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These days I have a certain problem with coffee. In effect, it makes me insane — although there may be a benefit in going deeply into this madness it produces. Unlike so-called “depressants” like alcohol, which take you lower into the self and the emotions, a stimulant likecaffeine acts to block my emotional awareness. This is not at all a source of jubilation, as when I cannot access what I am feeling I suspect that certain aspects of my environment are out of my control.

The horse beneath my seat may be walking, trotting, cantering — but I have no sensation of the reins, hence no control over my decision-making processes. I wouldn’t know if I were pulling too hard or not at all. I’m not quite sure what I’m feeling about anything. In times like this, I exercise perfect control and say nothing at all. I won’t be able to tell until the caffeine wears off and theflood gates allow my sensations to pass through again.

Caffeine triggers a traumatic center in my brain. Since I am unable to draw sufficiently from my emotional memory, I jump to the most negative conclusions about the-nature-of-reality-itself. It all seems very sordid, rather scary, deadly and refusing to reveal its layers.

An occasional drink of wine, on the other hand, is not just beneficial but practically essential for my health, for otherwise, with caffeine or no caffeine, I tend to lose touch with what I need to recognize in order to maintain my mental well-being. I can reintegrate my emotions by going deeply into them in a positive way, whilst building plans and formulating my ideas. This is what a glass of wine achieves for me. Not engaging in this bi-weekly ritual, however, returns me to my early-adult self. My 16-20 year-old self had repressed everything to do with emotion and feeling. This was the effect of post-migratory trauma; also of the tactics I’d developed from a very early age to deal with emotionally confusing and disturbing experiences. I switch off.

It has taken me years to realize the damage I was doing to my health in not maintaining emotional awareness. I had no idea I was so impersonal and detached from everything, until a crisis made me realize I had been repressing a huge amount of sadness and anger. I made a tremendous effort, from then on, to switch on to my actual emotional states. My physical healthimmediately improved with my self-understanding.

My ongoing tendency is nonetheless to switch off and thus to become a mystery to myself again. I hold my breath and hope nobody asks me what my motives and intentions were, because likely as anything I will not be able to know — until I have consulted with myself. And, who knows how long or short such a consultation with one’s inner being might be? It could take forever. Or a very limited time. Still, one has to begin the query first and then, wait and see.

Because of an inclination to hold my breath, I sometimes need to learn what I’ve experienced retrospectively. I haven’t really been taking it all in. I’ve been waiting for someone to be an ass — and then I’ll deal with it. I handle crises of most sorts and people behaving like asses very effectively — because it’s this I have been waiting for. I can think extremely logically and unhindered by any emotion or doubt, once I’ve decided to take action. My views and values become sharpened, clearer, in a crisis — and this is really paradoxical because it’s just the regular stream of life where I often can’t get enough emotion to flow through to think clearly. In a situation resonant of my trauma, it is difficult for me to “be myself”.

I retain an odd, Rhodesian personality — which I have modified to some degree.

I take time to decompress, to feel what I have been experiencing. I have developed a much higher capacity for emotional integration than I had in those early days of post-migratory trauma. Despite this, I’m never going to be an “emotional person” or even a very personal person, because focusing on feelings in their own right, rather than as building blocks of culture, puts a huge strain on me. I genuinely can’t understand the importance of having emotions that don’t supply substance for analysis.

It’s the resulting analysis that counts, which is the source of every deeper pleasure.