Do not be afraid to disappear

It's been a minute...! <3

“In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to, in turn, feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success, do not be afraid to disappear, from it, from us, for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence.” Michaela Coel

I haven’t posted on Substack since April. It gnawed at me. I didn’t keep up with the consistency with which I’d promised myself I would. I had failed. But when I stepped back and looked at the months since April, I was like: excuse me bish, you haven’t failed!

In the past few months, I finished my manuscript. It ended up a juicy 106,790 words. The deadline for the manuscript was the start of June. As it got closer, thinking about the book took up all my mental space. I couldn’t think of a Substack post. I didn’t have space to come up with any ideas, run workshops or cook dinner. I HAD A BOOK TO FINISH.

When I finally finished it and sent it off, it was like a giant ice-cream scoop took a chunk of double-choc out of my melting brain. For a few days, I felt unstable. I’d lost my centre of gravity. My mind had been consumed by thinking about this book for three years, with my obsessiveness peaking over the last six months of writing.

However, I love immersion, I love being consumed by things: ideas, projects… even people. I love the long-term, the delay of gratification, the slow joy of growth. I also like suffering for things I love: I hate it too, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m in pain being like, wow this is so awesome. I am c-o-m-p-l-a-i-n-i-n-g. But I like the feeling that my suffering is WORTH IT. Who doesn’t? That’s the heart of being alive: to have meaning in the suffering.

Writing a book tapped into this, and the part of me that loves to have an obsessive singular focus. I didn’t want to think of anything else: not Substack, nothing.

When June came around, I had to let the manuscript go. I had to put it into someone else’s hands. I had to accept the vulnerability of someone (my editor) reading my unedited words. I had thought I would want to cringe and yank it back (ew, it’s so raw and unpolished! Don’t read my diary!), but instead, I felt clear and hopeful. I did what I could with what I had and I trusted my editor ( a big shout-out to Anne for patiently building trust with me for the last three years).

The thing is, during this time, I felt like I disappeared. Sure, I still shared a bit on Instagram and hung out with friends in my day-to-day life but I realised that I had stopped thinking about my public self.

It’s the self that’s made visible via posts and shares; the one that chooses what goes in a newsletter, what goes on stories and on a newsfeed. The self that compares, and gosh, have I fallen into that trap multiple times. I realised I wanted to reconsider my relationship to this self - what made me desire visibility? How was this impacting my sense of self and, more importantly, my well-being?

Thinking about this public self drained me. It took me away from thinking about my real self, my everyday grounded self that loves being alive and in the presence of people and the physical world. I don’t want my life to exist online, I want it to exist in real life.

As I detached, I realised that I was no longer feeling a flood of gratification from likes or follows. Instead, I felt apathy. I liked it when people commented on my stories, not with an emoji, but with a sentence. That’s when I saw that it was all quite simple: what I craved wanted was never about attention, but connection.

When I came back to Substack, I felt clearer. I felt that here, on this platform, perhaps I could cultivate more meaningful engagement.

And it was through Mufaraqa that I already had an example of this being possible.

It started with a post and then snowballed. I kicked off an online discussion circle for Ramadan. The four sessions I held over Ramadan this year were, to me, incredible. It was a huge learning curve. A precious container of connection. A space to listen and be heard, to see and be seen. I felt overwhelmed and honoured in being able to bring people together and cultivate a space of honesty. A space where questions could be asked, personal stories told, and contradictions expressed and held without needing to hastily reach for quick answers. Other people’s stories can connect us and heal us too. I thought about oral story-telling traditions — from theatre to poetry to song — and how story-telling traditions were not simply emptied forms of entertainment, they were purposeful: they connected, they healed, they taught, and they invited us to commune.

Some of what emerged in Mufaraqa came from the painful place of spiritual abuse, and some folks had beautiful faith-based experiences to share. I loved that the co-habitation of a multitude of experiences allowed for a multiplicity of truths to exist in the space; that is, the hanging presence of the truth of our experiences and what they meant to us, and with that: the possibility of growth.

So, I’m still here growing this space. I didn’t have much of an idea about what Distorted into Clarity would be when I started it, I just wanted to write. So, I wanted to share why this Substack is called Distorted into Clarity.

This is a phrase that has stuck with me since an anthropology class I took at the American University in Cairo in 2018. The phrase came up during a discussion of Victor Turner, a 20th-century anthropologist, and his book ‘The Ritual Process.’ We were discussing how a study of people is always going to involve an act of distortion. That what we capture, analyse and present as data or theory can be considered as a distortion into clarity.

I took this idea into a personal framework: that what we do make ourselves clear to others and ourselves is also an act of complicity in our own distortion. Every time I list my identities and write about who I think I am and what I think it means, I am fixing something that is also unfixable. The paradox is that, while we can become legible, since what we make legible is a distortion we will always be, somewhat, unknowable. So, whether it’s a memoir or a blog post, I have interpreted myself and offered it as a gift to be known: I have distorted myself into clarity.

As a last note.

1. I’ll be co-facilitating a workshop series called “Post-Apocalypse Creatives” in August. I’ll be running two workshops: one on creative processes, and another on writing memoir. There’ll also be a 1-1 session to discuss all things writing and the publishing industry with me. I’ll share more details, including how to register, in the coming weeks!

With all the glorious love of the universe,

Lamisse xx