Turn to Yourself

Too many people I care about dearly have been feeling abused by their lives. They’ve been feeling unhappy, and extremely helpless with no control of the circumstances causing their unhappiness. This is for you if you feel this way.

Nothing feeds unhappiness as much as feeling helpless. Every time you take a look around yourself and think there is nothing I can do, you are choosing to solidify your sadness. I understand that your life is horrible, I understand that your circumstances are making you miserable. I can see clearly how it is not your fault that any of what is happening is happening, and that you cannot stop it from punching and kicking at you. But here is my question to you; what if your life never gets better? What if you continue being patient and waiting on life to stop abusing you, and instead all it does is move from kicking to cutting, and from cutting to stabbing? What happens then?

Will you spend your entire life being miserable? Will you carry that stone sitting on your chest for the rest of your life? Will your heart always be heavy, will your mind forever remain shackled by life’s abuse?

I want you to close your eyes and think for a single moment. I want you to think of everything happening in your life, and you will find that we always have a choice. The choice may be horrible, between two things each worse than the other –but the choice is always ours. We can choose to quit and live the misery of being without a job, with no money and no hope for it, or we can choose to stay at our dreadful jobs where a sliver of hope exists. We can choose to surrender to the beating, or we can choose to fight back and get hurt. There is always a choice, stop robbing yourself of that truth. You are in control, and when offered the choice between bitter and sour you chose which one you will withstand.

You are not helpless. Life happens the way it happens and sometimes we cannot help what is being thrown at us, but that does not make us helpless. God granted us the gift of ultimate control, he granted us the very weapon we can use against life’s abuse, but we choose not to use it. We are raised to believe happiness comes from without. Happiness is money, a present, it is travel, a smooth ride, new things, games, friends, family, good food –happiness is a good life. None of that is true. I dare you to bring forth a single person, whose life you actually know all the details of, and tell me their life is perfect. A perfect life does not exist. Just as ever present light does not exist. Our world was created on the very basis of opposites co-existing. Life is chaotic, it is a neverending gamble full of ups and downs. So stop expecting the world to grant you the impossible, stop expecting your life to suddenly turn around and go from bad to good just because you were patient. I can tell you right now that that will never happen.

Use what God gave you, that weapon he embedded in all our minds, the one rusting away in a corner under a pile of false beliefs. Take control of your own self. You have the power that no other creature was born with, the power of a mind strong enough to override itself. You have the power to rewrite your expectations, the power to take a step back and actually see who you are and edit every single aspect of yourself. You cannot force life to bend to your will, but by God you can bend your mind to your will and force it to find happiness amidst your misery.

Accept that patience is not the answer, waiting for things to get better is not the way to find happiness. You find what you look for in life, if you are waiting for things to get better so you can be happy, then all you will find are the bad things that are robbing you your joy. Shut life out, take a day and be with your mind and find your happiness in there. Happiness is hope against doubt, it is a smile bursting among the tears. Happiness is possibilities, it is dreams and an imagination, happiness is taking life as it comes while you work for the life you want. Happiness is comfort, it is faith, it is taking control of yourself and celebrating inside achievements, it is working to improve your life and yourself –whether those improvements pay off or not. Happiness is, above all else, nothing but acceptance. Accepting life’s imperfections, accepting that our choices are difficult ones, accepting that bad is a part of good.

My life was in ruins for years, and the day I decided to stop fixating on my life and fixate on my own self instead was the day my life got better. If I choose to, I can still see how none of it has been truly fixed, the negatives plaguing  my past still exist, and yet all I see is positives. No one found happiness by looking for it outside, no one found it by trying to create it in their lives. It can only be found by working on your insides, and when you are fixed you will see that while you were busy within yourself, your without got busy getting fixed. 

