Changing Tides
Shanon Chong
Humans are canvases. We exist to be influenced by others, their hands splatter ink upon us and we take a new hue. Humans are dyed by interaction, to say everyone is their own self is to be in denial.
Humans are canvases. We exist to be influenced by others, their hands splatter ink upon us and we take a new hue. Humans are dyed by interaction, to say everyone is their own self is to be in denial.
Trigger Warning: Suicide
Installation view of Waves Chatting to Other Waves, Lindy Lee, Buxton Contemporary, 2023. Photographed by Shanon Chong.
Words evade how I fear the people I am friends with. Is it strange for someone to be scared of their friends? Of course. I’d much prefer I wasn’t.
I am a mild person by nature, nothing to note past a personality as beige as camel hide, or would that be sandy yellow? People think highly of me. They know too little. Knowledge is like receiving water in the desert, you are sated. Suddenly they won’t need you, I guess they aren’t thirsty anymore. Did they need me in the first place? Am I another well?
I throw my head back, hair flicking to the sky. Long hair was a decision I made. It feels like a shackle I tie to myself to ensure I am not in denial of my desires. Of course, I fear that very statement. Those who know me think that any moment that I’m not in denial is to be celebrated. I simply want to curl up into a ball.
Humans are canvases. We exist to be influenced by others, their hands splatter ink upon us and we take a new hue. Humans are dyed by interaction, to say everyone is their own self is to be in denial. If your canvas was truly white, you’d be alone. I always feel a little colourless, but I know my beige is simply a mellow brown. Beige doesn’t happen without the mixing of colours. But as people hate shit brown, people are naturally averse to beige. Why do they have to be averse to me?
The mask I wear is not white. Every time I touch my face, I stain it. I am not stable. I am not constant. It is between changing masks they see all I am not. It ruins the façade. I wish there was a mask that reflected me better. I desire to be someone I am not. But change is not impossible.
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why does this keep happening to me? I haven’t done anything wrong? All I do is try my hardest, I do everything I can to help. All I get is blame. Leave me! Leave me! Leave me alone! Don’t come near me! Stop thinking you’re helping! Everything is driving me closer and closer to the edge. I can’t stop thinking! I can’t! Please let me stop thinking! Give me silence! Let me stop fucking thinking! I’m so tired of hearing all the thoughts in my head. Quiet, give me quiet … please I ask for just a moment of silence. You all think you know better and better and better, but none of you talk to me! You’re all just silent when I need you! Maybe trusting faces in the darkness is dangerous. None of you promised to be kind. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe it’s my fault. These intrusive thoughts make me someone I am not. I have to breathe; I have to make sure that I’m not overthinking. I need to stop thinking. I’m just so tired.
I know I’m bad at dancing, I do it anyway. It helps me calm my brain, I dance around on ceramic tiles and mutter lines from plays that haven’t been written. Could you call my dancing, ‘dancing’ if it isn’t graceful or full of technique? Am I simply moving around on the ceramic? The gridded tiles help me think straight. I’m a rook on the board, then sometimes I’m a bishop, maybe I’m just a queen. Thinking straight brings me back to who I really am, or who I want to be. Why can’t I be who I want to be?
My heart is constantly tense. I don’t think it’s a medical condition, but all the anxiety makes it happen. And the anger too. Sometimes I think I’ve matured, but I realise that the older I grow, the bigger the baby in me becomes. Curling up into a ball and crying seems to be the closest I can get to my desired self. I’m scared that my anger and anxiety will turn someone off eventually. Not that other things about me haven’t. I realise that it is rare for me to be the one getting kicked away. The one time it happened, I would say that catatonic was close to how I was. Getting over that was difficult. I swore that I wouldn’t do that to anyone else. I have.
Licking my wounds, I limp away from social situations. Sometimes I think I’m competent. I won’t take risks. I used to justify not interacting with people as playing it safe. I realise that the face I show others isn’t shy or reserved, it is simply annoyed and abrasive. I leave myself with problems and complain about having no friends, just acquaintances. I’m the student in your first-year writing course that commits suicide. Thankfully my support circle can help when they feel like doing so.
10, 11. Masturbation is seen as normal for teenagers, even adults. I have never had a girlfriend, much less a romantic relationship. Being undermined for any attempt at affection is simply going to happen when you joke about your actual feelings. Apparently, fewer than one fifth of teenagers say they’re in a relationship. I still think of myself as a teenager, I will continue to do so until I am twenty-one. I am also an individual who is part of twenty percent of individuals who masturbate two to three times a week. I hardly enjoy it. I also hardly enjoy being a statistic.
