I have initiated a new blog, which I would like you to check:
http://saltytang.blogspot.ae/
The blog is mainly about food and culture :-)
Alia
Wednesday 24 December 2014
Friday 12 December 2014
Collateral Damage
Often, when he is guilty,
he capsizes his deed in a Sorry,
a word coating the unsettled matter,
a transient cure.
It allows forgiving..
it also allows forgetting,
but the next time he is guilty..
a Sorry cannot do,
for the rage has never been explained..
for the silence has never been explained..
for the guilt itself has never been explained..
and only a word has been verbalized.. a Sorry.
And me...
in spite of my rage
my guilt
my senselessness,
I'm blameless,
for the effort to reach closure
always comes from me..
for the attempt to forgive
always comes from me..
for the hope that keeps us together
always comes from me..
for the fire of his wrongdoing
always burns me..
for the cost of his wrath
only damages me.
he capsizes his deed in a Sorry,
a word coating the unsettled matter,
a transient cure.
It allows forgiving..
it also allows forgetting,
but the next time he is guilty..
a Sorry cannot do,
for the rage has never been explained..
for the silence has never been explained..
for the guilt itself has never been explained..
and only a word has been verbalized.. a Sorry.
And me...
in spite of my rage
my guilt
my senselessness,
I'm blameless,
for the effort to reach closure
always comes from me..
for the attempt to forgive
always comes from me..
for the hope that keeps us together
always comes from me..
for the fire of his wrongdoing
always burns me..
for the cost of his wrath
only damages me.
Friday 5 September 2014
Curiosity
In so many different ways, it seems that curious people constantly suffocate us. Curiosity is not something we like to deal with simply because it feels as though our comfort and privacy are violated. However, if we look at it differently, curiosity is not bad. It is the birthplace of human civilization and development. If we do not ask, we will never know, and if we never know, nothing will really change - and that's the problem! Sometimes, all we need is just asking ourselves some questions, reaching closure with ourselves, trying to figure out what we are doing, and organizing our thoughts in order to be fair with our own selves. How? We simply need to look into ourselves, deeper than our skin, and wonder about every single thing we have done in this specific day, and then repeat everyday..
This way, we are evaluating ourselves by asking questions. "Was I fair?" "Was I offensive?" "Did I need to say/do that?" "Did I do a great job?" "Did I really deserve that?" "Is there anything I need to do? "Is there anything I need to change?" "Is there anyone I need to apologize to?" etc.
And when we evaluate ourselves by doing this everyday, we figure out the answers, and when we figure out the right answers, we avoid complications - we avoid unanswered questions being wondered by others that we might have wronged.
Moving on from the 'curious monologue,' we also need a dialogue initiated with curiosity. We can have people who we know love us dearly, but those people can also be on the very far opposite end. How? By not being curious, they prevent us from not only knowing but feeling the love that they have for us. Them being curious about how we have spent our day, what we did/did not do, how we feel etc.. can clearly exhibit their stable interest in our lives that we are living with closed eyes and only realizing what we have done and felt when they come and nicely ask about us. This simple curiosity can mean happiness.
This way, we are evaluating ourselves by asking questions. "Was I fair?" "Was I offensive?" "Did I need to say/do that?" "Did I do a great job?" "Did I really deserve that?" "Is there anything I need to do? "Is there anything I need to change?" "Is there anyone I need to apologize to?" etc.
And when we evaluate ourselves by doing this everyday, we figure out the answers, and when we figure out the right answers, we avoid complications - we avoid unanswered questions being wondered by others that we might have wronged.
Moving on from the 'curious monologue,' we also need a dialogue initiated with curiosity. We can have people who we know love us dearly, but those people can also be on the very far opposite end. How? By not being curious, they prevent us from not only knowing but feeling the love that they have for us. Them being curious about how we have spent our day, what we did/did not do, how we feel etc.. can clearly exhibit their stable interest in our lives that we are living with closed eyes and only realizing what we have done and felt when they come and nicely ask about us. This simple curiosity can mean happiness.
Friday 6 June 2014
Fragments
The innermost emotions, the powerful horses we are not ready to release
We keep them behind the bars of our unstable stable of feelings
Afraid to let them overpower us, making us seem astonishingly weak.
Until we realize
We are the captives
We are the starving creatures exhausted by our norms.
