Canada, the beginning of the Fool’s Journey.
I love Canada, I think coming to Toronto was the best decision I've ever made, I don't even know how did I have the audacity to do it. To fight all the obstacles to get me here. Even though I wasn't well.. I was ashes... He killed me, I didn't expect the wands that he stabbed me with, over and over again, then he went ahead and married her. To further humiliate me.
I dunno how did I have the strength to jump all these extra hopes.. I thought I was dead.. I was dead through it all, I don't know how I made myself, but I did.
I was scared every minute of it, but I was also numb, very numb. Screaming thoughts, but deafening silence from the expectation of what is yet to come, or might not come.
I was dead when I arrived here.. I remember though the rebirth I felt.. a new beginning.. fresh.. didn't even know how will I stay here. The ultimate fool, believing the next step will appear when I reach it, and it did. Always, even those steps that didn't seem to appear fast enough, I fell a few times, then kept on falling and falling, and hit the bottom again. Pretty hard. This has been my deepest bottom yet. Even the moments I thought I was awake, I was faking it. My poker face helps me with that. People at work think it makes me look mad, others just sad.
The word 'trauma' angered me. I still not sure why. The first time I decided to have a therapist, cause I didn't have to be too smart to realize that something was up with me. I was always very sad, very unhappy to be here, don't deserve to be here. In fact I was so unhappy, that I remember in the 2nd grade, asking my father if an overdose of Panadol will kill me, he said reassuringly, no, very unlikely, you might have some complications, but it wouldn't kill you". He probably thought I was afraid I would die from taking Panadol for my migraines, he didn't know that I wanted to.
My mum would often mention 'killing herself', she too was always miserable. For no clear reason, she is either furious or very sad. She seemed to get more difficult with time. She loves to put the blame on other people, she loves the feeling of guilt she tries to grow in other people, despite common sense, to further support her self-victimization schemes. She is the victim, always. Everyone else is a criminal.
Something of her, seeped in me, despite my life attempts at shaking her off. I thought I did. I always insisted that I am exactly like my father, nothing like her. I was embarrassed to have her as a mother, how rude she was to people, especially those who dared disagree with her twisted logic. To the point that more than once, a friend from university or work would assume that my mother isn't alive, and I only have one sister. That used to shock me at first. When I asked why would they think that, they often said, 'You always say my dad, you never mention your mum. Usually people say my parents."
It's inappropriate in Sudan to mention that you don't have a good relationship with your mother, it makes everyone automatically assume that you are a bad daughter. "She's your mother, no matter what she does it's your responsibility to fix it". I get it, I believe children should be so very polite to their parents, for all the sacrifices they make. I know I will make sure to rub the sacrifices I made for them in their faces as often as possible. I will do my best though to not every claim that coming to Canada to give them a better future, because that would be a lie. A really audacious one. I came here for me. And only me. I would probably be the aloof grandmother that has old-fashioned opinions that would embarrass them in front of their Canadian friends.
So yes, I would give my future children a piece of my mind, if they ever talked to me, or treated my family, the way I sometimes see Canadian children talk to their parents. They better not.
Anyways, I pretended not to be my mother as much as I could. Everyone agreed. We are so different, it is hard to believe we are even related. Especially given, that we look. nothing alike. Which I think has been the root of our problems. So couldn't believe how 'ugly we were', how 'nothing ever looks good on us, despite her best efforts'. My hair allegedly hurt her fingers, when she braided my hair. She is upset we ended up with African hair, very different from her 'good her'. We were also as dark as my father, not fair skinned. To her annoyance I wouldn't bleach my skin, or apologize for all the above by becoming more religious and wear the scarf more convincingly or better yet become a hejabi, so I would at least pass as a 'good girl' since I failed at being Baidah and 'beautiful'.
I still carry her with me. I catch myself have a similar thought pattern like hers. Not only that she bugged me with her eagerness to die and leave everyone else behind, as a pathetic final cry of victimization to show the people who hurt us how much that hurt, so maybe they would too suffer with the guilt. How weak I sometimes become. Unable to do the minimum. I remember as much as I am so very proud of her to over come the challenges that faced her. She is the first in her family to drive a car. I vaguely remember she mentioning it to someone over the phone. In my modern mind, I thought of course she can drive, all the mothers I knew in school drove, why wouldn't she. I thought as a kid all adults by default drive. Only a month or so ago, did I remember that chat over the phone, or was it in person with another woman, talking about how my uncle, her brother, was furious when he found out, my mother was taking driving lessons, I think my father had to put his foot down, to remind my uncle that she is his wife, and it is up to him. My father earned himself a different level of respect. He is the doctor. And she is the doctor's wife now.
Knowing my mother, and how she is afraid of her brother, I now understand what a difficult decision that would be for her to go against him. I also recently realized that she was probably beaten way too many times. I think she too believed that it was her brothers' right to beat them. I had that feeling when her brother beat her sister, the one she doesn't like, when she was an adult with adult children. My mother didn't blame my uncle, she blamed my aunt. 'How bad of a person can you be, that you get beaten up at this age and the only way left for your brother is to beat you'. Like many things in my childhood that shocked me. Not that my mother attacked her own sister, knowing how unreasonable my mother is and living with her for decades that wasn't new, I was shocked that a brother would beat a grown sister, the most humiliating thing. And he is in the right, because he is a man.