Twenty-Six

All my life I had been postponing living, postponing any dream, wish or goal I had “until”. I pushed everything back in order to focus on my studies, and all that got me was that at twenty-five years old I realized that I hadn’t done a single thing I wanted to do. All I did was focus on a future that refused to come, and wait on living until my life had passed. I was supposed to have everything I ever wanted by 2015, and instead I had absolutely nothing. Twenty-five was the year I decided to put a stop to that, the year I decided that I would live today and never postpone anything for any reason ever again.

And so, twenty-five was the year I surrendered to the present and said yes to every opportunity. It was the year I stopped fighting the current, and started swimming right along it. It was the year I found the self I’d lost, the year I created countless memories full of love, laughter and smiles. It was the year I gave a Tedx talk, the year I scratched things off my bucket list. Twenty-five was the year I re-invented my entire view of my future, the year I found happiness and content. Twenty-five was the year I changed my own life, and it was nothing short of miraculous.

Twenty-five gave me so much, and until the very last hours it continued and it gave me ideas for the gifts I traditionally give myself before a new year of my life begins. First and foremost, I give myself the gift of opportunities. If life won’t present you with that which you seek, go out and create it yourself. I give myself the gift of taking control, and creating my own opportunities and my own good fortune and luck.

My second gift is a promise. I promise myself that twenty-six will be even better than twenty-five. I promise myself a year that fills me with pride, a year of achievement and making a name for myself. I promise that my past will never be my present again, and that the future will not ruin my now in any way.

And finally, for my birthday, I give myself the gift of good advice. You made the mistake of focusing on the now that will lead to the future you want, and exiling everything else once before. Do not make that same mistake again. But do not commit a crime against your dreams in the name of avoiding the mistake. You have a vision, you have a dream –make them into a plan. Work today as though you have nothing to wait on in order to reach those dreams. Start creating that future, not just by studying, but by actually beginning the long and grueling building process now. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the required ingredients yet, it doesn’t matter that you don’t have your degree or the means to make it all real. Build it, build it now, today.. that is the only way it can ever be built. When your dream is unreal, the path you take will surely leave reality behind.

Trust in yourself, in your deepest goals and in Allah. You’re driving blindly, but he can see –let him lead the way. Follow the path, and along the road begin to build your dreams. And while you’re at it, I strongly suggest you enjoy the ride. Life is not the station we’re driving towards, life is the ride.

Happy birthday.. 

Everlasting Suns

All my life they have been at the center and outer edges of everything that ever mattered. They were the sun from the moment I opened my eyes, and all I loved gravitated around them and existed because they did. My life has two shining bright suns, and through the years I was too busy to notice that as I grew so did they. 

I felt them so strongly with senses other than sight that I never felt the need to truly look. I felt an aura of strength the likes of which I have never felt before or since. I felt love and warmth so big they kept two entire galaxies afloat. I felt smiles, laughter and care. I felt hugs that felt so timeless there was no way they would ever waver or change. I felt two spirits that burn with the entire life force of both sides of my family. They are strong enough to have kept me blind and secure, knowing that something this bright could never age and be anything other than everlasting. 

My blissful blinds came off this past year, and I realized that spirits don't change but bodies do. Limbs can age, cells can slow down, eyes can change color and skin can wrinkle and thin. Suns burn with the same strength but the shells that contain them age and grow on. I was so blinded by how they made me feel that I missed the changing point. I went from being dazzled by two magnificent women who led long, full and inspiring lives to suddenly realizing that they are older than I ever thought they were. 

It scares the living daylight out of me to see them so frail when they are at the heart of my definition of strength. But then I close my eyes and realize that they feel just the same as they ever did. My grandmothers burn just as bright as they have my whole life, and no amount of aging their bodies can do will ever change that. Spirits are everlasting, and sight is overrated. So I will keep my eyes closed and feel my grandmothers. And I will pray to Allah that no matter what my eyes try to tell me today or in the years to come I never stop feeling them everywhere I turn and in everything I do. I have loved them long before I knew what love was, and I will love them longer than forever can dream to reach. They are my everlasting suns, and that is something that time and old age cannot and will not change. 