Our emotions, like a carousel, are horses rotating around our nature
We are stuck there, on the platform..
Dizzied by the ride
Wanting to exit
But the merry-go-round is still whirling..
We don't know that just by holding the pole that emerges from the horse's head,
We are embracing the most important part of us,
Our emotions.
And no matter how much these series of emotions keep recurring,
We are holding tight
Accepting the ups and downs of the horse we are on
In fact,
We begin to enjoy the ride
Instead of just standing on the platform
Seemingly lost,
Dizzy
Anxious
Helpless
And confused.
We keep them behind the bars of our unstable stable of feelings
Afraid to let them overpower us, making us seem astonishingly weak.
Until we realize
We are the captives
We are the starving creatures exhausted by our norms.
Our emotions, like a carousel, are horses rotating around our nature
We are stuck there, on the platform..
Dizzied by the ride
Wanting to exit
But the merry-go-round is still whirling..
We don't know that just by holding the pole that emerges from the horse's head,
We are embracing the most important part of us,
Our emotions.
And no matter how much these series of emotions keep recurring,
We are holding tight
Accepting the ups and downs of the horse we are on
In fact,
We begin to enjoy the ride
Instead of just standing on the platform
Seemingly lost,
Dizzy
Anxious
Helpless
And confused.
Friday 30 May 2014
Pent Up Fears & Silent Tears
I always fade away and pop out again, and that is because of my extremely messy life and disorganized schedule (trying to get myself together and make some time for my writings though!)
Enough with my justifications,
Here's a quite different story that carry my deepest emotions blended to illustrate a kind of struggle not enough to describe in one-word.
...
Background
Alice is an offspring of two different races that allowed love to determine their future in a time that was strongly driven by racism and narrow-mindedness. Her mother fought to be with her father, and her father fought to be with her mother. When Alice was born, her parents had already lost their parents; she never met any of her grandparents and she never even wondered why they were not there. That was simply because she never had them around to mourn their loss, nor did she have to lose them in the first place. She was just the next generation that never met the previous one.
...
When Alice's childhood gradually grew faint, her cognizance emerged. She started asking, "where are my grandparents?" Not because she was upset for seeing her friends have ones but because she was curious. Her dad told her wonderful stories about his mother, not mentioning his father. She then knew that he grew up without one. Day by day, Alice knew everything about her grandmother, Mary, and she fell in love with her character. She also saw pictures of Mary. Mary's hair was long and deep reddish-brown, her skin was bronze, and her eyes were gray. Alice's dad is dark-skinned with gray eyes and slightly brown hair. She could see where all that came from, except his skin color. Her dad then told her that his father was darker than his mom, and that was when he started speaking about his own father. He was a diver and a pearl-collecter. He spent months, sometimes years, away from his son. And Mary, Alice's grandmother, ended her marriage with the diver. She was very young but almost infertile; Mary's dad was a miracle. However, Mary was known for being the mother of all the children that lived in their area. She disciplined them, fed them, and adored them.
And that was the story of one grandmother only..
...
Alice's mother is an introverted woman, she almost has nothing to talk about. Unlike her dad, her mother is silent, passive, and unemotional. Alice always believed that her mother is just apathetic. She never tried to understand her mother's nature and find out whether she is just putting up a facade to hide something or not. Marianne, Alice's mother, also seemed distant. She never tried to approach Alice either. This shows that they have an almost skin-deep relationship.
...
Alice's perspective
My mother's nature with me makes me repel, and how I repel makes me feel guilty. Guilty because I don't feel I'm being a good daughter, but this is only because I do not feel the connection. Marianne's very bitter with me, but she also contradicts herself, which keeps me puzzled. I can see pain in her eyes when I fall ill, and I can see the happiness in her slight smile when I succeed in whatever it is that I do. She just does not express it, whatever she feels. It may upset me but it also makes me worry. Sometimes, I just want to feel appreciated and recognized by my mother. It is not enough to have the world clap for me when my own mom does not. It has begun to irritate me more when I started realizing that she is stiff only towards me. It keeps me wondering and constantly thinking. I am the only daughter that is multilingual, athletic, and learned; I always make exhausting efforts to achieve not satisfaction but pride, my mother's pride, which I do not get. I fight vigorously to make her proud, but I am only loved, instinctively, and I started leaving it as it is.
...
