Asocial

Trying to explain how being asocial works to the social is like trying to describe colors to the blind. See, to them talking to people and socializing comes naturally as breathing. To them asocial means shy, self-conscious and lacking in confidence. Explaining what it's truly like to be asocial is like trying to bridge two worlds with nothing but words. But let me try anyway, let me give it a shot.

I am asocial. I am not shy in the least, and there isn't a self-conscious bone in my body. Anyone that has seen me truly speak can tell that I am confident and perfectly comfortable in my own skin. What marks me as asocial? What makes me brand myself this way? I am incapable of initiating casual conversations, of conducting small talk and of achieving any human form of passing greeting. In theory, I know what small talk is like, but in practice my brain blanks out and I realize the futility of exchanging simple pleasantries. I have no need, and no speck of desire to engage strangers in meaningless chatter.

My conversations are the exact opposite of small talk. I don't look to make friends, or to get to know people unless they truly interest me. I don't fake enthusiasm, and I am only ever enthusiastic for worldly discussions. Passing by individuals I feel no need to utter a single word. I enjoy silence and the company of the inside of my head more than any random chit chat. Socializing utilizes active expenditure of my energy, wherein I spend a huge mental effort trying to maintain a conversation I have no desire in maintaining and finding words to string together and utter in a form similar to social humans'.

My brain draws arbitrary conclusions regarding which people I find comfortable and can loosen the knot of "closing in on myself" around. For reasons that are beyond my knowing I find myself able to have a menial conversation with specific persons with relative ease. And when I say relative ease I mean instead of using the mental energy equivalent of lifting a load equal to my body weight, it's more like I am lifting a quarter of my body weight. For those same unidentifiable reasons, I find myself incapable of finding a single word in my full-to-the-brim mind to say to a select few.

I hope this draws an image that my social friends can understand. I understand what it's like to be you; I see the ease with which you talk to complete strangers and how fast you make new friends. I watch you talk to someone you just met the same way you talk to your best friends, and I see your jokes and the laughter that bubbles easily out of your lips. I know these are all effortless to you -as effortless as staying quiet, alone and separate is to me. Forcing you to hold your tongue around people would be ten times easier than forcing me to socialize. I hope that gives you something to think about the next time you blame me for being me. 

Twenty-Five

Twenty-four was better than twenty three. It was full of downs, but it had its share of ups. I cried for all the right reasons, and for some of the wrong ones as well. It was interesting, tormenting, character building and full.

I've always felt old. Down in my blood and in the makings of my soul I feel old. My twenty-five feels closer to fifty-two twice over. I have felt this way for years, but today is the day I let go of that thought. The number I am at is not old. It is full of youth, it is the prime of my life and if I feel old now, what will become of me when my number agrees? So gifts, then -for my twenty fifth birthday, I first give myself the gift of life. And I mean life at my own age for the first time in twenty five years. I give myself the gift of living my age, and appreciating how young I am.

My second gift is a promise. I promise that twenty-five will be my best year yet. I promise to hold on to hope with my teeth if I must. I promise to find it even when it hides, and I promise to keep hold of it even when reality tries to steal it away. I promise myself a new outlook, and a perspective that believes in reasons that have yet to show.

And finally, for my birthday, I give myself the gift of good advice. Go easy on yourself, on your ambitions and your demands of your life. You planned to be so much more than what you are at this age, but just because you didn't meet your goals doesn't mean you've failed. Perhaps your goal was faulty, the timeline was off and your plans were shortsighted. Think beyond the scope of what you pictured back when. See with the eyes of an adult that knows more of life today than she did even yesterday. Your end goal is so great and farfetched that you can't reach it in any way you think you can. When your dream is unreal, the path you take will surely leave plans and reality behind.

Trust in yourself, in your deepest dream and in Allah. You're driving blindly, but he can see -let him lead the way. And while you're at it, I strongly suggest you enjoy the ride. Life is not the stations we stop at, life is the drive.

Happy Birthday.. 

Stethoscope

When I was a child I got sick a lot. Clinics were as familiar as my own home, and doctors were the miracle workers that made my hurt go away -but more importantly they explained it. They looked into my mouth, listened to my chest and tummy and knew things. Doctors made me feel better, simply by caring, smiling and placing a stethoscope on my skin.