Strength, Courage and Wisdom

I have always believed that unsaid words have power over us, and that by saying whatever it is that we shy away from out loud we steal away its power. Strength is doing that which is harder, and weakness is succumbing to the simpler path of hiding from unpleasant things and pretending they do not exist. Seeing through a veil of denial to admit a truth you wish you could bury away is at the center of true strength. And what better way to acknowledge what you have denied than to say it and wear it proudly on your sleeve until it can be slain?

Strength is not the lack of emotion, courage is not the lack of fear and wisdom is not the lack of foolishness. If you do not feel then you have not defeated feelings; you cannot battle and outlast that which does not exist. In order for you to be strong you must feel. The more you feel the bigger your opportunity to be strong. If you are able to withstand a mountain's worth of feelings and still go through life unhinged and un-singed then and only then can you call yourself strong. But hiding away from things that exist and pretending you don't feel them in the name of strength is at the heart of weakness.

In the same way courage cannot exist if fear does not. How can you be courageous if you have no foe from within attempting to hold you back? Courage and bravery can only be found in the face of great fear, and if you go around screaming I do not fear anything then you are foolish and a coward who is too afraid to admit that they are afraid. No one fears nothing, but everyone pretends to themselves that they do not.

I can go on and on about my philosophy on opposites and how the presence of one proves the other, but suffice to say that strength, courage and wisdom cannot exist without pain and fear. If you are afraid then you are wise and have known enough life to know that fear is sometimes the epitome of logic, you are brave for acting against your fear and you are strong for being in its presence.

So in the name of saying words aloud in order to steal away their power, and in the name of admitting difficult truths and facing them head on, herein lies my confession. I fell, rose, battled, lost, rose, scarred, bruised, fell, rose and eventually won. I am not as whole as I once was, but I am stronger and with thicker skin. And at the end of all of that, even though in all the true meanings of the word I am fine, a deeper truth remains -I am traumatized.

There. 

Of Writing..

A few years back I reached a point where I could not write. There was no lack of substance, no lack of desire for it and yet try as I might no words would come out. Anything I managed to produce was forced, it was literally pushed letter by letter and none of it sounded anything like my voice. My block was so bad that eventually I gave up trying and for two years I lost my favorite hobby and only escape.

The cycle broke when I stumbled across a blog post called "this shade of green". I read through that piece three electrifying times back to back, and the long dead candle flared to life inside me. I went through the whole blog, reading entries as far back as three years old right after reading that first piece. My candle roared into a fire. It screamed its pent up energy into the void that had stolen its breath and it lived, it became. I was inspired by someone whose words I related to and whose writing reminded me of what I was becoming before the block took hold. I was inspired by beautiful language and complex thoughts put into simple and yet intricate sentences sown into place by threads of coherence that pulled you in long before you realized they had a pull.

Two and a half years ago a stranger's words ignited a part of me I had given up on, and I wrote for the first time in years. My words rushed through my fingertips with the pent up energy of years of soulless letters. I wrote and the relief was immediate and intense. I started my blog then. Not under a pseudonym this time, not somewhere to write my thoughts but a place where I would pour my feelings -heart, soul and all into. I wrote until the current flowed freely and it took no force to will metaphysical into solid letters and stitch a small reflection of my inside onto a page. It was both exhilarating and frightening to expose myself, but though the two battled I was always cheering for the exhilaration to win.

My flame dimmed as life attacked, and soon it was just a candle fighting an ocean of darkness. The candle lost, and the void took hold once more. I have been trying to force my letters to carry my soul but they refuse. I have not written, truly written, in more than five months. I am overwhelmed with the need to articulate on a daily basis but the words just won't flow. My writing no longer carries pieces of my soul, I can't paint images that empty the negatives inside me and so they stay where they can fight the positives. I am out of sorts, but the void is too strong and I have no oxygen and no spark of inspiration is strong enough to bring my candle back to life.