I woke up one day to the sound of the ambulance's siren. It felt as though my heart was running with urgent haste across my entire body. I was stunned, waiting for anyone to come and tell me that everything was alright, but no one came. I walked my worrying self to the living room to find it empty. kept wondering, "who is it? who left us?" I was driven by pessimism, hoping that it was not my mother who was taken away. I did not know why I especially thought of her.
I then knew from my sister that it was my mother. She fainted for no apparent reason and had to be immediately taken to the hospital.
Marianne had two skull neoplasms for 10 years, as a result of abnormal growth of cells, that she never told anyone about. It was a source of wonder and worry for me. I wanted her to recover as fast as possible.
To prevent them from spreading, Marianne had the tumors removed without anesthesia, which kept me thinking of how strong this woman is. This mere incident created this urge to try and understand why Marianne does not talk about her pains. To hide such physical discomfort for a decade is something to worry about. I needed to know what my mother hides.
After her recovery, I overheard my father telling my mother this, "I was terrified, I remembered your mom." I rushed to where they stood, wanting to know what he remembered exactly. And as he started talking, my tears ran down the crescents of my eyes and rested on my cheekbones, then slowly began staining the collar of my shirt.
Marianne's mother was diagnosed with cancer, I could never ask for details to know what kind of cancer. All I knew that she began throwing up parts of her own organs until she had no hope to even live. As my dad was talking about it, I kept looking at my mom. She was expressionless and quiet. She was not responsive at all, as if it was not her mother's death that we were talking about. I knew, though, that it is a sensitive topic to her. But why is it?
I understood exactly why. Marianne's mother, my grandma, loved her daughter endlessly. She did menial work to afford all that Marianne dreamed of. Although my grandfather was rich back then, he never asked what my mother wanted, he never asked how she felt. He had another wife and other children that he was busy with. Marianne was the youngest among her step-siblings, and her father did love her, he was simply too carried away. Her mother, however, did the impossible to keep her happy and satisfied. But as a young girl who was neglected by her dad, Marianne was rebellious. She never listened to her mother. She dropped out of school and relied on her mom, until my father married her. My dad, loved my grandmother a lot. She lived with my parents until the day she died.
It is guilt that determined my mother's new character after my grandmother's death. She loved her but failed to show her that. She never told anyone about the tumors that were bothering her because she was afraid to be blamed. She was afraid to be reminded of the way she lost her mother. She felt responsible for my grandmother's death. But she was not.
I started understanding Marianne, which strengthened my love for her. I do not want her to live with unspoken emotions that may eventually destroy her. In spite of our constant arguments, I do want to have this tight bond with her, but she does not allow me to get close. But as much as I understand, I cannot measure her pain.
...
Start of An End
It was discovered that the tumors that took away Alice's grandmother did not stop at her death. The neurogenic neoplasms begin as benign tumors and may develop if not removed. Something that threatens their genes and terrifies Alice.
Alice now has two apparent tumors. And every time she feels committed to undergo the surgeries, something holds her back. She is afraid to let them rest in her body and allow them to intoxicate her fate, yet she is unable to help herself. It is an easy procedure; going to the hospital, removing the tumors. But to Alice, it is much deeper than that. She thinks of her mother and the guilt she carries since her grandmother's death. Alice does not want her mother to wither from guilt. She knows exactly that her mom will blame herself. Thus, Alice is praying for strength and determination.
...
Undecided Decisions
I now know that I can never be as strong as my mother, but I know that I can handle the pain until I decide to let it go. I hate being thought to be careless, there is not anyone that does not care about their health. I get phantoms; I imagine my grandmother and how her death recreated my mother. I do not know how my mother used to be, but to see how she is now, I can honestly form a mental picture of her internal struggle. This fear started when I met the surgeon that was supposed to remove my first tumor. When he knew who I was, he started tearing down. I was baffled, thinking he was being unreasonably sympathetic. Yet, that was not the case. He was the same surgeon that tried to save my grandmother's life. The surgeon my mother never wanted to see. Not because she blamed him, but because he was the last person to see her mother, the person who knew a lot about her. Most importantly, he was the person who understood her pain and tried his best to save her.
He could not deal with me, fearing failure.
And that was the last time I visited the hospital for that matter.
...
