What a wild few weeks. Actually, what a wild time, I feel I keep saying that, every week it’s something new. It’s something that makes me take a step back or sucker punches me. Every week I need to catch my breath because the wind keeps getting knocked out of me. 

Last week, in the midst of coming to grips with yet another loss, a friend called to check in. We soon began talking about trauma and how our minds and bodies are experiencing unrelenting trauma. My theory is that the strain of our emotional trauma has taken on a physical form in our bodies. Our pain is manifesting physically and it’s not the world in its general fuckery that is hurting us, it’s people. She explained she felt particularly tested because she’s struggling with understanding intent. 

I am fascinated by this concept of intent. In my previous work environment the assumption of good intent was always preached. It was talked about so much that sometimes I felt I worked at the “cult of good intent”. However, the reality of that good intent gospel only seemed to apply to a few people, intent was in the end very subjective. 

My friend is struggling to assume good intent, she worries that the call for this assumption gives malicious people carte blanche to weaponise their vile. I, on the other hand, don’t believe malice is at the core of any human being, but I could be naive. After all,  I am probably the most naive and silliest person I know.  But this question of malice is hitting me quite hard. 

I have had many conversations with many people in many time zones, for which I am very grateful to those who indulge me at 2:00 a.m. their time. These conversations somehow come back to intent, malice and the place of kindness in our world. 

I keep wondering what malice and intent look like in a world already broken by a pandemic. I am still not sure malice is core to the issue of many actions that seem malicious. I believe that insecurities mixed with anxieties create a warped perspective of the world, which more often than not lead to the truncation of trust. And once trust has been truncated, it creates a powder keg of problems that looks like malice and the aforementioned trauma. 

Here’s where things in my mind have been sitting – the nature of mental abuse. I have been wondering about the nature of emotional and mental abuse, especially when they come from someone’s understanding of what buttons to push in order to hurt. Pushing buttons that are clearly aimed to create some anxiety and hurt can easily cause emotional turmoil that leads to prolonged mental abuse. In time where someone is living in pure anxiety of your words, or lack thereof the physical manifestations of that can render someone unable to function to their full capacity. 

The natural anxieties that come from, how we’re intimidated by people, or how situations make us feel or how we struggle in general with anxiety (something I have struggled with for many years) differs from someone who is actively creating anxiety for you. The act of creating anxiety knowly for the purpose of emotional manipulation is abuse. When someone weaponises your fears and insecurities by using their own hurt and their lack of forgiveness, that is such a dangerous thing. That is malice. Often it’s so quiet that you don’t know, until someone else points it out. 

This is a terrible time, this pandemic keeps taking. For everybody, problems are rising every day. Not just loss and those are plenty. People are hurting because they don’t know what to do. People are hurting from heartbreaks that they never expected. They are being broken by things they didn’t know, could break them. For many, for the first time they are experiencing the worst thing that could ever happen to them and they are ill-equipped to handle it. So it is malice or pain?

People are struggling, confronting themselves, their angels and demons included. They’re looking in the mirror and they don’t like what they see, and they are struggling to get past themselves, to forgive themselves. The least we could do is find ways to forgive each other. The least we could do is seek help to manage our anxieties to curb our insecurities. I read something that South African artist Lady Zamar said in an interview recently: 

“Forgive someone as many times as they ask and never stop being kind”.

I want to live that statement but what little trust we have left in ourselves and in people seems to be getting lost. My friends have a lot on their plate. I have a lot on my plate. I do not have time for made up problems. I have zero fucks to give not because I am saving them for something important. I have none left.. The world has taken all of it from me. It has taken my passion. It has taken my joy. It takes my sense of self every day. 

I fight back for those things everyday, I remind myself that these things are important for me to fight for and hold onto. I think, when trust is lost what do we have left? Then I also remember, there is nothing lost that cannot be found. There is nothing broken that cannot be mended. Then I get finding and mending.