I realize how embarrassing it must've been for my mother, when she was surrounded by intelligent, easy going women who were in my father's circle. She was taught that a lot of things she was seeing were 'morally wrong', and she felt inferior to them. Compared to her sisters, my mother speaks very good English. Her English is actually impressive, especially when I see how my young cousins who studied universities, aren't able to speak any English at all. Even my youngest uncle, a doctor, I remember him one day running to me carrying his phone, to ask me, what the email that was sent to him in English say. It was just an automatic email to confirm his registration that he just did. "So they didn't say anything else, so everything is fine?", his panic made me confused. How bad could his English be, that he is unable to read such a simple email. My mum came a long way from that, I do feel pride when I recognize all of this. She didn't even know how to cook anything when she married my father. He taught her a few things, then she carried on. Everyone, I mean everyone can't stop talking how good my mother's cooking is. Including me, the hater. I used to take her cooking for granted, and then upon visiting my friends and eating their mothers' food, I couldn't eat it at all. I wondered how come none of her children noticed how bad the food was.
She has come a long way, I almost never see it. She boasted about it a few times, she also boasted about being a great mother for not beating us up and always having food on the table. I thought she was terrible, and should've been allowed to be a mother. She wasn't like the other mothers, they were polite and fun. She was like a sergeant and I was her solider. It wasn't an easy relationship. She had conservative views that angered me, and an anger that terrified me. I was doing my best to please her. That rarely happened. She wouldn't talk to me if I was the 2nd of the class, even the 2nd of the school wasn't good enough, I should be the top of the whole school. Like my sister. Why can't I do that like my sister. Top of the class doesn't matter anymore. It has to be the first, to her second was nothing and I was always second. What does she have that you don't.
I was in elementary school, when it was the day of the results. I got in the car and sat in the backseat. She turned around from her driver seat, without saying anything the look on her face asked me for the results. 'I came second, I said in a small voice'. She made sure her face showed the disappointment, still not saying anything she turned around and drove us home in utter silence. She succeeded, I was guilty.
I was too soft for her mental games, I started to stutter very young, the stuttering continued for most of my life. It is, third to my battle with mental health and migraines... I sometimes part myself on the back when I realize that my stuttering is almost undetected. It comes up sometimes when I am nervous, or I feel like I have to say something different than what I am actually thinking. It specially comes up when I am speaking to Sudanese people, especially my family. Who would think, that the girl who wasn't able to talk in a normal low-key conversation, would be regularly invited to be a guest speaker in events and interviews and even started her own youtube channel to talk to a camera and post her videos publicly. I came a long way too.
Anyways, I wrote this whole post to talk about Canada. And how much I love it. My new home, and could be the only place I felt somewhat accepted. Other than the winter, of course, there are two things that despite my previous expectations are going terribly wrong; my mental health and dating. The two departments I thought I would flourish. Ironically the one thing I didn't expect is to be recognized as an artist here, I always thought it's be far-fetched. They know art well, they would recognizer a fake one. Ironically they haven't yet.
I thought Sudan and my mother combined were the source of my depression, once I move out I will be set free. I came here and very soon after.. my mental health took a deep dive for years, since the end of 2017 till a few months ago. I am 36 now. It's been a while since I was down and it is a bit unnerving to be back to this life. Same scared kid, but is now an adult, who has to run as fast as she possibly can to make it, and make it for all the time, we've lost, all those years I lost in that darkness. The most depressing thought I often have that I've never lived. So I want to experience life now, I want to make it up for all those years I wasn't here. and alive.
I have to often remind myself of who I was before I fell. My former self feels so foreign. She was determined, very hard working, and would find a way.
I haven't been that person for a while, to the point that I believed that I am lazy, hate nature, and am a city girl. I am none of those things. and I hope when Uranus exists Taurus that I never go back to those things. I want to cure my fear of life with some exposure therapy. I need to do more and more of what scares me and terrifies me. I need to remind myself that the fear was nothing new, I was scared always, but I managed it. I never had an anxiety attack, with all the anxiety Sudan and my mother combined introduced, never. But now my body heard of anxiety attacks, so it started to love to spontaneously go on anxiety attacks without warning. Can't it realize that I have things to get to. I don't have time for panic attacks. My migraines and depression do waste enough of my time, as I said... I am 36. And I sometimes feel my life has been nothing but a series of dark depression valleys and earth shattering anxiety attacks.
Lady Universe, this wasn't part of the plan. I didn't come to Canada for this. I also didn't come to Canada for this unacceptable dating life. I thought I would find the one, the guy who can't believe a girl like me exists. And would be quite happy I decided to make the move from Sudan. I never ever thought I would miss dating in Sudan. Bumble, Tinder, Hinge?!! What?!? Are you kidding me, is this what we have come to.
They can do whatever they want, they don't have to face being captured by the security for openly having a relationship or having to hide their relationships and phone calls from their parents, or arrested and face the dire consequences if they were ever thought to have has sex with their partner outside of marriage. They don't have to worry about none of that. And they let all this freedom go to imprison us all inside apps to swipe right and left of each other. I'm tired of it.
So as I said, the results of the dating and the mental health departments were not part of the vision, but I understand, this is Canada, not heaven. I can't have everything, and no one really promised me anything.
And there is probably no such thing as heaven.