To end this story,
I hope that God grant us serenity, strength and sense to keep our health at its best, in order to obtain the ultimate happiness of this life. May God allow us to have endless chances to have all our needs met!
Love,
Alia
Enough with my justifications,
Here's a quite different story that carry my deepest emotions blended to illustrate a kind of struggle not enough to describe in one-word.
...
Background
Alice is an offspring of two different races that allowed love to determine their future in a time that was strongly driven by racism and narrow-mindedness. Her mother fought to be with her father, and her father fought to be with her mother. When Alice was born, her parents had already lost their parents; she never met any of her grandparents and she never even wondered why they were not there. That was simply because she never had them around to mourn their loss, nor did she have to lose them in the first place. She was just the next generation that never met the previous one.
...
When Alice's childhood gradually grew faint, her cognizance emerged. She started asking, "where are my grandparents?" Not because she was upset for seeing her friends have ones but because she was curious. Her dad told her wonderful stories about his mother, not mentioning his father. She then knew that he grew up without one. Day by day, Alice knew everything about her grandmother, Mary, and she fell in love with her character. She also saw pictures of Mary. Mary's hair was long and deep reddish-brown, her skin was bronze, and her eyes were gray. Alice's dad is dark-skinned with gray eyes and slightly brown hair. She could see where all that came from, except his skin color. Her dad then told her that his father was darker than his mom, and that was when he started speaking about his own father. He was a diver and a pearl-collecter. He spent months, sometimes years, away from his son. And Mary, Alice's grandmother, ended her marriage with the diver. She was very young but almost infertile; Mary's dad was a miracle. However, Mary was known for being the mother of all the children that lived in their area. She disciplined them, fed them, and adored them.
And that was the story of one grandmother only..
...
Alice's mother is an introverted woman, she almost has nothing to talk about. Unlike her dad, her mother is silent, passive, and unemotional. Alice always believed that her mother is just apathetic. She never tried to understand her mother's nature and find out whether she is just putting up a facade to hide something or not. Marianne, Alice's mother, also seemed distant. She never tried to approach Alice either. This shows that they have an almost skin-deep relationship.
...
Alice's perspective
My mother's nature with me makes me repel, and how I repel makes me feel guilty. Guilty because I don't feel I'm being a good daughter, but this is only because I do not feel the connection. Marianne's very bitter with me, but she also contradicts herself, which keeps me puzzled. I can see pain in her eyes when I fall ill, and I can see the happiness in her slight smile when I succeed in whatever it is that I do. She just does not express it, whatever she feels. It may upset me but it also makes me worry. Sometimes, I just want to feel appreciated and recognized by my mother. It is not enough to have the world clap for me when my own mom does not. It has begun to irritate me more when I started realizing that she is stiff only towards me. It keeps me wondering and constantly thinking. I am the only daughter that is multilingual, athletic, and learned; I always make exhausting efforts to achieve not satisfaction but pride, my mother's pride, which I do not get. I fight vigorously to make her proud, but I am only loved, instinctively, and I started leaving it as it is.
...
I woke up one day to the sound of the ambulance's siren. It felt as though my heart was running with urgent haste across my entire body. I was stunned, waiting for anyone to come and tell me that everything was alright, but no one came. I walked my worrying self to the living room to find it empty. kept wondering, "who is it? who left us?" I was driven by pessimism, hoping that it was not my mother who was taken away. I did not know why I especially thought of her.
I then knew from my sister that it was my mother. She fainted for no apparent reason and had to be immediately taken to the hospital.
Marianne had two skull neoplasms for 10 years, as a result of abnormal growth of cells, that she never told anyone about. It was a source of wonder and worry for me. I wanted her to recover as fast as possible.
To prevent them from spreading, Marianne had the tumors removed without anesthesia, which kept me thinking of how strong this woman is. This mere incident created this urge to try and understand why Marianne does not talk about her pains. To hide such physical discomfort for a decade is something to worry about. I needed to know what my mother hides.
After her recovery, I overheard my father telling my mother this, "I was terrified, I remembered your mom." I rushed to where they stood, wanting to know what he remembered exactly. And as he started talking, my tears ran down the crescents of my eyes and rested on my cheekbones, then slowly began staining the collar of my shirt.
