Pain is Inevitable

wall painting, exhibition view at Sharjah Gallery, American University, Cairo, 2012

When I started my journey to develop this work, Egypt was going through its historical and memorable Revolutionary path of the 25th of January 2011. Similar to any student in Egypt at that time, and any other Egyptian for that matter, I wanted to relate my work to the pain and agony that Egypt and its forever-great citizens were going through.

 

However, since I was fortunate enough to not experience such anguish and misery on a first hand basis, I moved to a more personal form of experienced pain of my own. And as I was writing in my diary one day about a certain painful moment I was experiencing, I decided I should go all out, and reveal to the viewers my personal hurting that I was going through.

 

I think it killed a part of me

My legs wouldn’t stop shaking from all the pain

Some days, I literally cannot breathe

My heart was really burning

Many Egyptians tend to resort to sarcasm and humor during times of agony and grief; however, humor was never a form of therapy for me. Moreover, being a person that finds it hard to express feelings and emotions growing up, I found it to be therapeutically calming to write down my feelings instead of expressing them verbally and physically. This work may shock those that know me, seeing as how I am not the kind of person to express such emotions. Which was not an easy task for me to display so publically.

 

I allowed my emotions to completely take over my body and mental state of mind

My legs stopped working

I killed myself on the inside

I can’t breathe right now. It’s scary

I start to literally feel four or five walls of protection building up inside me

The concept of my work here is about how emotional pain translates into physical pain. It shows the different possible forms and locations of physical pain that can occur as a result of emotional distress. Some may consider such physical distress as Hypochondria and non-existent, however, to each person experiencing it, the physical pain resulting from such emotional pain is as real as any other scientifically detectable pain.

 

Real actual physical pain. I guess this is the part of the body they call the ‘gut’. Pain in my gut. Starting at the very inside of my heart, all the way down to my gut.

My stomach kills me when I upset him

Yesterday I cried so hard that my legs stopped functioning, I couldn’t move them, and my eyes weren’t working so well

Right now I’m alive, but I’m actually dead

I thought it was something people said to portray the way they feel but it’s not. It does actually truly hurt. Like the emotional and mental pain are illustrated through this strong, overwhelming, physical pain.

I was raised to not get attached

It’s time for me to find my own path… Alone. And it burns

My work shows that emotional and physical pains translate into each other by using examples of previous personal experiences. I have compiled a number of my sketches and sentences from my personal writings and put them together to show how each drawing represents the emotional pain during the time that the physical pain occurred as portrayed in my writing.

 

I think of doing bad things to myself sometimes. To end all of this. To stop the pain

Being vulnerable, being emotionally naked, and telling someone “ok, here I am. This is me”, is scary. It makes your heart beat

I don’t know if my mental and emotional state will be able to wait that long

And anger slowly turns into letting go of the body completely

I’m numb all over, I can’t feel my heart anymore

The tears are already on the edge of my eyelids, waiting for a trigger to release them. My stomach feels like there’s a poison inside it. My legs are already feeling weak. And I’m barely keeping my eyes open. My head feels so heavy

I can’t feel my insides anymore, I can’t feel my heart anymore

In my case, such strong emotional distress translated into physical pain as a result of emotional rollercoasters I went on through the years with my loved ones. However, only by being extremely happy at moments was I able to feel the extent of such painful ones.


Text and drawings by Malak Gomaa, Cairo, Egypt 2012  

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