Change

I want to take a step back. Or twenty, or perhaps more. I want to take however many steps back it needs for me to see myself and my life clearly. I want to see every messy corner, every broken piece of glass and every pile of ash. I want to see the good and the bad with a clarity that only distance can give.

When I can see everything, when I've developed sight and a mind that can fathom every facet of myself, I want to sit back and make decisions. I want to uproot everything and move it around. I want to reorganize my life, throw things out and put new things in their place. I want change. I want it so badly it is a need and no longer a mere desire.

I need to throw all olds out and bring in a big bunch of new. I want new hopes and new dreams, I want new goals and new plans, I want new ideas and new thoughts. I want a new mind, and a new perspective. I want to want different things and I want to want them differently. I want my surroundings to reflect that need for different -I want everything to be fresh and new.

I want change. I want to go through myself and my life like a tsunami and wash my insides and outsides clean and bare. I want to replant, I want to begin from zero again with nothing but a book of experience guiding me through. I want to change everything through and through, and then sit from afar and bask in the comfort of losing that restlessness that was my old. 

Loss, Faith & Surrender

I don't have any more fancy words in me. I don't have any descriptions, or elegant sentences that tell of how I feel in the most convoluted way I can manage. I have nothing in me but true, honest to god words in their simplest form -words that tell.

I feel lost. The only solid in my life right now is my faith. It is the only tangible protection I have against the madness that is surrounding me, and the only thing keeping me sane and whole. With faith you hold on to Allah, you hold on to him with everything you have and believe in his wisdom, and that your patience will be rewarded. With faith you surrender all thought to Allah, and await those trustworthy actions that make worrying pointless.

I have surrendered. But there are things that must be done on my end. There are fights to be fought, decisions to be made and paths to be taken. There are trials that test my faith and my patience. Life keeps happening to you even if you've surrendered it to Allah. And I don't know how to live it. That is my problem. That is my confusion and my loss.

If it were up to me, I would hide in the littlest corner I could find. I would hide in it with my praying clothes and with my Qura'an and I would spend every minute of my time praying and praying. If it were up to me I would not live, I would just worship, pray and believe. But it is not up to me. It seldom is.

Answers are needed from me. Decisions are expected. Strength is welcomed. Togetherness is required. And they are all things that I am currently running just a little low on. I don't have the wit to find the answers. I don't have the courage to make decisions. I have strength but it is the inward kind that keeps me from breaking, not the outward kind that can hold others' hands. And I have togetherness but it comes in the form of endless praying.

The questions are chipping away at my patience. Questions all around, all the time, from everyone and everywhere. The one person that should have the most questions is me, and I keep those hidden and locked away in a vault labeled "none of my business". I can't answer any questions because I don't have the answers, and I don't want to have them, I don't want to seek them out and I don't want to find them. They are none of my business. They're Allah's, and His alone. That is what surrender means. That is what my faith is.

Alas, I must find answers to give. There are only so many questions you can leave unanswered without tipping people over the edge. My edge might be some distance away, but I have established long ago that I am less than human and my edges seem to always be misplaced. People mistake trust and faith for denial and retreat. But perhaps they are mistaken for each other because they truly look alike.

They need answers, Allah has them but I do not. And so I must once again hunt around inside myself and find some extra patience and strength. Perhaps there is some left on that furthest shelf, or in that corner labeled rainy day. Wherever they are they must be there somewhere, for I need them to brew a potion of answers out of dust. I need them to keep my smile, and to offer up things that I've never had. I need them so I can be for others what my faith is to me -the rope they hold on to when they fall off the edge.