Marianne's mother was diagnosed with cancer, I could never ask for details to know what kind of cancer. All I knew that she began throwing up parts of her own organs until she had no hope to even live. As my dad was talking about it, I kept looking at my mom. She was expressionless and quiet. She was not responsive at all, as if it was not her mother's death that we were talking about. I knew, though, that it is a sensitive topic to her. But why is it?
I understood exactly why. Marianne's mother, my grandma, loved her daughter endlessly. She did menial work to afford all that Marianne dreamed of. Although my grandfather was rich back then, he never asked what my mother wanted, he never asked how she felt. He had another wife and other children that he was busy with. Marianne was the youngest among her step-siblings, and her father did love her, he was simply too carried away. Her mother, however, did the impossible to keep her happy and satisfied. But as a young girl who was neglected by her dad, Marianne was rebellious. She never listened to her mother. She dropped out of school and relied on her mom, until my father married her. My dad, loved my grandmother a lot. She lived with my parents until the day she died.
It is guilt that determined my mother's new character after my grandmother's death. She loved her but failed to show her that. She never told anyone about the tumors that were bothering her because she was afraid to be blamed. She was afraid to be reminded of the way she lost her mother. She felt responsible for my grandmother's death. But she was not.
I started understanding Marianne, which strengthened my love for her. I do not want her to live with unspoken emotions that may eventually destroy her. In spite of our constant arguments, I do want to have this tight bond with her, but she does not allow me to get close. But as much as I understand, I cannot measure her pain.
...
Start of An End
It was discovered that the tumors that took away Alice's grandmother did not stop at her death. The neurogenic neoplasms begin as benign tumors and may develop if not removed. Something that threatens their genes and terrifies Alice.
Alice now has two apparent tumors. And every time she feels committed to undergo the surgeries, something holds her back. She is afraid to let them rest in her body and allow them to intoxicate her fate, yet she is unable to help herself. It is an easy procedure; going to the hospital, removing the tumors. But to Alice, it is much deeper than that. She thinks of her mother and the guilt she carries since her grandmother's death. Alice does not want her mother to wither from guilt. She knows exactly that her mom will blame herself. Thus, Alice is praying for strength and determination.
...
Undecided Decisions
I now know that I can never be as strong as my mother, but I know that I can handle the pain until I decide to let it go. I hate being thought to be careless, there is not anyone that does not care about their health. I get phantoms; I imagine my grandmother and how her death recreated my mother. I do not know how my mother used to be, but to see how she is now, I can honestly form a mental picture of her internal struggle. This fear started when I met the surgeon that was supposed to remove my first tumor. When he knew who I was, he started tearing down. I was baffled, thinking he was being unreasonably sympathetic. Yet, that was not the case. He was the same surgeon that tried to save my grandmother's life. The surgeon my mother never wanted to see. Not because she blamed him, but because he was the last person to see her mother, the person who knew a lot about her. Most importantly, he was the person who understood her pain and tried his best to save her.
He could not deal with me, fearing failure.
And that was the last time I visited the hospital for that matter.
...
To end this story,
I hope that God grant us serenity, strength and sense to keep our health at its best, in order to obtain the ultimate happiness of this life. May God allow us to have endless chances to have all our needs met!
Love,
Alia
Saturday 8 March 2014
Beauty And Correlation
Hello, readers! It's been really so long since I last posted anything, and that is because I've been busy with my studies (probably because I lacked motivation, too). But here I am with a new story that I hope you all enjoy! pay attention to the tenses and try to correlate! :D
...........................................
As humans, we look at our pains differently, but we all know they're beautiful. Some may find their pain a way to become stronger, wiser or just older. Stronger, because pain, for whatever reason, destructs one part but strengthens another. Wiser, for whatever caused that certain pain would be our new warning not to fall apart ever again, and our new lesson that we will teach others who may or may not go through the same phase that we went through. And others, on the other hand, will just grow older, and as they grow older, pain will be just a memory. All these perspectives illustrate the beauty of life. It is a ladder with few broken rungs, but as long as the base is strong and the upper part remains in its normal structure, you can manage; you just need to push yourself a bit more - every time!
This description also illustrates how we see love. Some see it as weakness, some as strength, some find it cheesy, some find it completely disgusting, but they all may have to struggle to understand it. When they understand it, it begins to be beautiful. They begin to figure out its value. They can weigh it. They can differentiate between infatuation, fascination, lust and love. They then begin to distinguish this strong emotion that can weaken the strongest of them.
