Admitting I'm not OK — back on 2/19

Taking some time off so I can make good use of this grief

Friends, I need a break. My heart is in pieces and my body is telling me to stop before it shuts down. I have been in constant fight-or-flight mode since an attempted robbery at my house in September and now — as of this writing, it’s day 93 — we are still witnessing the genocide of Palestinians as they scream into their phones for the world to step in, to make it stop. The sounds of planes or choppers overhead, fireworks, any kind of burst at all makes me panic. People and places I once felt safe around make me want to run far, far away.

I haven’t been the organizer and artist and writer I need to be for Gaza, the only thing I wake up and fall asleep thinking about. I can’t be the friend or partner or daughter or sister or human I know myself to be. I am a shell of myself these days, and though I know I need not apologize for embodying the grief of such loss, it is helping no one for me to be so ghostlike, so barely human. And frankly, I’m sick of people telling me they’re worried about me because it makes me feel crazier, angrier and so much more isolated when I see not everyone is as broken.

I take issue with self-care in the way our society has capitalized on the term as hyper-individual care. To me, self-care has evolved: it is the care of my basic needs — sleep, shelter, food, emotion regulation etc. — and it’s driven by a larger purpose: community care. I do not believe I deserve to “treat myself.” I don’t believe any of us deserve to sit with anything but discomfort right now. But what I’m doing day in and day out, slowly disappearing, my nerves on fire, it is not sustainable to move through the cruel world like this. I know that.

Give me a few weeks and a whole lot of grace as I step away from whatever responsibilities I can afford to offload.

I hope to take this time to slow down and regulate my nervous system through therapy, with animals, more sleep, deeper breaths, in community and in power with my feeling kin. In slowing down, I also want to read more Palestinian poetry and prose before I return to my own pages to fight and write again. All I want is to make good use of the fight in me. I know it’s there, lurking behind these tired and swollen zombie eyes.

Billing for paid subscribers will remain paused in the meantime.

I’m leaving you with some words on bearing witness and building endurance from Palestinian clinical psychologist, professor and author Hala Alyan that I found helpful this morning while packing up my belongings in tears and making the difficult, but necessary decision to leave my MFA residency.

Ceasefire now, end the occupation, free Palestine, free Sudan, free the Congo, free our minds. May we all find the endurance to continue to bear witness and fight for collective liberation.

Love,
Fiza