There are moments I look up to an unforgiving sky—of course, while talking to a nonexistent God—only to find I am still inside of myself. It hurts. I ache. I look up to see birds whose names I will never know. So, if the birds do not know they are flying over me, and I am expected to neglect the estrangement that accompanies missives from home, then, it makes sense to be a little bruised around the edges.
My father named me. “Zeynep” means “precious rock.” In the early years of my life, I would spend hours circling my favorite nouns in his Turkish-to-English dictionary: concept, weight, theory, and so on. My memory of this time is limited: he was an angry man, I collected words.
The city where I grew up was my father’s cage. Frankl says that we are personally responsible for finding meaning in our lives. You could have a purpose if you really tried, but why obsess over it? What is the probability of calamity in the coming years except an opportunity to fall even further into a black hole? I admit, the world, in its current state, is not the world I was born into. To the extent any of it is similar at all, it is similar like moments of happiness at the times you least need it.
My mother could be one of the unhappiest women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. There seems to always be a wall between who I am and who I need to be. Recently, I’ve been wondering what kind of American dream my parents imagined for themselves. It takes more than half a lifetime to figure out why we are never satisfied with our place in the world.
No one can see the prison you keep yourself in, but by all accounts, it still surrounds you. I wish I was only as sad as the first time I learned I was sad. The whole world appears to be a cage now. I often fear the conditions of my life may resemble that of my father’s too much. If only I could spend another several years inconvenienced by the body I find myself in. Instead, I must move forward.
My father was a man who was disgusted with the world. How could I even begin to correct mistakes programmed into me before I existed? How could I not? (If, in your answers to these questions, you forget to center yourself around clemency, it is a sign you are unable to see yourself outside of a cage.)
ZNK 