Kern Carter's Blog, page 31
August 15, 2022
August 13, 2022
Dreamscapes: Curtained Concrete
Photo Credit: Alesha BurtonPeople say dreams are meant to be an interpretation of how your brain sees the world rather than how your eyes see it. The way a place appears in your eyes is sometimes different from how it appears in your dreams because your brain sees the place differently from its actual design.
There have been many times in my dreams when my house looks as it does now. There are times when it looks like an oversized advent calendar with a cartoony jack-in-the-box clock shooting out at me as I tap the bell against the door. There are times when it is the width of a school desk and the length of a hallway in a faeri spy movie.
This dream encapsulates my mind’s interpretation of downtown Yonindale and the act of taking the train. I call this dream: “Curtained Concrete”.
— — —
I am walking around what my brain knows to be downtown Yonindale, but everything seems to be under construction. It’s an elongated construction zone that spans every inch of the city I walk. Mirages of wooden beams, high concrete walls, and hanging wires greet me down a claustrophobic alleyway.
As I walk, the general lighting changes between the warmth of the wood, creating a pseudo sunset rushing through the haze of the alley, and the cool, paleness of the concrete sucking the soul from the alley.
I suddenly reach a furnished subway station. It sticks out due to the general clearing around the area and its glass-based exterior. It resembles a bus lot. I head there as my brain gives me directions to go home.
I see some old friends. Their faces are blurred and yet clear enough for me to recognise them. We talk with one another as we walk down multitudes of staircases and escalators, but as they leave, I barely remember them.
I head to the platform of my train. It’s a flat platform where the tracks and standing area are on an equal level. There’s a thin yellow line before the tracks that more closely resemble the old trolley streetcars run by humans. The platform is very bright, as though it’s being lit by natural light even though it’s not.
There are no separations between the train tracks of eastbound and westbound trains, so someone could walk between the tracks to the other side of the platform.
The train tunnels are covered by deep royal blue curtains that shimmer a little. Whenever a train is more than a station away, the curtains would stay open and reveal the tunnels. When a train is nearby, the curtains would close, then rise just as the train rolls into the station.
While I wait for my train, a few track hoppers are loitering the tracks. They take advantage of the unknown of which train will be arriving first and wander along the tracks as they wait for the curtains to close.
When the curtains close, they take their spots in guessing which tunnel the train will come through. Some take the tunnel to my right, others take the tunnel on the other side.
The curtain to my right rises and reveals the tunnel. The track hoppers run and jump out of the way of the fast-approaching train. One guy runs into the adjacent tunnel. Many jump onto my platform and the other set of tracks. One guy doesn’t seem to run fast enough and disappears altogether as the train runs by.
My train is here. I board it nonchalantly. Although my brain doesn’t immediately tell me it’s normal, my reaction to it seems as though nothing is new. Like it’s a regular occurrence.
An image flashes over my dream. It’s an extremely grainy black and white photo of a train car on fire. It looks like an image that would’ve been printed in newspapers in the 1900s. Every pixel blooms a fire that burns itself into the depths of my brain’s memory. It’s slightly eerie.
It switches back to a view of my train, but from the perspective of a camera mounted to the front of the train. As we go through the tunnel, the colour drains from the dream. It then begins to pixelate like the burning still image. More and more of my vision, as a camera, is taken over by a rapid black flame that burns away at what I can see like a sheet of paper.
As the dream fades to black, I wake up.
The interpretation of the dream feels like it’s just out of the reach of a genuine location in downtown Yonindale. It feels like I wasn’t necessarily wrong when I saw hallways of construction zones along construction zones. The dream really did feel so close to home yet unfamiliar.
Downtown Yonindale is a very blurring experience compared to the open world of the suburbs. Even the uptown or far west feels like concrete palaces rippling over the greenery of the world. Perhaps that is what my brain was getting at that my eyes don’t perceive whenever I go there.
I wonder if anyone else feels like this when they leave the small, suburban, or rural towns and head to the big city; like a bell has been hit beside your head.
But even though Yonindale is dizzying, I think it’s good to get out and go there. Not just because I used to have a hard time travelling and having a sense of direction (despite being a vampire), but also because it makes me appreciate my home and the fields of trees and crops not taken care of.
I think getting out in the uncomfortable, once in a while, helps more than hurts, especially whatever the brain truly thinks is uncomfortable. Get out if you can and be uncomfortable with your brain. Discomfort grows the best comfort.
— Heleza
[image error]Dreamscapes: Curtained Concrete was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
August 11, 2022
August 10, 2022
Ellipses Through Love and Shame, II
Photo by Martin Adams on UnsplashThey say that a shooting star is just a meteor burning up as it penetrates a planet’s atmosphere — a kind of will that disintegrates despite itself, like a pair of lovers that don’t know how. This is their story.
