a half-baked genesis

This week we going back to the start with an OG origin story with a little bit of ADHDing interlinks, schemas and scheming and finding words for feelings.

Hello friends and fiends, old and new ~

I’ve decided to share the origin story of half-baked stirrings at its two year mark. Introducing myself officially to those who might have come on here recently or have been here from the start. My name is ila and I have been writing experimentally on this platform. IRL, I am essentially a nerd who cosplays many different things; i create narratives revolving around the city I am from, which is Singapore, with a crispy interest on stories that thrive on the margins. I am also interested in thinking through intergenerational traumas and more importantly finding ways to practice intergenerational healing. Due to my ADHD brain, I dabble with many different things and sometimes find myself merging these many different things together.

I also believe in the presence of spirits in all things and how there’s death-birth simultaneity in how everything cycles. In the responsible adult world, I am learning to raise my wonderful almost eight year old child and through her have been thinking (and practising, though slowly) various forms disability justice. I am also an addict going through a long and challenging recovery. Atm, I am interested in the histories of land violence and how it echoes in today’s resource grabs ecocide and killings that are challenging everything I was brought up to believe in, about this sad sorry world.

Anyway, in June 2022, I wrote my first post about how my tomato plant decided to unceremoniously expire after being moved to a different pot. But no, gardening techniques and the bad housekeeping of indoor plants did not kickstart these intrepid explorations of sporadic ideas, deeply personal anecdotes, spell casting antidotes for broken hearts and lost feelings. Instead it began months earlier over dinner with my dearest friend, SC, (or was it over a sneaky lunch) in which he shared his genius plan to create a map to bring to his upcoming therapy session.

By then, I myself was already two sessions in, a talk therapy newbie, body hunched forward in an armchair, trying to shit out words to describe what my body was attempting to exorcise. The knots remained tight, snagging my throat and clutching stubbornly at the deepest crevices of my gut. I never knew trauma can be this clingy. My first therapist, bless her soul had walked me through a guess the trigger charades all capped neatly within an hour. “Were you angry?” she asked after I spend twenty minutes trying to understand what’s making me upset. I replied in a garbled mess “No, it is worse than anger.” “What is it then? Is it resentment?” “What’s the difference?” I asked. “I think I am feeling constipated.” I said after a brief pause. “And how does feeling constipated make you feel?” she had asked. Back and forth, on and on.

We had a minor breakthrough during our second session as I pretended an empty armchair was my absent father and clamber over heavy words such as ruined and abandoned. Such as hate. Wow I felt reborn, bawling freely to furniture as the words spill out and the knots were finally coming loose. At the end of that session however, as I was wiping away my tear soaked face, my therapist informed me that this will be our last session as she had resigned. There must be another way I thought, realising I had to start all over again with some other professional stranger I pay $48 once a month to listen deeply for an hour as I attempt to describe the origin of my crazy. Her parting words to me were “You are doing great. Remember to always be curious about your feelings”. The knots tighten once more.

What’s the map for? I asked SC and he told me about how he is working on a schema. What happened next was sorta this blurry seeding that embedded in the most fertile part of myself. Here’s a loose definition of schema:

Schemas are broad and pervasive patterns of thinking and behavior. These are more than just beliefs; schemas are deeply held patterns that are closely related to our sense of self and view of the world.

Schema theory proposes that schemas are triggered when events happening in our current life resemble those from our past that were related to the formation of the schema. If we have developed unhealthy schemas because of difficult experiences in our childhood, we will resort to unhealthy ways of thinking and behave in response to this new situation.

I too wanted to create my own schemas, not really a map but rather through a practice of storying, to make words for these feelings make sense to me somewhat in all its messy interlinkages. Tbh feelings have been shaped to be experienced in this super binary way. Being in two sessions of therapy amplified this so much. Eradicate bad feelings, replace them with good feelings, etc, etc. It is not so clear-cut my friends. Most times for example, feeling sad about something offers me a kind of wet unbridled pleasure and feeling saturated joy makes me want to die right after. Instead of these binaries of good and bad feelings, I want to submerged myself into the mess of it all. I refuse to eradicate any of it. I want to sink my teeth into these knots and feel its unfurling. Even in its half-baked, malformed, watery states.

**

In these last two years, in the boundless joy that writing has given me, within all its surprising turns, I relish finding different versions of myself the most. This may be shocking but I struggle with Writing as it has always been the most restrictive and demanding form to make with. Words can be oppressive and insular especially because I write in this colonised tongue, a language I am unfortunately more familiar with. (Which explains my constant want to trace the origins of certain words through their etymology). But somehow this no pressure one-post-a- month practice, which I indulged in an unhinged, nerding out, non-technique flow kinda way, has taught me so many things. Especially how to process complex counterpoints in my life, that I have, before all this, brushed aside as difficult or bad or unhealthy to spend too long of a time ruminating in.

In my rhizomatic dreaming, I too feel the joys of being able to share parts of myself with all of you (dear gentle readers #iykyk). And sometimes to have it resonate and echo back. It’s a feeling that I am still finding a word for but the closest to the feeling is probably the opposite of loneliness though not quite intimacy or connection. Some other warmer kind of closeness, one without promises or expectations.

Also I find myself in writing long form as practice of refusal for immediate responses and short spurt reactions. Through writing in this manner, I allow myself to put things in order. No, not in a keeping things under control kind of way. More so to bring some kind of clarity for my speedy ADHD chaotic brain. There is no such such thing as ruminating too long in soup, and this desire to pattern out different tangents unto each other and puzzle them out until I find that sweet spot is a comfort that no bawling to an armchair before the hour is up can provide.

Best of all, what I’ve realised in these last two years i that I am no longer searching for words now. Or the source of my crazy. The writing has diverged from what was intended. Instead the writing searches me, reaches out and coax the crazy, tell her that it’s ok to come out and dance a little on the page.

Anyway, it’s in true form that this genesis remains half-baked as the seed is still growing roots, lovingly tended to and sprouting its first early buds. I am super thankful and deeply humbled by those who have supported me financially since day one (looking at you here X) when you did not have to, those who have signed up for paid subscriptions when that became an option (and trust me when I say, these contributions goes a long way for me to sustain myself) and those of you who have read and come back to read some more, I love you all the same.

Until next time my loves, hydrate, ressociate and stay in love <3