My Name Is Aurora Suryah - I Am Alive | Suryah Studio

GIVING MYSELF PERMISSION TO CHANGE DURING RAMADAN

Trigger Warning: The material below includes language that may trigger you. Please engage the work below with caution, patience, and grace for yourself.

For the longest time, I’ve been fearful of change. Fearful of uncertainty and clinging to the idea that a “stable” and stationary life was my only desire because I didn’t grow up seeing or feeling anything that modeled that for me. I’ve spent so much of my life processing and internalizing rage and fear from everyone and everything around me. At 29, I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I’ve never had any understanding of my own selfhood or autonomy. I knew these concepts on a superficial level, but my practice of them was only superficial and intellectual. I could explain it, give examples, refer to texts, but I never gave myself permission to actually internalize it for myself and participate in the practice of it for myself.

I’ve always thought being able to acknowledge and intellectualize selfhood and autonomy was “the work”. I thought just reading the books, watching the lectures, and mastering the performances of language and oration was enough to embody those ideas. But of course I did. The child who never belonged to themselves. A soul that never felt the touch of its own body. I was petrified at the prospect of interrogating who I might actually be if I took long enough to look inward and listen. So I learned to adapt, I learned to reconcile with my decision to abandon my own life, and became good at performing awareness. But it’s okay because everything felt right after I told myself no enough times. The loving embrace of this dissonance and disassociation was familiar enough after a while to silence the fragile version of myself that was locked inside the body I was committed to letting rot and die with the pain I could only feel when self-harm and constant attempts to take my life weren’t enough.

When I say I learned to perform, I really mean it. I learned to perform a version of myself that wasn’t harmed by numerous religious institutions. I learned to perform like attending more funerals than I’ve had birthdays wasn’t enough to kill me. I learned to perform like being called a “nigger” and a “faggot” every day, going to high school in Dundalk, MD, wasn’t affecting me. I learned that being angry, combative, and resistant to systemic oppression was enough to justify harming myself every single time I had the chance.

Who did I actually give myself a chance to be when I couldn’t even handle the responsibility or reality of actually existing? It’s hard for me now to understand what my relationship with my body was early on in my life because I spent so much time hoping and praying I wouldn’t survive past 18 like my friends. Why didn’t I die like my best friend did when I was ten? Terrell never had to experience his body being violated and taken, he never had to suffer the consequences of never being man enough, he never had to bind his chest and hide his hips in middle school because someone called him a “BBW” at 12. He never had to cry himself to sleep at night because he was stupid enough to choose the eating disorder that makes you fatter. Terrell had parents who took an interest in his selfhood and autonomy. At least that is what I told myself to make my own cognitive dissonance feel more comfortable and less like a prison.

In 2019, I worked as a Creative Director and apparel buyer. The pay is absolute shit, but I have access to industry vapid and superficial enough for me to hide myself in. I’m in a position to curate and influence culture in a hyper-localized eco chamber filled with other twenty-somethings just as misled and misunderstanding of themselves as I am. But I had social capital and the external validation of people who didn’t know how much I hated myself, I was drinking every day, and carelessly ingesting a melody of drugs. So performing was easier. At least it felt that way. That’s the same year I was violated by a bright-haired influencer with a drinking problem and a nasty habit of crossing the line with those around them. But it was okay because I was already committed to ignoring that my body existed.

 The pandemic didn’t stop the performance either. I got as far as reading “Beyond The Gender Binary” by Alok Vaid-Menon. I was able to come out as queer and even non-binary on a very small and intimate scale. A very select group of people knew, including the therapist who couldn’t stop falling asleep during my sessions. I was convinced that the horrible sex I was having with the barista from the cafe attached to the apartment building was enough embracing of my queerness. But they were ashamed of their body and sexuality and had no problem projecting that onto me, so it felt familiar and comfortable enough to validate my performance. So it was okay.

As I’m typing this now. I am on the cusp of 30. I am transgender. Freshly laid off from a government job I gave my life up to survive, amicably exiting a relationship barely held together by survival and our individual desires to continue pursuing our own dissociative dissonance and breaking through a crippling fear of change, no longer bracing for uncertainty I can’t control or denying responsibility for showing up for myself now that I’ve decided to put the script down and step off the stage that’s been the only constant in my life. During my first Ramadan, I’ve learned that my mind, body, and spirit belong to me, and that I have the ability to be more than just someone who can survive. My life doesn’t need purpose or passion to be real. I matter because I  claim it. I’m valuable because I exist. I’m successful because I’m choosing to be me even when it’s not convenient or comfortable.

As an early birthday gift to myself, I’ve decided to honor my life and my birth by choosing my own name. My name is Aurora Suryah, and I am alive.