Out past the quietly waning moon shot a star so bright and magnificent that its tail licked with white and blue flames, dancing across the sky. Only once in all my moments have I known a moment quite like that one. As that shooting star reminded me of someone, it made me think.
What is it about the psyche that creates pain from joy? What is this chemistry that chelates our spirits into love, and then destroys it? Why do we burn so hot with such passion and emotional violence upon our dearest? Is it that we are the stars of stars of stars that carry intergenerational wounds into wounding each other?
What I know is that from my nebula I found myself to be a star of curiosity and love, of wonder and creativity, and also of pathological giving, worthlessness, and outbursts of seething plasma. I am good, I am from good, yet I have an unhealed core — a core that creates pain from joy.
I loved her with all of my gravity. She, who was just like me. A lover overpowered by unhealed grief for her child-star that still bleeds without understanding. The grief and trauma that was passed down to us cut our elastic gravity like the Death Star killed Alderaan and the violence flung us far into the outer reaches, far from knowing each other.
Never have I known such sadness. Never have I more certainly known that the last goodbye to a lover would hurt more than any damage done to one another. And that it will stay with me for millennia.
Oh, how I wish to find her again, in that mosh-pit out past Betelgeuse where she once stood in the black eye of a galaxy — that seemed the only moment I had ever known — and tell her that there is only love if we choose it and that I choose her. There is no divinity to bind us, no fate, no higher power, it is not written in the stars who we shall love. It is within us, so maybe, if we are the stars, it is written within the stars after all. But to love beyond an epoch, beyond heartache and reactivity into eons must be our choice.
I once heard a story, intercepted on Earthen radio waves, about a little moon that taught about the power of reflection. The moon could have used vanity to say look at my beauty, look at how I shine. But instead, the moon chose humility and integrity, saying this is the truth of my beauty, this is the ugliness that I am not afraid to share with you. I am but shadow and dust, and this light is not mine. The question is this — who are we in love if we are hiding from shame? The moon teaches that when shame is owned then shame disappears, no longer hidden but gone.
When we hide our shame, we hide our truth and we cannot, truly, be in love. Shame is the discomfort of being witnessed, the ego’s effort to hide. Owning and disappearing shame make way for self-love, and self-love creates the foundation for giving love to whoever we choose. When we choose to overcome our shame, we are enduring pain for enduring joy. These are the ellipses of love and shame. And with this little moon’s lessons, I am sorry.
The trauma that broke our gravity did not break the love. That love still burns in my core yet rests for another epoch. It’s that love that traces the shooting stars, watching the blue flames lick off, hoping that that’s you — dancing across this cosmic life.
Ellipses Through Love and Shame, I
[image error]Ellipses Through Love and Shame, II was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
My Deepest Regret
Photo by Serkan Göktay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-wearing-grey-and-orange-hoodie-sitting-on-brown-wooden-park-bench-during-daytime-66757/A part of me did not want to post this story out of fear of what others might say about me. But I decided to share this story either way.
Sometime last year, around October, to be precise, I made the foolish mistake of secretly packing up my suitcase the day before. The reason? I wanted to run away from my home in Ikeja and go all the way to Ibadan to stay with my boyfriend at the time.
Why you might ask? The truth is, I was losing my sanity with each passing day. I did not realize it at the time, but I held on to so much emotional and mental baggage growing up, baggage that became too much for me to bear.
I was a bully victim, still scarred by those horrific experiences. I was that one child in my family that came home with terrible grades and could barely take care of herself. Like if you saw my hair, it was a bloody mess. I was that kid that was labelled a ‘crybaby’ by everyone. Once, I cried in class and everyone laughed at me. The teacher, at the time, brought a bowl and placed it in front of me, and asked me to cry well so that the bowl got filled up. Talk about cruel. And my mother would blame me for shit that was beyond my control.
It got to the point where my mum and sisters would get into arguments with me due to miscommunication on all sides. The insults got worse with each passing day. I would rant on WhatsApp to my boyfriend who would listen and never once stopped me.
This would later bite us in the ass, one fateful day. I was about to make a run for it, but my mother’s driver caught me and stopped me in my tracks, and then reported me to my mum once she came back from her school run.
I had the misfortune of having to explain myself to her and she, in turn, reported me to my sisters, all of whom agreed that I should leave. One of my sisters came back home and took away my phones from me as I lied and tried to cover my boyfriend’s tracks.
She went through both phones and came across the WhatsApp rants and the voice notes that I recorded where I said some not-so-nice things about the family.
Besides holding on to years of trauma, I was also jealous of my mum and sisters and a lot of my peers as they were all more successful than I would ever be. Or at least that was what my mind was telling me at the time.
