04 -- The Sticker

i love seeing the mix of sweat and 50+ sunscreen mixed into an opal white droplet nesting in my navel. It has been cut open four times — 2 ovarian cysts, 1 myoma, 1 ectopic pregnancy that took place one month into the first lockdown of the covid pandemic. By now, the navel has changed its shape, sort of closed in and become shallow. The scars inside it somehow make me proud — of surviving. finally, we have reached Sicily, by an overnight train that goes onto a train ferry, the last existing one in Europe, and the sun is back.

it is dawning on me only now that my life has been a string of events guided by survivorship. with time, i have become skilled at it, as many others have. when you grow up like that, and with usefulness in mind, you discover they even pay you for it. thus, your vocation, even titled as journalism, is indeed survivorship in disguise. as you are skilled in people pleasing via reading their minds before “the bad thing happens”, you are a high achiever, never tired, always ready for more work. there, a career is even built. a career built on survivorship. then your body chemistry changes abruptly, and your construction falls apart like the straw house in the story about the three little pigs. you were so strong in performing, in performing that you’re fine, the best in pleasing, the greatest in masking. so much so that it became you. the survivorship was your full nature, like a big sticker slapped all over you, and especially hard on your voice.

it’s only now that i can see that the sticker might have a little edge, that i might be able to scratch it off, to maybe hold it long and strong enough to tear it off entirely. but what if there is nothing underneath? what if you tear yourself away along with that big sticky label, with black residue around its edge, accumulated over decades, even since you arrived in this world — you, the big achiever, you with the best grades, first in the class, all for them to notice you maybe, your parents, maybe they will see that you are good at something — something other than hiding that broken plate.