No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less;
As well as if a promontory were,
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
– Meditation XVII, Jon Donne.
I don’t remember the exact day when I realised that I was pretty different from almost everyone else around me.
And not in the, “my mom says I’m special” sort of way, or like I was some sort of kid genius whose mind was too advanced for other peasant children on the playground to comprehend.
I just remember being really, really lonely, almost all the time.
(all photos: Tabitha Turner)
Everything overwhelmed me. Books were never just stories on pages; when characters died, my friends had died. I would sit in my closet for hours listening to film scores, believing that I could feel the sounds move through my arms and chest. I was at odds with the world around me: clothing hurt, hairbrushes hurt, but being rejected hurt the most. I didn’t know of any other middle-schooler who spent Christmas morning playing with a forensics kit while everyone else went sledding or spent months wearing three t-shirts in rotation because everything else scratched.
I’ve always had a passionate love for humanity, but saw myself as someone standing outside a party, looking in through the window. The world was an ocean-sized waterpark wave-pool full of so much stimulation, emotion, disaster and passion that the only way I could stay afloat in it was stepping outside of it, observing it, and thinking about it.
As I got older, my feeling of being lonely and overwhelmed drove me deeper and deeper into myself, drifting further away from the crowd, until one day in the winter of 2008 when I looked up from the bed of a psychiatric hospital, and found myself off on an island all by myself.
I still remember the first time I came across Meditation XVII, because I got to the “no man is an island part” and out loud responded, “I AM.” And that was the way I liked it, honestly. As long as I could separate myself and my seemingly bizarre-o interests from the rest of the world, nothing and no one could hurt me.
Rejection isn’t possible when there is nothing around to reject you.
But in the years following that declaration, the theme of “everything is connected” began to emerge, and this idea began to soften me the way a warm bath thaws out clenched muscles.
Instead of seeing myself in opposition to the world and all its crazy humans and stimuli, I started to see myself as a part of it, a member on a level playing field where all pieces in the game interact, even without meaning to.
And then I came to the island of Lesvos.
I’ve known that at some point, I wanted to make a part of this poem a permanent part of my body, but it never seemed to be the right time or place. Working at Sykamania, surrounded every moment by thousands of refugees traveling the waters between life and death, finally brought the theme to completion.
At 23, I now understand that my life-long dread toward people, places and things stems from a sensory processing disorder, which sounds kinda medical but is actually just a fun way of saying that I feel absolutely everything. I used to say that there were days when I couldn’t live in my body because it felt too much; nowadays, the highs and lows seem to be the places where I most often find opportunities to reflect the character of Christ.
My first tattoo reads “No man is an island” in Farsi, translated and done in the handwriting of Amir.
ETC, or Embrace the Chaos, our team name. God gave me the name at training camp and it’s proven to be the most perfect embodiment of community, flexibility, and unconditional love.
I am a part of a bigger plan. The attractive, self-serving mistruth that “I’m only responsible for myself” or even “I am alone” are boldfaced lies.
The choices that I make are never only my own. My decisions, my words, my love, my apathy, my compassion, and my life are all irreversibly tangled into the fibers of the universe like a line of spider web; you touch one string, the whole web vibrates. Whether or not I like it, I’m compelled to take responsibility for everything that I do, because it has the capacity to effect people in ways I may never know.
I am needed here. Not off on an island, all by myself. Not in a mind-tower. What I bring to the table is unique, it is indispensable, and it is necessary.
My life is necessary. Your life is necessary. You are needed here.
No man is an island.