For a bit of context here, besides struggling with my grades at school, I also had no job. I kept on applying to various companies and tried to launch a freelance business. No offers came pouring in. I got a string of rejections every single day. That made me break down in tears. Anytime I saw someone achieving some milestone, I became green with envy, not taking into consideration what those people might have gone through to get to the top.
Either way, they saw all those messages and were disgusted. They took away my laptops and sent me off to Ibadan the following day.
Ibadan was a nightmare as his parents grew to hate me and my presence, no thanks to my sister sending them screenshots of the messages and the voice notes. Aside from that, they noticed that I did not cook or do chores and mum pointed this out as part of her criticism of me. According to African culture, if a woman does not cook or take care of the house, she has failed in her duties as a wife and no excuse is tolerated.
As far as my mum was concerned, my inability to do certain things was shameful, as people would point fingers at her and blame her for whatever shortcomings I had. It did not help matters that I was being selfish and never considered anything she and my siblings or anyone, for that matter, ever did for me till that point.
Another thing to point out, I was born prematurely. According to my mother and siblings, I had breathing problems. That was my first brush with death. I had a sort of normal childhood amidst the bullying as my mum and sisters would buy whatever it was that I wanted, like the latest Barbie doll or a Disney Princess movie—Pocahantas being my favorite.
After spending about nine days in Ibadan, I was brought back to Lagos by his father who dumped me at the front gate. I broke down in tears thanks to the horrible disgrace. Not helping was my sister mocking me and mum refusing to let me in as they came across a WhatsApp message where I said I was going to stab my mum.
The truth is, I can never ever stab that woman. I was very angry then and people say all sorts of bullshit when they are mad. Anyway, one of my sisters took me to a hotel to spend the night and she even spoke to me gently and asked me questions about my experience and I told her. She even asked if I wanted to go for psychiatric evaluation as one of my uncles suggested that as my messages told him something was amiss. I agreed.
The following day, I was taken to a rehab center and was checked in as an in-patient. The following day, I did the psychiatric evaluation where a startling discovery was made: I had been suffering from Bipolar II for years without realizing it. The theory of me suffering some sort of brain damage as a baby might be true.
I heaved a sigh of relief as I got to understand what was going on, but after that, I was like “And now what?” I panicked a bit, but the psychologist calmed me down and told me not to worry too much. They gave me medications that I still take to this very day.
I still struggle with depression and occasional bursts of manic behavior, but for the most part, I am alright. When I told my family, they felt horrible for the way they treated me for years and forgave me.
I have since forgiven them and everyone that has wronged me in some shape or form. But the one person I forgot to forgive is myself. I am learning how to forgive and love myself. Not an easy task given the shit I went through and the actions I took.
I am currently in a healthier relationship. Broke up with my ex last year and cut off whatever ties I had with him. Needed that fresh start, to be honest.
Only time will tell where life takes me from here. But for now, I will take baby steps and keep trying my best and smile through the good and bad.
[image error]My Deepest Regret was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
August 9, 2022
Call For Submissions — What Makes Your Life Beautiful?
I’m feeling good today. Just moved into my new apartment, book sales for Boys And Girls Screaming going well, life is good.
How is your life? I know there’s always struggle, but tell CRY what is making your life beautiful.
Same rules as always:You can submit to this or ANY of our past writing prompts. Just scroll through our previous newsletters. They’ll be marked “Call for Submissions.”If you’re already a writer for CRY, go ahead and submit.Be as creative as you want in your submissions. As long as you stick to the topic, we’ll consider it.Just because you submit doesn’t mean we’ll post. If you haven’t heard back from us in three days, consider that a pass.[image error]Call For Submissions — What Makes Your Life Beautiful? was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Hate for Love
Image provided by CanvaFrom somewhere…
Our complexion calls us kin.
You struggled to accept me because of the underwhelming degree of my melanin.
I looked for you to look for me.
You looked at me with hate in your eyes.
You relied on their lies.
Their wounds guided you.
You saw me when you saw you.
And they taught you to hate.
Yourself.
How could we ever be someone else?
Half of me is half of you.
Love is what got me through.
With fire in my eyes, I took a torch to my pride and prioritized my peace.
Bathed myself in compassion and humility.
I forgave you for not knowing how to love.
Knowing what love is,
is not a requirement for having kids.
You were wounded,
emotionally.
Generation after generation.
The concentration of hurt came first.
It always comes first.
It gets worse before it gets worse.
So breathe…
Just breathe.
The love in your lungs is what aided in the birth of me.
Believe.
Believe in being.
Your most truest you.
Bringing love to the fire is how the seedlings reroute their roots.
I loved me so much that I took your hate from you.
Eradicated my wounds and passionately found my truth.
Somewhere…
You are me and I am you.
[image error]Hate for Love was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
