Dive into your creative stream
when people ask me what I’m particularly good at, I want to tell them, “ruining lives”. it has become such a niche talent of mine that instead of overwhelming shame and disappointment in myself, I only shut down these days, because my body has now been inundated. I ruin lives like it is something I was born for – to make my father cry and my mother develop a chronic illness; for my grandparents to feel unloved and for my aunts and uncles to regret loving me; for ruining my therapist’s weekend-nights; for my friends to feel like they’re giving too much and not getting enough; for never doing justice to my pup. I was told that since the day I was born, I never drank milk – if drinking milk is to sustenance as love is to living, I was and am and will continue to be an abject failure at both; there is something hidden in this analogy of milk: a baby is born with the natural inclination for drinking milk, as is a human being their capacity for love; it is then unfortunate that I have repeatedly disappointed my family’s expectations of following both. I am now lactose intolerant, and it seems as if I am intolerant of love as well. I’m not usually an essentialist, but even I can see that I lack something essential; something that should be here isn’t, though there is something darker and uglier and tar-like making my chest cave in on itself like a black hole, in its place. it is hard for me to process love, it is hard for me to consume milk; when you say I don’t hold space for your love, I want to ask you why you believe I can, why you believe it is a choice and not a deficit; because the only love I can accept is in the form of lactose-free milk, not milk powder, and while many have packets of the latter at home, they don’t go through the trouble of buying the former: milk powder is nothing but milk in its powdered form, and while easier to take, doesn’t make it much better; your love is easier to take when you’re funny and kind, but it does not make it easier for me digest. and it is so silly, but so crucial. new-born babies don’t have a personality, and if they do seem to, they must be fundamentally flawed – no one ever tells you how hard it is to be a whole human being when you’ve been considered a fundamentally flawed baby. nobody ever tells you how to learn to love; if love is an action, and actions speak louder than words, and it is actions which give meaning to life, is it surprising that I ruin lives through inaction? I talk about caring for people the way they want to be cared for, not the way you want them to care for you; at the same time, I do not serve milk to my guests, it doesn’t even pass my mind to offer, the option just does not exist for me – which is very curious indeed.