You Exist Too Much

by Zaina Arafat

It occurred to me in that moment to question why, as a man, his bare legs were somehow less troubling than mine. It was a double standard, a shame I had simply accepted until then. In acquiring my gender, I had become offensive.

“Your worries are like water,” she often said. “The moment one flows out, another floods in to fill the space.”

Without the security of a relationship, longing felt less safe. It felt lonely.

The notion that everyone will eventually cease to exist brings me great comfort and temporary courage. Often

If my mother was Hamas—unpredictable, impulsive, and frustrated at being stifled—my father was Israel. He’d refuse to meet her most basic needs until she exploded. Then he would point at her and cry, “Look at what a monster she is, what a terror!” But never once did he consider why she had resorted to such extreme tactics, or his role in the matter.

“You’ll find that having someone who has a claim on you, and who you can claim, it’s one of the greater things in life.”

I’d been clinging to her I-love-yous like a refugee clings to a threatened nationality. They were the homeland that validated my existence.

“Read all you want,” she said with uncharacteristic authority. “But you’ll just end up a more informed prisoner.”

I’m aware I can be exhausting—“you exist too much,” my mother often told me.

It is a bizarre and unsettling feeling, to exist in a liminal state between two realms, unable to attain full access to one or the other.

Baggage. No one ever breaks free from it. Everyone has to figure out how to go on living, to be decent, in spite of it.