I wrote because I had something else to write about but I could not force it out. I wrote this instead. I miss writing. 

Pain is Pain

When we're in pain, it's easy to shrink in on ourselves and think that the people around us, the ones trying to listen and help, don't feel as we do. It's part of the pain to make us feel like we aren't understood, like we're alone suffering in its clutches and no one can possibly know what it's like. So we push people away and hide with our pain, it clinging to us and us clinging to it.

But if we can break free of that circle, if we can find the strength to look beyond what our suffering wants us to see. Then we'll realize that hurt is hurt, pain is pain and that everyone out there has tried its bitter taste one way or another. We are never alone in pain, just as we are never alone in living and breathing.

Some people might forget the exact flavor, they might be insensitive, they might lack compassion.. But underneath all those personality traits everybody knows. We all do. You are not alone. Don't let the pain lie to you. You are understood, and we know how you feel. 

Puppet

It's like my heartbeat. The sound. That voice. It's just like my pulse. Just as constant. Just as persistent. Just as loud. It thuds in my chest, it pounds in my mind, it stretches throughout my body and presses me.

No. No, I won't. I'm stronger. I can win. I won't succumb. It can pound all it wants. I won't go there. I am not a puppet. The voice doesn't control me. It's a part of me. It screams from within my own body. It battles its will against mine from inside my own skull. The voice is mine. I own it. It is my slave. I can shut it up.

Silence.

There. There. I knew I could win. I knew I was strong. I made it stop thudding. I made it pull out of my skin. I can breathe! I'm so happy. I didn't fall. I didn't succumb. I won. I have peace. My will won.

Now that I won, that I proved I can master my own self.. Perhaps I deserve a reward? I lasted longer than ever before. Surely.. Surely I deserve a break?

I sound convincing. So convincing that I inch closer to my favorite friend and my worst enemy. I move towards it, my heart loud and elated. My whole being feels lighter just knowing that it will fill my veins in mere seconds. I'm going to.. NO! No, no, no! It's a trap. The voice spoke like my own voice. It nearly tricked me like it always does.

I stop in my tracks. I stop and it hurts. I feel it now. The ache. The unquenched desire burning through my flesh. It feels like the lack of air. It feels like heaviness. It feels like gravity. It feels stronger. It feels like crying sand. It feels like swallowing jagged rocks. God, I can't. I need to. I have to.

No, no, no, no. I moan it out loud. I clutch my head and will myself to find the will to fight. It can't win. You can't let it win. You're stronger. It hurts. No, it doesn't. I can't breathe. Yes, you can. Fight. Fight, damn it, fight.

I pull in a lungful of air. I pull it in despite the hands squeezing my lungs. But there's no oxygen. Oh my god. I can't. I can. I'm losing. I'm winning. I'm sweating need. I'm shaking need. It's all I need. The world turns into a void. Nothing can break through the wall of lack pressing in on me. There's no joy. There's no.. There's nothing. I can't feel. I can't feel anything. I am need.

NO! I'll fight. I don't have to. I'm stronger. Please, God, please let me be stronger. I want to be stronger. I want to stop. I have to stop. I'm weeping. I'm shaking. I'm dying.

.. Why? The voice whispers seductively. Why do this to yourself? Is it really so bad? It's wonderful. It feels like a jolt of pure joy. It brings the lack into focus and fills it with shape. This is who you are. This is who you are.

No. I won't.. Even as I say it my legs betray me. Even as I try to drop it, my hands succumbs. The voice drags me under. I fall. I feel. I finally feel. Joy and relief course through me. I am filled with it as I weep my despair. The world turns bright. The pressure recedes from my ears. I can hear. God, I can breathe. There's air. There's air. I wish there wasn't. I wish I was strong. I wish I wasn't a puppet. But I am. I am my own slave. I wish that I was not.

- Empathy series..