Liminal space of past and present

*In the very space that once misery brewed, now change and hope has sprung anew*

I found myself again back in place were time and my emotional state existed in a liminal space between my past and present; a fine thread that kept me inactive and afraid to look in the past resulting in the hindrance of my present. An eternal battle between these two states, fighting side by side, releasing seeds of sorrow and pain to grow and cultivate in me. A place that I swore never to return to and never to engage under any circumstance in my life. Paranoia and uncertainty accompanied me as the plane landed in my early childhood city, Manchester. Life run its course in guiding me back here in my travels. Not knowing at the time that it was an important milestone for me to understand and comprehend in moving past the feeling of contempt that desolated any love that I could feel. Seeking amends and closure from what I was running away from frantically in any form of mention of those said years. I sensed a need to go back after my years in working on myself and my ability to capture and understand my feelings. I seeked the answers that I couldn't answer back then; where words failed to capture my pain and my inexperience kept me back from ever enjoying any sight of breakthrough, festering an endless source in nurturing these negative and lingering emotions. Resulting in my active pursuit of the 'warmest' and 'loudest' caring arms that could caress and nurture such pain, subjecting myself to toxic and manipulative relationships.

*A collage made from past drawings and pieces that I uncovered in my old sketchbooks from 10 years ago living in the UK.

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Memory Loss and its compensation

I have been suffering memory loss for the first time in my life. Things that should have been familiar now became new discoveries. It appears that my mind has purposely erased those negative memories eradicating familiarizations leaving joy to begin growing again. A close representation of a smile from a familiar face who I longed to be embraced from, that time gracefully erased from my mind. How very peculiar did all this feel, in revisiting my childhood trauma that I held so tightly on to. Being left with such choice of being able to experience feelings other than contempt. Allowing for fixation to dwindle down and closure to occur. In the years I spend here through the confusion, pain, misery and disdain; I found it was nothing but my own chosen perspective endlessly creating a tainted veil obscuring my vision and preventing any form of growth to happen. Much like cement blocking the patch of grass in growing back to its lush green, so did I began feeling the person responsible of cementing and suppressing any form of natural growth to ever occur. Through nature's observation yield the answer to such predicament; nature always finds a way to present life were life has been taken away from. In the analogy with the cement over a once green patch of grass the answer was this; if left alone nature will reclaim and break through the cracks formed in the cement, sprawling life anew. Recraimling once again its lost patch of land until it covers and hides the cement that was laid on it. if constantly one were to fixate on it, the weeds that would try to break through the cracks would always be plucked away, resulting in an endless cycle of preventing nature to grow back by our own medling. I then realised it's much harder to hold onto things and constantly interfere, than let things go and allow for time and life to run its course for nature to find its way to you. Now years later that veil that once so forcefully clinged on me, now rests in the past, floating in the eternal limbo of self doubt. Sailing its voyage through the ever-changing waters of time. I came to realise how to each person walking the streets of a city, rested an elaborate story that my eyes couldn't penetrate to decipher. A personal intent and reason, worries and fears, and the longing of the warm embrace of appreciation. Once those very eyes would have contemped them to a 'boxed up' reason of mine, sentencing them as an effect to my self inflicted cause of pain; through the many years that followed and accountability that I took for my actions, growth alleviated my symphony of assumptions.

I began to understand how people did their best to stay afloat in its all consuming cycle of climbing the corporates ranks. I caught myself observing early in the morning onto those high res towers at early dawn, once my view had been hilltops and trees; now replaced with small cubicles lit up at early dawn of people starting their day for their long commute to their place of work. Taking trains, cars, bikes and buses, long before their working time, in the hopes of them arriving at the allocate start time. All in the promise of a better tomorrow, of recognition of their efforts and an ample amount of 'bread' to fill their desires and in upholding a roof over their heads. People ironing their shirts, staring at their coffee machines longing its fragrance to awake them and taste to breath life in them. Full of worries, annoyance and exhausted by the routine. For all the pent up anger, distance, vanity and indifference the city was receiving in its very streets, the origin of such emotions rested in those very cubicles, stacked horizontally on top of each other, just before dawn would embrace and mark a new day.