12. I don’t hate pets. I enjoy company of any form. However, I find myself scared to pet dogs because I’ll get my hands dirty. This fear extends to many things. Yet I bite my fingernails, cleaning the gunk underneath with my teeth. I like cats the most, they seem to be solitary. I don’t think they are sad about that.
13. FUCK, FUCK, FUCK. WHY THE FUCK CAN’T I DO ANYTHING RIGHT? I CAN’T LET THEM FIGURE OUT HOW POINTLESS I AM. I CAN’T STAND MY EXISTENCE. NO ONE SHOULD. I WANT TO BREAK THIS BODY AND START ANEW, BUT IF I DID, IT WOULD MAKE MY MOTHER SAD!
14. Lonely.
15,16 (top). I want to be a doll. Not a Barbie. I want to be a doll that haunts the corner of the room. I want joints with ball bearings and very clearly separate limbs. I want to wear a gothic Lolita dress and show off dead and empty eyes. I would be immortal. The shivers down my spine wouldn’t be in fear, they would simply no longer occur. I would finally be cute. I used to fear dolls. But I realise the desire to be supersedes the fear of being.
15,16 (Bottom). I’ve wanted to be a girl for the longest time. I fear as much as anyone else. Actually, I’d say I fear more than others. It is much easier to say this to the wall of strangers viewing this canvas rather than saying it honestly to someone I know. I think my friends will leave me. If they do, I wonder if I can stay.
17. Sometimes I think I’m surrounded by darkness. Staring out into the distance yet I’m stuck within this orb. I still can’t understand the change I need to make. I used to play volleyball. I thought I was good, exceptional even. However, I realise that delusions of grandeur and the Dunning-Kruger effect are not simply grown out of. My arrogance and ego are fitting of a writer. I wonder whether this field chose me, or whether I gravitated to it because of my ego, which is the size of the sun. Or maybe it was simply because it was the only thing I had going for me when everything was failing? Maybe it’s a better escape. At least I am not a scientist.
18. I wish my identity was settled. I wouldn’t be me. I wish my identity was settled. I’d be happy. I wish my identity was settled. Everyone would love me. I wish for happiness past chemicals.
19. Since this is something of an exposé, I will tell more. At the moment, I like playing videogames with my friends more than writing. It seems to give me the confidence that I don’t have in real life. I want to see if I’m more inclined to reality, or whether my stratagems in videogames are who I am. I am just a floating voice.
20. I am the tumor that people remove from their life. I was born from my Mother, ejected from her uterus. Then I was removed from the ‘cool kids’ group in primary school. I was too much of a dork even before I got glasses. Then I found myself removed from the group with my friends in year seven when we had to make a rap. I had to drop bars about basketball with strangers. I wanted to drop off a bridge., I was alone for my final year of highschool, after my friend left me, floating over to the only group that would bother with a vagrant. Maybe if I had just left earlier and had the awareness to do so they’d be happier.
21. Please love me? Please keep me around. I still need you.
23. I don’t know when I first realized I wanted to be a girl. Maybe it was the long hair my Mother had. She doesn’t anymore and it seems that like magnets, our polarity changed. Maybe it was my lack of a proper Father figure. My Dad would rather watch Korean and Chinese dramas. Maybe it was the affirmations I got from anime, the girlish guys that were confident with their appearance. I thought I’d be happy with just that. Whenever my friends ask what I want from being a girl, I say boobs. I really mean I want to wear pretty dresses and not have to construct Ikea furniture. I realise I can’t escape that regardless of the junk I keep in my pants. If asked when I was younger it wouldn’t take long to realise I’d always wanted a girl’s voice, my voice getting deeper and deeper never solved that, I always wished for the mellow voice pitched toward soprano rather than tenor. I tried learning how to change my voice back then, but children are distinctly high pitch, there was nothing to learn, I was already there.
24. Though don’t expect a new me instantly, I’m still learning my ways around a makeup brush and I haven’t found time yet to do the voice training. I’ve spent more time singing J-pop songs rather than working on my voice. Though, I don’t think I’ll reach the range I want. But making compromises with my body will have to do until I’m willing to commit further. I’m still too scared to tell my friends, one of them is transphobic and I don’t want to lose him. But if he really is like that, then what can I do? Soon the wave you were talking to will subside, and a new wave shall rise.