For me, that ladder with the broken steps deluded me into thinking that all the other rungs are also damaged until I discovered that I may have to stumble, suffer, but I may also have to fly until I can see that beginning of the perfect steps that lead me to the most beautiful thing that I never thought I could find. I just had to believe in the possibility of this finding, even if it seems a little too impossible.
We often hear that people die from bombs, natural disasters, diseases, strokes, and / or whatever disaster it may be. But those people just die. They rest. Suffer for some time and it's all over. On the other hand, we often see the most damaged people are the ones physically unharmed. Their emotional death starts with filing a divorce, aborting a child, making the wrong choices, breaking up, being betrayed... and the list goes on.
Again, for me, it was betrayal that brought nothing upon me but insecurity and self-esteem issues. No matter how much we hear, see and know that betrayal is wrong and the one wronged is entirely blameless, that betrayed person is the only person living the consequences of the betrayal. Maybe, just maybe, the betrayer encounters remorse, but that would not reorganize the emotional state of the one facing the consequences. This picture that I'm trying to draw is my way of describing my status and any other betrayed person's. It is bitter - we all know it is without having to explain what happened and why it even happened. Full stop.
And that (betrayal) was the reason I thought all the upcoming rungs were broken. In fact, I never even thought I'd grow stronger or wiser, just older.
Then emerged that bit of sense of hope in me. I did not know but I believed. I believed that there will be that day when I reach the extremity of happiness that I'd also be too sorry for the days wasted - the days before I found this happiness. But was I right? I was damn right.
I lived two decades searching for the right thing to love aside from the instinctive love for my parents. I wanted to be loved in spite of myself, my flaws, my irrationality, and my occasional insanity. I never wanted to be belittled nor did I ever want to enforce myself on someone just to be safe in his custody. I wanted to be adored for the imperfect person that I am. We all want that don't we? Despite the facade that we all put up, we are all little children wanting to be embraced, accepted, and tolerated. Unfortunately, I was belittled and undermined. Fortunately, I am embraced, tolerated, and adored.
It was a reason I least expected, a person I never knew and a feeling I never even experienced. Again with correlation, would I ever value this feeling, this person, and this reason if I never knew what pain is? If life could just gift me this wonderful gift that can make me happy, would I really be happy? I would not, for I wouldn't have anything to compare it against. We compare a good thing to a bad thing, happiness to sadness, we always have to know how an awful thing is in order to know that this other thing is actually beautiful.
A blessing to me is this reason, this person and this feeling. And another blessing to me is that pain and that betrayal that made me stronger, wiser, and older. My happiness correlates highly with these blessings!
The End
...........................................
Love,
Alia
...........................................
As humans, we look at our pains differently, but we all know they're beautiful. Some may find their pain a way to become stronger, wiser or just older. Stronger, because pain, for whatever reason, destructs one part but strengthens another. Wiser, for whatever caused that certain pain would be our new warning not to fall apart ever again, and our new lesson that we will teach others who may or may not go through the same phase that we went through. And others, on the other hand, will just grow older, and as they grow older, pain will be just a memory. All these perspectives illustrate the beauty of life. It is a ladder with few broken rungs, but as long as the base is strong and the upper part remains in its normal structure, you can manage; you just need to push yourself a bit more - every time!
This description also illustrates how we see love. Some see it as weakness, some as strength, some find it cheesy, some find it completely disgusting, but they all may have to struggle to understand it. When they understand it, it begins to be beautiful. They begin to figure out its value. They can weigh it. They can differentiate between infatuation, fascination, lust and love. They then begin to distinguish this strong emotion that can weaken the strongest of them.
For me, that ladder with the broken steps deluded me into thinking that all the other rungs are also damaged until I discovered that I may have to stumble, suffer, but I may also have to fly until I can see that beginning of the perfect steps that lead me to the most beautiful thing that I never thought I could find. I just had to believe in the possibility of this finding, even if it seems a little too impossible.
We often hear that people die from bombs, natural disasters, diseases, strokes, and / or whatever disaster it may be. But those people just die. They rest. Suffer for some time and it's all over. On the other hand, we often see the most damaged people are the ones physically unharmed. Their emotional death starts with filing a divorce, aborting a child, making the wrong choices, breaking up, being betrayed... and the list goes on.