The re-imagining of my faults

My camera would accompany me everywhere in my travels, in all the locations and places . I thought its use would be essential to capture the perspectives that my mind finds noteworthy. At the time I couldn't bring myself to use it to capture the world around me. I found myself struggling to use an artificial lense to capture what I was witnessing. I felt so drawn to the world around me, in its motions and patterns, the subtle changes that one could see by existing in the surrounding. Ten years ago I sat in this very place witnessing a barrage of negative emotions spewing off from the people walking and navigating their way through this city. A self inflicted perspective that I used to filter the world around me, pulling my inner state of being and externalizing it, acting as a giant mirror to reflect what was within me to exist on the outside. Fueling those long low swings to strike more frequently and harder each time. Now mesmerized by the world, I found myself being neutral, silent to what I felt the world meant and behaved and much rather seeing it and trying to understand what it is, rather what I feel it is. Avoiding my mind's baseless reasons and concepts to truly comprehend my surroundings. How people interacting with each other out of necessity, out of need and desire, everything became quite informative, when I let go of my personal grasp. In such actions, my past began mending itself, allowing me to acknowledge life objectively; no longer tying emotions to elaborate their existence but much rather experiencing it at its core. Everything was tied to a perspective that everyone manifested as a reason that brewd the reaction and understanding of their surrounding and inevitably their chosen reality. I realized that if I was able to do that, to leave myself out of the things around me, it meant that I felt ready to let it go, to allow myself to coexist with it. To walk parallel with it, without being influenced in swaying my direction from its actions. At times when this was difficult to do, it meant that I needed more time with it, lessons to learn about myself that kept my hand clenched so tightly, unable to let it go. An important discovery that brought actual change in how I view the world and my past. I witnessed reactions that I did not see before, people being genuinely disinterested in one another, they didn't stare nor did their eyes follow you when passing by. Everyone seemed to operate and faction independently from one another. To what reason, I have no grasp, but perhaps that will come with time and conversations with them. I suppose, life is elaborating to me on how much I don't know of this world, and in the off chance I begin grasping an idea of it, then that is just a small personal perspective amongs an endless amount of new ones waiting to be conversed or witnessed as time prepared me for it. For each idea, concept and perspective I now form, I await my future self to add, change and develop as time illustrates the faults in my actions. Past influences the present and connective bridges form that naturally flow between the two. Each year that time brings forth, so am I understanding how drastically different my perspectives really develops into.

Epilogue The trinity of its change. -Past \ Present \ Future~

To that I began wondering. Was it like this, years ago, in my teenage years as well? Or did something occurred in creating such a reaction. Was it just my perspective or did something specific occurred that tilted my perception of this town. Perhaps an earlier version of myself could easily answer that, with resolve and passion but now I doubt the accuracy of such answer. My memory loss did not bare me with an answer, but with a rather fascinating feeling of unexplained joy. How through letting things go and allowing and trusting myself to grow I could come back to a place I thought long gone and dead for me. My past although painful and stigmatizing as it were, my present self became aware of how filtered from my current self it really became when recalled upon. Subjectively picking my wrongs in a moment that was long gone, inaccurately conveying the state I was in, but much rather pointing the growth that I made in understanding the mistakes and not acting upon them at the time. Allowing for an endless cycle of guilt to blossom, leaving its wounds of dissatisfaction to borrow in my self-worth. In result, I understood that the future was depended heavily on my present self understanding. Being able to find beauty and memories that no longer pain me to bring in my mind but give me a genuine smile of the growth that I have undergone. In closing a heavy chapter that pained me, allowing for mobility and action in moving forward from the dihabellitating past to the unexpected and fascinating present; I march and move forward...

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