“Writing is where I leave my state of suspended animation, and start on my own life…It’s where I go to be deeply and freely alone; to create myself, and experience myself as real.”
– Katherine Angel, Daddy Issues
I returned from an emotionally explosive three-week trip to what I refer to, generically, as North America, and what I used to call home (Toronto) or other specific localities, like New York. It’s my tacit and truly subconscious revenge at the lumping together of Middle East as a destination, when it encapsulates such a rich and varied selection of cities that even I, a “Middle Eastern”, can find alien and foreign. I finally dragged my uncharacteristically (though my friends would correct to characteristically) oversized, overweight luggage over the steps and into the hallway, abandoned it immediately along with my shoes, handbag, keys and jacket, and walked upstairs to the bedroom. I took off my clothes, plugged in my phone to the charger next to bed, and went under the covers. It was a cloudy afternoon, characteristically London.
The next two days were a daze. I would wake up every few hours, shower, brush my teeth, eat once a day at most, do a bit of work on my phone, read the headlines, send emails and voice notes and texts, and fall back asleep. I felt deranged, like Otessa Moshfegh’s Year of Rest and Relaxation, barre the agency of her character. My friend May says agency is overrated, and she’s probably right. I was taken over by an acute sense of melancholia, fragmentation, and madness, captivated by my dreams, which were a convoluted mass of images old and new— trees, fantastic oceans, babies, former friends and encounters, current anxieties. I spent a good chunk of one dream trying to glue together my broken pair of glasses, pieces of which had shattered miles away. In one, I was taking care of a friend’s toddler while it kept changing, physically morphing into different versions of it little self, mutating endlessly. The North American Trip had disfigured my entire sense of self. Though in a sweetly familiar way. I relished it.
There were a few factors I can share that contributed to this physical and mental regeneration. One, family. It had been a while that the four of us (now five), were in Toronto. I miss them. I am overwhelmed by all the range of emotions I feel for and towards my small unit of family. Always have, but was not always equipped to deal with it. The emotions have evolved but the essence is the same. I want to take care of them, protect, encourage and better them. Yet I am the last of the family, the youngest, the “girl”. The one who left, unable to return home. In a purgatory of her own making and watching as the things she doesn’t want to see change, change, and those she want to see change, remain still. The paint on her walls deteriorate, flowers die, her bed is the same, time passes, Toronto stays Toronto.
Revisiting Toronto was itself another provocation. I went to our old neighborhood with my husband, and showed him my High School, our old house, the streets, the park, the mall, the Starbucks, the cinema. The ordinary trappings of a suburban North York life that was never going to satisfy me, no matter how hard my family or I tried. I did the most bizarre things, wasted time with people I had nothing in common with, smoked weed in cars, read alone in my bedroom. I think of how impatiently I moved out when I was 18 and in University. It’s silly, but I wish I had more time living with my mom and brother. It’s ironic and cruel but I miss it. I miss living with these people who have always loved me the way they did.
On the weekend, we went downtown, to the same neighbourhoods I used to go. Old busy bars with long spiralling cues for the bathroom were now empty. The faces, bartenders, signs and markers that made up that scene were now gone. Was it that long ago? Queen, Dundas, Ossington, Dufferin, night after night there were things to do and parties to show up to and people to diss or miss or kiss — moving at a fast rate, so fast it felt completely still from inside. Like looking out the window of an airplane, never realising how much distance you’ve actually conquered.
Then, I had a cold. I had a cold for 10 days, the longest I remember. My body decided to let go, and perhaps take advantage of being near my mom, who is the definition of nourishment — often at her own expense. I soaked up all the attention I could, unrelenting. Armin called it a burn out. It was as if the entire year, all the weeks I worked and all the nights I stayed up and all the anxiety I chewed on to the sides of my fingernails and corners of my lips, were exhumed, like an exorcism. I had begun to feel warm and relaxed. We took a trip to Niagara Falls, where Canadians will proudly remind you, the “good side” of which is theirs and the backside in the US. I watched people gamble stoically, we went to a winery, we had long meals and I had the opportunity to be somewhere else with my mom, and wake up every day next to him, knowing she’s in the room next door— happy. Then I travelled to New York City.
New York, a site holding relics of very different stages of me. I’ve been there under circumstances of work, idea of love, friendship, insecurity, confidence, adventure. I’ve been there alone, with people, and to surprise my future husband before we told anyone we’re dating. I’ve been there for the bachelorette party of a friend who’s since divorced. For New Year’s Eve. For a visit to NYU. To stay with a friend who I don’t see as often but whose hospitality I’ll never forget. I went to see a man whose heart I immediately broke. I went to visit my childhood best friend. To see exhibitions. To be. This time, I was greeted by a selection of some of the best people in my life, who love me perhaps as much as I love them. I went without my husband, and in that solitude all the previous Tara’s felt very vivid, and I felt the presence of how I carry them all most gently, sometimes feverishly, but deep within.
I watched Betrayals, the Harold Pinter play. I had meetings with people I enjoyed speaking to. I stayed at a nice new hotel and made a shitshow about a bed bug that wasn’t there. I went upstate (I enjoy repeating that word: Upstate. It’s pretentious but since I’m not familiar with the context and unclear as to what the pretense precisely represents, I like saying it and watching different New Yorkers’ react). We drank and ate and read and listened to music, a few tracks on repeat mostly. We hiked and smoked and talked for long hours and were silent for some and I felt liberated and stimulated and in synch at the same time. So extremely overstimulated, in fact, that I had to shut my eyes, or move away from the couch, unable to find words to describe how I was feeling; the intensity of the connection I had to my thoughts and body and surroundings were extraordinary. The temperature of my body changed compulsively, my limbs free, my appetite absent. This was a new Tara, or an old one that had come out to play again. Then it was over.
It was raining as I arrived at the JFK airport. I was impolitely asked to pay extra for my luggage, and the flight was so cold I wrapped myself entirely, head included, under the blanket. I wasn’t able to watch anything, or write, or read. I waited, to arrive.
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Then, I slept for three hours last night. Today, I biked around and worked out and I worked for 9 hours straight, ticking things off my To Do list, which has expanded to am uncomfortable size. I have finished my documentary, it’s practically over. And practically it has just begun. I hadn’t done this in so long though — writing things like this, and sharing it. But I feel like I should respect and pay homage to the part of me that always did this without even thinking about it. So I’ll share this. And I will then work on the next stories I want to tell. And in this moment I’m happy to have all of my selves with me, here.
I have arrived.