Again, for me, it was betrayal that brought nothing upon me but insecurity and self-esteem issues. No matter how much we hear, see and know that betrayal is wrong and the one wronged is entirely blameless, that betrayed person is the only person living the consequences of the betrayal. Maybe, just maybe, the betrayer encounters remorse, but that would not reorganize the emotional state of the one facing the consequences. This picture that I'm trying to draw is my way of describing my status and any other betrayed person's. It is bitter - we all know it is without having to explain what happened and why it even happened. Full stop.
And that (betrayal) was the reason I thought all the upcoming rungs were broken. In fact, I never even thought I'd grow stronger or wiser, just older.
Then emerged that bit of sense of hope in me. I did not know but I believed. I believed that there will be that day when I reach the extremity of happiness that I'd also be too sorry for the days wasted - the days before I found this happiness. But was I right? I was damn right.
I lived two decades searching for the right thing to love aside from the instinctive love for my parents. I wanted to be loved in spite of myself, my flaws, my irrationality, and my occasional insanity. I never wanted to be belittled nor did I ever want to enforce myself on someone just to be safe in his custody. I wanted to be adored for the imperfect person that I am. We all want that don't we? Despite the facade that we all put up, we are all little children wanting to be embraced, accepted, and tolerated. Unfortunately, I was belittled and undermined. Fortunately, I am embraced, tolerated, and adored.
It was a reason I least expected, a person I never knew and a feeling I never even experienced. Again with correlation, would I ever value this feeling, this person, and this reason if I never knew what pain is? If life could just gift me this wonderful gift that can make me happy, would I really be happy? I would not, for I wouldn't have anything to compare it against. We compare a good thing to a bad thing, happiness to sadness, we always have to know how an awful thing is in order to know that this other thing is actually beautiful.
A blessing to me is this reason, this person and this feeling. And another blessing to me is that pain and that betrayal that made me stronger, wiser, and older. My happiness correlates highly with these blessings!
The End
...........................................
Love,
Alia
Thursday 16 January 2014
Mein Kampf
Mein Kamp (my fight or my struggle), for those of you who do not know, is an autobiographical manifesto by Adolf Hitler himself. It is still one of the world's bestselling electronic books, and it remains the most crucial piece. Even though banned in the Middle East (I've managed to get the full translated text though), it has always fascinated me. Hence, it has also inspired me to write a story.
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My fight started in the hands of the brutal. The fight, however, was between me and myself. For no logical reason, I have endured belittlement. I said, for the sake of hope. Other times, I said, for the sake of love.. But neither was my savior, not hope.. not love.
"No matter how much I had occupied myself even previously" (Hitler, 1925), my wounds never seemed to be mended but by that who belittled me.
At least that was how I thought my situation was. I felt the obligation to be held hostage by uncertainty and confusion.
Here is the story..
I
In an unlucky morning, I woke up feeling agitated and needy. I wanted someone I could tell my story to. And there he was, that someone who gave me a more painful story to never talk about.
He was vague but considerate; he made me feel welcome at any time. There were always boundaries between us that he seemed to respect, for I had psychological issues that he knew nothing of at the start. I knew, however, that he began to recognize the extremity and unusualness in my personality. So, I decided to tell him about the things I was least comfortable with. I told him about my imaginations, my fears, my antipathies and all the embarrassing things about me. I told him all about my weaknesses.
Those things were the reason I never committed myself completely to a man. I always felt incomplete, incapable, unloved, and intolerable.. I thought I was better off just alone, but, again, I did not enjoy loneliness.
II
He knew me well, except I knew nothing at all about him.
He was not a friend, I never knew what he was. He was like a priest in a confession cell who I would regularly visit. I knew it was safe to speak to him, I knew talking to him offered me relief and peace, but I never knew what days could turn into.
III
A year passed and I never met that person. However, I started to feel like he was the correction to all the psychological messes that my mind was made of. I felt being with him was the only way that could lead to self-advancement and peace of mind. I was very wrong.
IV
I developed this thought in my mind - that I was in love with him but I should not be in love with him. That simple thought could kill me. I, however, did not rush. I remained calm, knowing I might lose my one-chance at something new that could also renew me.
V
It took him one year to start opening up to me. He told me about the one thing that hurt him the most in life and that he did not ever grow out of it. He then began to acknowledge things about me that are hard for others to recognize. He took his baby steps towards my heart. His interest in me was clear, but his commitment to me was out of the picture.
