Venomous Guilt

Fragments, from a male point of view (I think this is a first), also, some of the words/phrases are ones I've heard and loved; I'm attentive to words and I mark them carefully -- no plagiarism, though. Enjoy!

Right now, I'm starting to think.. 
to untangle all those knots I allowed to trap my thoughts.
I have been trapped myself..
trapped in apathy;
blinded by my egoistic self..
Only to realize that there is no truth
there is no validity
to rationality when emotions are entirely disregarded.

Right now, I know that we all have these divisions inside us
and once we ignore one, we stop being whole.
As for you, you were always balanced, which baffled me.
You would be vocal and verbalize your rational thoughts,
you would be subjective, too, and speak your emotions out..
As for me, I perceived that as a dramatic sequence of angry arguments..
I always missed the point you were trying to make..
that once the quarrel is over, or once I, shamelessly, decide to give in,
peace is assured.
But peace I have taken from you..
Leaving you constantly torn while I silently retreat..
I have not been able to see what you were really doing..
What you were doing is caring merely for me.
Worrying about us.
Instilling hope into me,
but that hope I have thrown away.

Right now, your patience is evident,
and my mistakes are evident, too.
I have poisoned your existence, stopping you from thinking
about what you need to be thinking of instead..
I ridiculously disregarded your feelings and saved mine.
I ungratefully forgot the times you could give up on me
but you stood there..
not because you are undignified
not because you are stupid
not because you are naïve
but because you are loyal..
because you carry the world's love
and you are gifting it to me, even when I least deserve it..
because you see no time or energy that can be wasted
in trying to save me in my desperate times,
and I still mindlessly neglected the bigger picture
while constantly making you battle against yourself;
losing sleep, appetite and interest..
This is how I rewarded you.
And it still did not satisfy my compressed ego
when you decided to retaliate,
I could not tolerate the taste of my own medicine..
And in spite of your ongoing efforts to recant and restore normality..
I still brought you down,
without the minimal sense of how a man should treat a woman.
I have belittled you with what I have shown you
the day you reached boiling point..
I have boasted to ignite your jealousy
without realizing how damaging it may be,
how unnecessary and degrading it was.

Right now, I know that how I feel about anything
and how I feel about you are two separate things,
that I kept on mixing.
I have brought you down just because I felt
suffocated, stressed, and undecided..
I felt the need to drag you down with me
without a second thought.

Right now, I want to stop you from shrinking your own self-esteem,
which I may have imposed..
I want you to start thinking of yourself
of your life..
I want you to find your own strength,
which you have derived from me when I was undeserving..
I hate to see my past blooming in you and yet is making you wither..
Feeling helpless, uninterested, incapable.. I know.
There is a fiery nagging urge that keeps you torn
between wanting to compromise
and wanting to heal..
I felt this way, but you were there..
and I do not seem to do the same.

You are full of love,
and I am full of shame..
I hope to see you whole again.

Carmel

They say conflict is the most important part in any relationship; once both speak their negativity out, they settle.. they prosper. Yet, what happens when one of the two chooses not to resolve conflicts?
In spite of what she was known to be, she was the weakest when it came to him. At times, she seemed like an obsessive devotee who got fixated on him and needed to be stopped.
Carmel was the only girl I looked at and saw loyalty beating from her like an aura. My only wish was that Eden could see that. Every night, she would talk to me about her distress, not even in a complaining tone. She would describe how she felt and end it with "I don't give up on people I love." Having said that, Carmel always did give up on the people she loved that proved unworthy of her love and energy, and I was relieved by that knowledge, for Eden, frankly, was only weighing her down. But it took longer than it would normally take Carmel to give up and choose her dignity over a fairy tale, which only meant she buried her pain beneath resistance. This is why I asked her to write letters every night, to Eden, that she would never send, to relieve herself of the burden of bottling up. As her friend, I read him one of her letters because he deserved to grieve way more than we all do..

"Dear Eden,
I always think of the time you told me that you think I think everything's about me. How much more can a person be blinded and ungrateful? Let me tell you what it really is about though.
All I ever do is try to make things right for you and your life ever since day one. I asked a lot about your past for that reason. I wasn't curious, I just wanted to change your view, to make you believe it's not always going to be a failed relationship. But then I found you having who failed you still in your life, and you resist getting rid of her in spite of my ongoing requests. It just seems like I'm too consumed by you that I stopped looking at myself and the person I've become. I get hurt, upset, and mad, and my thoughts keep me up at night but I stopped showing it to you, for I know what will happen: You will either give me the cold shoulder or act defensively until it all seems like my mere fault. And when I finally ignore whatever negativity you project onto me and put it all behind me, I only do that because I think more of you than I think of me. What will Eden do when I leave him? How will his life be? Is he going to drink again? Smoke again? Is he going to be careless about his career again? Who is going to be his voice of reason? I honestly don't know why I'm choosing to be stupidly selfless. I keep telling myself it's all worth it because I'm living for an anticipated future with you. But how will the future be if right now is already weighing me down? One cannot miraculously move mountains suddenly. And if you ask why I feel this way, it is because I, too, have been wronged countless times, that I, too, need someone to remind me I am not only loved but appreciated and respected, that I, too, need someone to try to make me happy and relieve me of my distress, that I, too, need someone to crave my closeness, and that I, too, need to be given as much as I give. It just seems that doing the same to me is your last course of action. Maybe it was not like that some time ago, but for all I know and feel, now, I am just an asset to you, no matter how much you think you love me and care for me. In spite of all this, Eden, I still feel lonely when you choose to abandon me for absolute no reason except your selfish and personal issues that victimize me, and that is when I desperately do all it takes to awaken you from your whims, and this is the most disgusting and shameful part of it all - I've ruined myself to please your only weakness. 
And now it feels like everything I need to feel alive only makes me dead inside.
I do want to hate you, Eden, but what will be the use? After you've used up all what I wouldn't want to be reused. 

Carmel"

There are important cords about any relationship other than mutual affection, that remained untouched in Carmel and Eden's case, the ones that could create harmony, if only Eden tried.. Carmel left with nothing to lose, not even Eden. 
He lost her, that's for sure.

Salty Tang

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

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.

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.

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.

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