I found a load of photos online which include shots of me, captured during our winter hajj pilgrimage in 2006. With this year’s hajj coming to an end as we speak, I nearly linked to that website here. But in the end I couldn’t, because that face is really hard for me to look at …
The hardest part about recent explorations of self, framed by a greater understanding of the effects of this chromosome disorder, is that I now doubt everything. By which I mean my understandings of past events, particularly those experienced in my youth. The condition I still cannot name and I don’t think I ever will, because …
Out walking as a family, we got onto the topic of how fast-growing our kids now are. Flanking their mum, side by side, the youngest is now the exact same height as her, and the eldest is shooting past.
It’s true that I was a nerd then, and I am a nerd now. The only difference is that I used to flee what I was, but now I embrace it. Indeed, I reconciled myself to what I am long ago.
My demise in those days began — as far as I know — the day a girl with brown eyes and beige skin got her protectors. She was, I believe, of Malaysian origin, although that to me was immaterial.
At risk of gaslighting myself — very popular contemporary terminology — I am prepared to concede in my mid-forties that I may have completely misread and misunderstood events that occurred all around me in my youth. This concession is, of course, the result of hours spent reading research papers investigating different aspects of the impact …
I guess I obsess a bit about the 1990s. That’s because it was my worst decade. That ten-year period, from beginning to end. Of course, many my age would say the same thing, since that was the period of our adolescence when we were all finding our feet. True, I imagine, to some degree.
There’s something I never told you. Actually, there’s lots I never told you. But this one is bigger than everything else. I never told you, I suppose, because our relationships were fractious then. And, well, because I was struggling to come to terms with it myself. And because I had little reliable information at my …
Why do I always have the feeling I’m late to the party?
In 2001, a close friend of mine from university days invited me to go with him to Brixton for another friend’s wedding. A convert of West African descent, he was always much more rigorous in his approach to faith than I ever was, converting five years before me, in his mid-teens. Despite trying his best …
As a result of his life experiences up to that point, nerd-face is fiercely egalitarian. He’s anti-racist, pro-justice, passionate about human rights. Due to a lifetime of bullying due to some imperceptible difference he can’t even see in himself, he’s developed a strong emphatic attunement with the underdog. In his personal relationships, he gravitates towards …
For a few days, I toyed with the idea of sharing with my family all that I have been pondering on my blog lately. To speak of my diagnosis for the first time and explore its impact on me back when our relationship was so poor, in my late adolescence and early twenties. But in …
I had a hair cut yesterday, a bit extreme, and suddenly noticed how grey all that remains is. Hearing my musings, my beloved laughed out loud. “You have a daughter nearly fourteen years old sitting there,” she chortled. “We’ve been married over twenty years. We’re not young anymore, you daft cuckoo!”
I suppose it is strange that I’ve been working through my feelings about this condition in front of complete strangers, instead of family.
I honestly wish my path had never crossed with those people all those years ago. I wish I had been content being a nobody. I wish I had been satisfied with my tiny friendship group, comprising people more like me. I wish I had just gone with the flow and kept myself to myself.
