18 – Innerlijk Zelfportret
by Menke Biewenga
I stare restlessly at the pink floor lamp beside my bed. Sometime before tomorrow, I am supposed to create “een innerlijk zelfportret”—an inner self-portrait. Why do Social Work students have to practice everything they learn on themselves first? I suppose this is one of the more “fun” assignments. There is only one problem. I cannot see myself, no matter how hard I look in a mirror. So how am I to make anything represent me?
I get up from my bed and rummage around for something I can use. This is my room, my studio apartment. The carpet, paint, curtains, all chosen by me. No roommates to worry about. Yet most of the room feels overly generic: IKEA bed, IKEA couch, IKEA desk, IKEA shelves. Just like every other bedroom in the Netherlands. My parents even paid to have it all delivered to the front door of my ninth-floor room. I shake my head; I am not worth that much trouble. Anyway, it’s what’s on the shelves that represents me more. My journal. The Bible I received when graduating middle school. A graphite-colored rock with the word “strength” engraved in its smooth surface. Strength, not because that is how I feel, but because it is the meaning of my name: Menke. An MP3 player. And books. Books I’ve read and reread since I was a kid. Seven orange covers for Lewis’s seven books of Narnia—in Dutch. A present for my first St. Nicolas. Did my parents already know I’d grow up to be an avid reader? Beside these lies one giant book holding the same seven stories, this time in English and with illustrations. The last birthday present I remember asking for. The rest of the shelves are filled with Imme Dros, Carry Slee, Simone van der Vlugt, Tolkien, Tonke Dragt, and, of course, Harry Potter. My shelves are filled with stories, the gateway to my imagination, and a lot more “me” than what I show on the outside. My hand reaches for my favorite books: The Letter for the King and The Secrets of the Wild Wood, by Tonke Dragt. I have loved these stories since my mom first read them to me and my two brothers. I almost know them by heart. They even inspired my first real poem. Yet I hesitate. How much do these books represent my “now”? Of late, far darker fantasies have filled my midnight hours as I fight to fall asleep. I leave my books behind.
Then what? On the desk beside my laptop lies a blue and white envelope. Photos. Photos of my travels. Photos of me. Bingo. That might work. The first picture that draws my attention is a picture of me sitting in the sand on a beach in Mozambique. You cannot see my face, so you cannot see I’m crying. What you can see is the pencil in my hand and the notebook in my lap. This picture feels like me. I lay it aside for now.
The second picture I am drawn to is a full-body picture of me standing in this very room. My dark-brown hair reaches just past my shoulders. My clothes are simple: white socks, a pair of jeans, and a pink, long-sleeved shirt. My arms hang rigidly by my side, where my hands form into loose fists. I cannot recognize myself in this picture, though I know it is what I look like. Taking a pair of scissors, I set to work. It feels oddly satisfying to watch the blades cut off my head, my legs, my arms, my feet. I work almost mechanically snip, snip, there’s a shoulder; snip, my left hand; snip, an unidentifiable piece of shirt. I gather myself—minus my face—in a small heap. Then, glue stick in hand, I take each section of my body and stick it, at random, to a sheet of paper, being careful to make sure there is some space between each fragment.
I admire the result from a distance. Scrambled, disconnected, headless. Now there is a mirror that captures how I see myself. In my “real” mirror, I look together, might even look happy—though I am not very good at faking that. Mostly, I look far too normal. A Tamarack posing as a Scotch Pine. If only people could see what was in my head. Cracked pith, uncertain roots, broken needles, and a twisted mess of charred, cut, bent, and mismatched branches.
My head. I find another picture of myself and another piece of paper. If I am to make an inner self-portrait, I have to represent what’s in my head. I don’t dare to show what is truly inside of my imagination. The kidnappings, the rape, the mental self-harm. Always to protect others. Always against myself. I can’t very well put that in my assignment. But I can represent it in a way only I know what it really means.
I start with a name. It’s been a few years now since I have used my own name in my imagination. My alter ego, Diana Fox, was born not from the stories I read but from the movies and TV shows I watched. A perk of being addicted to television rather than some ingestible substance. Gabrielle from Xena, Shalimar Fox from Mutant X, Max Guevara from Dark Angel, and Aragorn as Strider, not king of Gondor. These are the pictures I choose to hide my highly abusive imagination.
I am about to call it good as my eyes fall, again, on the picture I had laid aside. Writing. There is one more part to me beside the fractured “I cannot see myself” reality and my fucked-up imagination. There’s my writing: my writing with God, my poetry, and my novel ideas I never dare to pursue beyond the first few pages; the one place where I can at least somewhat be myself. My broken, depressed self. I don’t cut up this picture.
Instead, I take out a red permanent marker and draw short diagonal lines on a black piece of paper. Colors to represent my depression, my suicidal thoughts. Then I cut a small cross out of white paper and stick it in the top left corner. It ain’t big, but it is enough. Just enough light, just enough hope for me not to be scared I will ever actually try to kill myself—not by jumping in front of a train or by jumping from the balcony outside my window. A small white cross to represent my faith. My God. My reminder that, no matter how dark things get, I know I will never truly be alone. It is to the center of this page I paste the picture of me writing on a beach on the other side of the world. It is this me I care about the most.
I compile the three parts of myself on white poster board. The fragments of my body go in the center, what’s in my head goes on top, my writing rests at the bottom. It is cryptic, yet far more honest than I had intended to be.
It is broken, yet it is me.