formication

Formication is a sense of touch hallucination that feels like bugs in, on or under your skin.

I lay on the marble floor, belly down, to feel my flesh pinch on top of its cool, hard surface. There is the tickle of air currents that flow around me. The sensation traces my limbs like a wave. Who does it meet when it crashes?

Ants crawl on top of me. I’ve not seen an ant in ages. The tiny, black ones; ones that taste sweet when they drown in water, or perhaps it was because the water itself was sweet. It doesn’t matter, I drank it anyways. They stray from their path, lost, having to reckon with the fact that I might…swipe them off without even looking. Right now, I feel lonely.

I’ve been back home for a week, and I’m forced to face a phenomenon that has bothered me growing up in Malaysia: living in the peripheries. I’m to assume being an adult is understanding that everyone’s main priority is their job, filling whatever space around them with it. I find my way around the gaps, in whatever’s left. It is childish and selfish to ask for more attention, when the reason of them working this hard is for you, and the reason you’re feeling this way is because you’re not working. Well, that’s projection, because I only feel bothered by the people I want to spend time with, the people that matter to me. And they are all extremely busy.

Don’t be mistaken, I am also a perpetrator of this, guilty as charged. Being so busy that people don’t approach because they only think of me as busy. (That’s not true, please ask your local introvert – me – to hang out.) Nobody’s asking because I’ve made it hard to ask. Though sometimes I wonder if it’s a response to the people around me being busy… what are we even being busy about? The ants know their reason.

Our ceiling fan disrupts the stagnant air for me because I can’t feel the outdoor breeze. I hear the whirring but I can’t see the spin, it makes me dizzy. Did you know that when you crush an odorous house ant, it secretes a distress pheromone? People describe it akin to “piss”, “blue cheese”, or “coconut”, but to me they smell like marker pen ink when you first open the cap. I confess that I enjoy the scent. Am I an ant? I feel the floor tiles grow slightly warmer, thermodynamics doing its thing.

It’s only natural for people to care for their own lives, as much as I have agency in mine. What I’m actually bothered about is change. Change, as I’ve learned the hard way, distresses me a lot, as much as I lie, as much as I seem put together. Preparing for it is the only way I know how to soften the blow. But how much can you wane off the impact of moving countries in your formative young adult years? I’ll tell you a secret: I cried for 5 out of 7 days in the past week, not because I was sad, but because the change was too big for me to handle. Overstimulating, lack of routine, not knowing where the spoons are, disorientated, feeling like a stranger where people expect you to feel at home, lost.

Even the local food that I’ve been very much looking forward to has been causing me gastrointestinal issues and runs to the bathroom. I’d like to imagine that would make even a seasoned hardened heart, cry.

The stressors of change have been compounded by the fact that I’m pseudo-moving out from the house I grew up in Malaysia, and into my partner’s house. Which I’m extremely grateful for, every waking and sleeping moment. This is truly a blessing, I feel so happy, yet my brain still recognises it as a change. On its own, I’m able to process the complex emotions as a regulating adult, but overall all together? There is guilt.

Alerted by the fall of their peers, ants crawl on top of me, probably smelling like whatever piss pheromones they’ve secreted on me. I let them only because in a wicked way, I miss them. Isn’t it weird that you can live in the UK and not have ants swarm your exposed Gregg’s donut after 10 minutes on the countertop? I grew up learning how to avoid these ants – that were everywhere around me – and now I can’t see a shell of them. I pinch myself in the elbow, where I felt traces of a bug. Only to find myself come up empty. There was no ant, all I did was pinch myself.

Despite what’s been written, I’m not doomer about it. Oppositional feelings can exist simultaneously. There have been pillars in this life transition: my family (and however much stress they cause me), my partner (who is starting a new stage in his life too), friends who text me to check in on me (despite having their own lives), a new cat (my aunt’s), my 嫲嫲’s home-cooked food (that my stomach is calmed by). All of them welcoming me back into routine, by being in their own.

It’s all part of the process. One day I’ll have hotpot with my friends at an ungodly hour and I’ll forgive it all. As someone who’s very much impacted by their quality & quantity of sleep, the heinous jet lag doesn’t help stabilise me. So… still laying on the floor, I take a nap, feeling the ants – real and imaginary.

⋆˙⟡☆ ˗ˏˋ ☆ ˎˊ˗  ☆⟡˙⋆

Tangential notes on having an occasional itch under my skin from my are.na channel:

⋆˙⟡☆ ˗ˏˋ ☆ ˎˊ˗  ☆⟡˙⋆

And a note to self, for there is no escaping effort:

⋆˙⟡☆⟡˙⋆