VI
Let's skip the background, for all the good things stopped mattering.
Two years passed while I was kept hanging. It seemed like he dominated my life and tailored my fate. He stimulated my feelings willingly, but without the intention to love me. I was foolish. I thought that he might be waiting for the right time. But what right time could not possibly happen in two long years?
I started to speak, to tell him how I feel. Sometimes, he would completely ignore me or even avoid me. Sometimes, he would bluntly tell me "I do not love you, don't wait for it." Other times, he would ask me out on a date. He would also tell me that I was the only person capable of making him forget his deep-seated pains. Sometimes, he would simply talk to me like I was the reason he was alive. But at all times, he was mentally abusing me and emotionally tearing me apart, because of simply one reason: he never verbalized his thoughts to make things clear to me.
VII
I never told him how hurt I was. In fact, I was always there for him - doing what he wanted. When he wanted me to be a friend, I was that friend. When he wanted me to be his lover, I went on a date with him. When he wanted me to be his enemy, I would keep a distance. And when he wanted to hurt me, I was always there.
It was wrong of me to make him feel powerful. I boosted his ego by satisfying his selfish nature. It could get worse sometimes; he would tell me what to do and what not to do.. who to talk to and who not to talk to.. who to be and who not to be..
In short, I was his own puppet.
He would call me to only talk about my weaknesses and joke about them; telling me that I should seek help. Funny because he was the one that used to help me overcome my struggles. He even accused me of making stories up for I wanted a chance "to attach him to me." He would also state my flaws, one by one, to make me feel naked and undermined.
VIII
He was the one lacking stability, I just could not realize that. He did what he did because he was maimed and ruined; wanting to devastate someone else. He was passive-aggressive and domineering. As for me, to fuel my patience, I took mood-stabilizers, chopped my hair occasionally, and more disappointingly, I tried committing suicide. It was not only about him; an uncertain relationship with a controlling person. It was more about me and the way I felt. I was humiliated and degraded. All the issues I faced before knowing him started to double. And I thought I should tell him about the suicide attempt - to maybe waken his conscience, and when I did, he was just angry. Angry because I did it and not angry because he was the reason I did it.
IX
I stopped wanting to depend on the little hope I had left; my hope that I would one day be what I want to be with him, without such complications. The hope that he would tell me he loved me to make all the crazy things worth fighting for. The hope that he would stop treating me like property.
The day did come.. but remained just for a while.
X
He was acting unusually. His emotions were running high, his words were strange, and his tone was different. It baffled me, but, at that moment, I was sick of all the mazes he forced me into. I wanted him to let me go. It was indeed an impulsive decision, but it was the most appropriate one. I told him to do whatever made him happy because at that point I could not possibly tolerate his domineering nature.
XI
He sounded hesitant and it took him a while to finally say it. He told me he loved me, and no happiness could be compared to mine. I forgot I ever suffered with his behavior. I believed we could both begin a new clean chapter. But that chapter we started was dirtier than any other.
XII
He betrayed me and I knew it. The only difference it made is that he did not know I knew it. He would simply ditch me on days we were supposed to be together. Talk less to me. And then give me silly excuses. This made things worse for me, but I refused to give up on him. I foolishly thought that our relation was bound to last. I was delusional, until he confronted me. He concealed all his corruptness and inhumanness in one sentence: "I do not see a future with you."
And after that, I swore to never believe in an empty dream.
XIII
Anyone hearing my story would think I overdid it. I should not have walked the extra mile for someone who was on the fence; not wanting to let me in and not willing to let me go. It was not easy to exit such suffocating cell and expect to instantly adapt myself to the outside-world.
Anyone hearing my story would think I overdid it. I should not have walked the extra mile for someone who was on the fence; not wanting to let me in and not willing to let me go. It was not easy to exit such suffocating cell and expect to instantly adapt myself to the outside-world.
After a while, I was afraid I could never recover from the state he put me in. For the most part, I did recover. Yet, a woman who was once belittled would always carry her pain. If she was wise, she would bury it. If she was wild, she would turn it into aversion. If she was kind, she would forget it. If she was strong, she would embrace it. And I have become both strong and wild, for to be hurt is one thing and to be humiliated is another.
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