Bubbles, Durban, South Africa
My girlfriend is going through a really tough time right now. She says she doesn’t feel that she has the privilege to feel all her emotions because she’s so pent up; it just comes out wrong. She even relapsed to cutting. I just wish there was a way I could help her release in a healthy way.
Bubbles
AW:
Dear Bubbles
If I understand your question correctly: Your gf is drowning in the world’s sorrows right now, as so many are, and yet she feels that she has no right to express these overwhelming sensations. Perhaps she experiences her pain as something that doesn’t “deserve” any utterance, and in silence she turns in on herself, resorting to self-harm as a traumatic mode in which her soul may be “allowed” to speak. Yet making art can be a service. When my partner read this poem to me, she said “I don’t hear any ego – I hear kindness”. This is Naomi Shihab Nye’s “38 Billion”:
38 Billion
It’s hard to grasp very big numbers and distant concepts.
Its like imagining what all our thoughts might have been
if we lived 300 years ago. Would they be centered
on a goat or six rocks piled together
or would they be wide as they are now?
In those long-ago days,
would people be meaner to one another
or nicer? I have no idea. But sometimes I wonder what
38 billion dollars could buy, instead of weapons aimed
Against us and this is what comes to mind:
Eggs. Pencils. Undershirts of very soft cotton.
Ribbons. Radios. Shining flashlights.
Handmade clay plates. Chocolates. Really soft pillows.
Baskets. Bracelets. Running shoes.
-Naomi Shihab Nye
