On recognising the shape of yourself

A little essay on the feeling that comes with knowing yourself

I am thinking about realness. About moments you are present in the world as yourself. And what this means for the life you are living.

These have been happening more and more often to me. I think the more you try to open the door, the more the opportunities present themselves to you. When I started to travel on my own I struggled with who I was, without my family or my community to guide me. When I lived in Shanghai, the first time I was ever alone for so long I struggled with it, who was I? Did I perform all my prayers? What did I wear? What did I think? What were my opinions? Away from all I knew, in such a foreign place in such a foreign culture, I had to dig really deep to understand myself, finally.

Now that I travel more on my own and stay in new places, I can say I know myself better. I know what I like and what I like to do and what I like to wear and if I want to pray and when I remember God and how I move in the world. It is one of the greatest gifts of my life; to know how I want to move in the world. And wherever I go, a kind of doorway seems to open and I go into it with a certain sense of joy and self I’ve never had before. I smile, I cry, my heart opens like this small unfurling bloom in the darkness, like the line you see at dawn above mountains, like the feeling in the trees when the wind moves through them.

What does this mean?

I say yes, almost whenever I want to say no. It means I am almost always afraid but that I am always surprised. I recently returned from a trip to India. I’m still not even sure how I got there except that one morning there were plane tickets in my inbox and I was suddenly in the far east of India, further than I imagined, almost at the edge, touching China, the Himalayas close, Burma almost beneath me. What is this life? And I met people. And I was myself. There is a way my heart opens now that I’ve never noticed before. It’s hard to explain, but I am open to everything. Like a moon. Watching. I laugh easily. Sometimes even when I want to cry. Maybe, especially. I have never seen myself so lovely. Because I am myself. What I say, how I form the words in my mouth, what I think, how I interact, it’s like I’m an outline in the world and I can see the shape more clearly as I move in it. I don’t know if any of this makes sense to someone else.

It feels very good.

And that doesn’t mean I don’t doubt myself or that I am not sad or full of grief or despair but it means when I step out, I am proud of myself and at least there is that. There is that.

You know now I try to say more of what I normally can’t. Usually I am quiet and I carry everything in me because I cannot find the words, even when I am moved deeply and now I open my mouth even when I do not have the words; let me try to say what I cannot, let me make a sound in the air to express that something inside me is moving. After a session on Urdu poetry I go up to another organiser and put my book down and hug the person, saying thank you, thank you for this thing, that is changing the way I think, that is moving me into better places in myself, I am so grateful, you are so special, my world has opened up. I feel all this light from other people. There is so much kindness. I make jokes. I am nicer. I have friends wherever I go now. Isn’t that strange? It’s so nice. But I offer my heart often now and people take it and I take theirs and these days I find myself on beaches beneath stars talking with strangers and they are like old friends and I don’t know how it gets better than that. To imagine yourself on some coast somewhere in the world with others, walking, talking about all the things that move you, about writing and reading and books and the universe and there are stars above us watching and how endless space must be.

I don’t know if I’m making any sense.

There is a moment and I have many now, where I see a friend standing and listening to music on the stage and he is so full of the moment, so still and happy and I see him as him and it is lovely. There is so much power watching someone be themselves. There is another moment outside a residency where we somehow, I don’t know how it happens, we all dance in a circle underneath the night sky somewhere in the catskills and I am so me, I move like me and it takes away all the times I was never allowed to be me or was told how to be me. We move like witches or crazy people, I don’t know. Free. In Kenya I am talking to the audience about my father and I feel this connection with everyone there and I almost weeping because they know me and I know them and I am seen.

All I know is I am a shape in the world and I am moving as myself and it so lovely, even when it is sad, and even when it is hard because I know how much it took to get here and I know who I am and there is nothing quite lovelier than that.