HK - repetition

Hanna Kaszewska's Strategy of Repetition

I keep repeating things and I keep repeating myself. It is not my objective to make people feel bad, but I do worry I keep spreading negativity around me.

To hear my fears are understandable is more than enough.

To hear it is impossible to feel anything else,

in this place and at this time,

is everything.

There is a compulsivity in my repetitions, but there is planning involved as well.

I find my symbols and I keep drawing them over and over again.

I find my words and I rewrite them hundreds of times.

I make up stories in my mind and tell them and retell them to myself.

These actions are necessary, almost involuntary, but their content was carefully chosen. The decisions were made.

The process of elimination is, in fact, ongoing.

To some things I do not go back anymore.

Or I discover new emblems to work with and, for the short few moments, they are becoming my entire world.

I was never one to turn to religion, but perhaps that is exactly what prayer is for those who believe in such things.

Then again, maybe it is a matter of familiarity.

If familiar equals safe then going back is the only reasonable option.

Except it is not.

It is quite obvious, it is not.

But I keep repeating things.

And I keep repeating myself.

There used to be a lot of guilt associated with the repetition.

And I would like to say it is gone now but that would not be accurate.

The guilt is still there. Sometimes.

It creeps up on me and it makes me feel small. Or too big. Taking too much space with the words I have said many times before. Using the same motifs. By and by.

It took me far too much time to differentiate between being boring and being consequent.

Or it took me exactly as much time as it should.

(There is a slight possibility that both of these statements are true.)

I have read once, that talking about trauma - just talking and not analyzing nor trying to understand it - can be helpful, because at some point it just does not matter anymore. When you say the same word a few times in a row, it loses its meaning.

Maybe it is the same thing.

And maybe I am cheating since repetition is what I do anyway,

not waiting for a tragedy to happen.

Or maybe fear itself is disastrous enough.

It is a little and quiet kind of trauma.

It is also my life now.

So I make myself safe with again and again and one more time.

Until it does no longer matter.

Until the fear no longer matters.

Even if it is still here.

And, now, it is always here.

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