Contemplations of an Immigrant—Post No. 3
A glimpse into the inner life of someone who never fully arrived, and never fully left
This morning, I woke up not myself.
I went to get a glass of water from the sink, and I saw my reflection in the stainless steel pan I had washed the night before, and I could not remember who I was. I looked like someone who resembled me, but it didn’t feel like me.
When I woke up yesterday morning, I think I was more myself. Last week, I was definitely myself, but this morning was different. I couldn’t recall myself.
As I grind my coffee beans with a 1Zpresso hand grinder (because my husband refuses to catch up to the 21st-century machinery age and we have to make coffee like it’s the 1600s), I contemplated the question: What is this self that I can’t remember? And where is it located? When was I introduced to it first?
"Oh my goodness, who is this little cutie? Yes, that's you. Look, those are your eyes and your eyebrows and your ears. That's your nose and lips. That's your personality, and that's what you love and that's what you hate. That's you!"
So we learned who we are and reaffirmed every step of the way to never forget the self that was assigned to us—boxed, wrapped, and stamped like a neat little package, never questioning the ephemeral, inconsistent, ever-shifting nature that we’re born with.
Where’s this self?
I became self-conscious of my tiny existence as an entity walking through life, having to uphold this self. I had to be self-aware enough to have self-control over my selfhood. That took a kind of self-esteem and self-confidence that I was not given when I was told to look into the mirror at myself. I was not self-assured and therefore didn't always have self-respect. It was self-evident that from early on, I started self-destructing and self-harming, since I had no self-regulation. I had no self-defense because I was not taught self-validation. It's all self-explanatory if you have ever thought about yourself. One has to think about oneself, but not too much, for no one wants to be called selfish or self-interested. Sometimes I lack self-motivation, and I self-indulge in self-pity. I am self-taught about self-help because I am self-sufficient. I occasionally self-sacrifice to get self-love, and even though that looks selfless, if you look deeper, it's self-righteousness.
I place the Chemix on the kitchen scale and start pouring hot water over the hand-ground coffee beans.
I think about the memory of myself before I went to sleep last night. I was sure who I was. My identity was thickly slapped on the skin of my soul. I went to sleep, secure that I would wake up with myself intact. And now here I am in the fog of waking, unable to locate myself.
I stop at 500 grams of water.
There’s a feeling of flow in not knowing, not remembering. I don’t know if I should be scared or liberated.
“Mehrnaz, are you up?” a voice calls from upstairs.
Suddenly, like the Matrix, I get reconstructed back to myself. My mind, with its thousands of tiny claws, speeds up to grasp, to attach, to narrate, to explain, to clutch, to define…And just like that, I'm trapped again.
Now I feel like myself.
Contemplations of an Immigrant is a series within my publication, Ms. Rebel—short-form writing on everyday philosophical thoughts, questions, memories, small joys, and what lingers in silence. A thought. A fragment. A breath.
Thanks for being here.
—Mehrnaz
Fantastic!