Audio Transcription:
I’m laying down in a fetal position, knocked out by pain. Saliva drips from my mouth and I’m on the verge of passing out. I’ve taken a mix of random painkillers and they’re finally hitting. The pain stops; I have a mini orgasm.
The first month of quarantine, from March 20 to roughly April 20, was the worst of my life – a new rock bottom. Jobless, broke, and in pain, I desperately called all the dentists in my city to make an appointment and managed to get one of them to prescribe painkillers. Bless them, they probably saved my life. It got me thinking that I definitely wouldn’t have had the same “chances” if I lived in the US, which made me spiral into depression.
Quarantine already sucked, but it got worse after we received news of my maternal grandmother’s passing.
Was it covid? We couldn’t tell for sure since we were locked inside and had to bear the weight of words swallowed down, emotions we couldn’t share with anyone because we weren’t allowed a funeral.
I was grieving and felt like I was ready to blow up. I felt envious of the couples quarantining together; I needed emotional and sexual support.
The crisis was poorly taken care of by our government, they showed us how they absolutely don’t care if we live or die.
Citizens: “We need masks, hospital staff need help, they’re underfunded!! The elderly are left on their own-”
French government: “Move-on-dot-org, Needy. It’s over!”
I was already quite radical in my beliefs, but that was the nail on the coffin.
Something in me died during Aries season.
In the span of a month, I begged God to take my life. I’m not specifically suicidal because I love life and I’m curious to find out what more I can handle. Sado-masochist much? I blame my catholic school years. Anyway, I was ready to die.
While everyone was making cute videos about baking bread and gaining weight, I lost about 3 kilos from my wisdom tooth and my grief.
I’m a fiery Taurus, which means I’m already a mixture of horniness and anger 50% of the time, but because of everything, that number went up to 90% of the time.
I’m not comfortable with the idea of sharing my bodily secretions with people I have zero connection with. If I don’t feel you, there’s absolutely no chance for us to have sex, let alone kiss. Due to the virus, my disgust amplified by 10, maybe even 100 – “WHAT? YOU MEAN TO TELL ME PEOPLE DONT FUCKING WASH THEIR HANDS???” It was a slap on the face. How am I to meet
anyone in this god-forsaken city if we’re locked inside, with a virus spreading chaotically in the streets and people not washing their hands?
Yet, all I could think of was ass and titties and wanting to burn everything to the ground. At the end of the day, fire can be purifying.
I believe we’ve reached a point of no return: too many people (a higher percentage of the world population) are being treated unfairly, unjustly. People are locked in cages, dying at borders, denied the most basic human decency. I saw it long before coronavirus forced us all inside and glued us to our laptops, social media, and TVs, grasping at a semblance of community.
Don’t you think it’s weird we’ve been trying to fix the same issues for forever, and very little has changed? Yet we keep that bit of hope somewhere, which hurts even more.
There wasn’t much I could do about my horniness since there was no way to go out. I also live with my family in an average-sized flat, so that didn’t help. I started watching Jennifer’s Body religiously, to cope, because yes, I think this film perfectly summarizes the mood I was in: horny, angry at men, and out of control.
I feel like 2020 is telling me: you are NOT in control, but you can learn to flow with the energy surrounding you, if you are in the moment. I have a tendency to push back and ignore my desires, my feelings, and my rage, in the hope that they will magically disappear. Bottling things up means I’ll explode later. I let things pile up until there’s no room to store that rage… and then what?
I had no outlets, nothing to let my rage out: no sex, no masturbation, and no social interaction. I felt trapped inside the house and inside myself. That’s when the protests started again. People taking the streets, looting, setting police cars on fire. It felt cathartic. I knew it was bound to happen. Somehow, everything led us to this.
I imagined as if a part of me – and a part of us – subconsciously manifested that horror. I hate this world. It disgusts me to my core to see what we do to the ones we perceive as “weaker” and what we do for power, money, or respect.
I get it. I get why Jennifer Check killed men. It’s weird, I get why Aileen Wuornos murdered men. I get how after years of taking it in, bottling it up, and being laughed at by the ones supposedly in charge, women snap. They let the darkness out. Empathetically, I feel sad for them reaching that point of no return. I don’t excuse it – of course – murdering people, it’s sick and twisted, but it’s what can happen when a person is pushed over the edge.
What happens when there is nowhere to run? What will happen next, I’m wondering?
2020 took a lot from me but what I got in return is answers to questions I didn’t even know I had. Before I point my finger, I have to take a deep, long look at me and my own actions. It taught me patience and self-control. It showed me who I am deep down, after being pushed over the edge, after walking through the literal fires of hell, mentally, spiritually, physically. Deprived of money, social interactions, sensual encounters. Deprived of movement, feeling powerless because I can’t help the people who have been living like that for ages. Remembering there’s so little I can do but pray and have compassion for others. Remembering our governments don’t care and are only looking for more ways to screw us over and establish an even more tyrannical system…
I think about titties and ass, and as we go deeper into the summer, my horniness only gets harder to deal with. I want the sticky, sweaty type of sex that pulls the beast out of me, so I can finally sit in silence and feel fully content. Let it all out. This fiery swallowed rage.
When my birthday came – April 30 – it actually felt like I was being born again. I am learning how to live despite – or actually, in spite, of the chaos. I’m alive and unwell but on fire for changes and new beginnings.
Words and Images by Mohini Hewa
Mohini Hewa is a self-taught visual artist and film school dropout born and raised in France.
Active since 2014, she specifies in collage art that have allowed her to search deeper into her roots & share her opinions on society. In 2017, she got accepted into film school but dropped out a couple months before graduation for various reasons. Her passion for film is still intact and she’s currently working on her personal scripts. Her new project is an e-zine called “The Golden Milk” of which “ISSUE 0: The Dark Skin project” will be coming out soon. She can be found on Instagram at @mohihewa or @3000angels.
