Deniz Csernoklavek: Still I'm a Bit Magnificent
Beky Banks
Still, I’m a bit magnificent.
Numbers?
Those are for people who trust clocks.
I’ve spent years arguing with time,
and losing on purpose.
I count in feelings.
I do maths like I’m telling a story—
and yes, sometimes the story ends in cake.
Letters like to run away from me.
They do backflips on the page
while I try to look serious in meetings.
I nod. I smile.
I try to remember why I came into the room.
(It was for tea. Always for tea.)
My brain?
A wildly creative spiral.
It doesn’t do “step one.”
It begins in the middle,
takes a left through metaphor,
gets distracted by a childhood memory,
and somehow still arrives
with something strangely brilliant
and slightly emotional.
I have tripped over my own feet
in silent meditation.
I’ve cried at spreadsheets.
I’ve had to pretend I understand acronyms
while internally spiralling into existential dread.
But here’s what else I do:
I feel the room before it speaks.
I notice when someone’s about to leave—
not with their feet,
but with their presence.
I catch what’s unsaid.
I hear the story behind the silence.
My way of knowing is
relational,
textured,
untranslatable.
Occasionally inconvenient.
I’ve spent years trying to pass for “normal,”
which is exhausting—
and frankly, not worth the paperwork.
Now, I’m just here.
Wobbly, nonlinear,
beautifully awkward.
I make sense differently.
I learn sideways.
I relate diagonally.
Still, I’m a bit magnificent.
A reflection on making sense in a nonlinear, relational way — embracing difference, awkwardness, and a quieter kind of magnificence.
Deniz Csernoklavek
MA student in Gestalt Psychotherapy at the Gestalt Centre London
Based in London
Email: denizcsernoklavek3@hotmail.com
