wish I didn’t have to. https://www.instagram.com/p/CMsHHshDpL5/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

Core series - Safe. https://www.instagram.com/p/CHQw6AToCDy/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

Core series - Hurt. https://www.instagram.com/p/CHOMJ7mIVq0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

Core series - Exhaustion. https://www.instagram.com/p/CHLnSxco6re/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

Core series - Perspective (second slide provided by @zulifestyle bringing love and positivity in my depressing art 😂❤️) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHJCh36oeoA/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

Core series - Strained. https://www.instagram.com/p/CHGdv2GI0Xu/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

Core series - Distant. https://www.instagram.com/p/CHD49fComZe/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

Core series - Fatigue. https://www.instagram.com/p/CHBUJ_9IJ6I/?utm_medium=tumblr

[havenze]

Core series - Guilt. https://www.instagram.com/p/CG-vW0eIV_t/?utm_medium=tumblr