From the very first memories I possess I was in love with a stethoscope -the truest representation of everything good in the world. I knew that I wanted to one day don a steth and spend my time and energy giving people more time and energy. I loved stethoscopes with a silent ferocity that I held at the very center of my heart.

As I grew older my love only grew. I sank my curiously hungry mind into reading all about that world I so desperately wanted to join. But one thing I never so much as approached was anything related to steths. I didn't look for their proper name, what they did or how they were used. I didn't ask my doctor to let me so much as touch his, and I even avoided the toy ones.

I loved them more than to approach them as a silly child with a crush would. I had an adult brain in my nowhere near adult body and I was too deeply in love to squander my first touch. I would not learn what I desperately wanted to learn until I earned it. When I knew enough medicine to truly understand I would seek this knowledge. When my papers said medical student I would touch and try it. I would marry my love when I was officially married to medicine.

After three years of medical school I was asked to buy a steth. I touched it for the first time in a pharmacy, and tested its name on my tongue. Stethoscope. My stethoscope. I finally had one of my own and I finally understood everything about it. I was happy.

My stethoscope now lies hidden on a seldom used shelf in my closet. It's twisted and carries the weight of a hundred nick-knacks. It is not abused, it is hidden for its own good. It is hidden because it hurts too much to see it knowing I had let it down. My stethoscope deserves better than bitter tears from a heavy heart.

So I hide it, pretending that not seeing it makes me love it less, and want it with less force. I hide it and pretend I can't feel both our disappointments at it not being used to save the world. 

Breathe..

Soften your heart, lend it some tenderness and let it truly beat. The only reason your mind and chest ache is in objection to the hardness you force onto yourself. Solid does not mean strong, a rock breaks but rubber stretches and resists. We harden our shell to protect ourselves, forgetting that hard is weak in its rigidity and soft is strong in its adaptability.

Soften your heart and let yourself feel. The more you fight your feelings and inject stiffness into yourself the worse you'll hurt. You cannot outrun emotions, they find a way to manifest and trust me when I say they won't leave you until you truly feel them. They are not scary. Being a still stone might give you an illusion of calm but it does not mean that you are alive. We are alive because we feel. Our hearts beat and our blood runs because they yield.

Soften your heart and let it fill with a hundred sentiments and more. Feel everything you've ever fought to keep yourself from feeling. The pain, the hurt, the guilt, the shame, the love, the joy, the relief and the grief. Let a spectrum of contradictions into yourself and let them fill you. They won't hurt worse than your physical pain ever does. There is relief to be found in allowing yourself the freedom to truly be human. If you keep your insides "strong" then you outrun the positive but give the negative room to hunt you down and hurt you worse.

Soften your heart and lend it the tenderness it needs to beat with ease. I will give you directions on how to turn all your rigid into strong soft. Close your eyes and breathe. Let the darkness of your sight calm your jumpy nerves and breathe once more. Bring your shields down and surrender to your every thought. Scream every thought that should come with a feeling but doesn't at yourself a hundred times until you feel. Speak the words out loud. Tell yourself what you should feel. Say it again and again and again until you feel it filling you. Smile as you cry and tell your heart that you are setting it free. Remember that feelings mean you are alive and human, and that soft means you are durable and strong. Breathe, and allow your heart some room to breathe.

For my idiot.. 

Computerized Mind

I wish my mind was a computer, and the inside of my head had a control panel. I wish there was a keyboard attached to my skull, and a command center that responded to my every keystroke. I would simply let my fingers fly across a series of pre-labeled buttons and have my mind do as it's told.

My thoughts would no longer ricochet off the inside of my head and bounce around in games of catch me if you can. The flighty contemplations and the endless nagging of my mind would lose their power and yield to my every command. The ocean of feelings that lies beyond my control and washes over me in tidal waves that shake my core, and stormy rage that is my undoing would disappear at the mere click of Alt and F4. The maze of memories that haunts the back of my lids and courses ache through my veins would leave my consciousness when I order the process to end. Instead of spending days stuck amidst the chaotic pounding of losing past and future I would reorganize everything into neat folders that await my touch before they can release the chaos they hold within.

If my mind was a computer then I could shut it down knowing that with a tiny click I could bring it back. I would lie in my bed and send the command and wait as all my tasks and processes slowly got ticked off and my insides went blank. If my mind was a computer life would be simpler by tenfold. When my pieces broke and I got lost within the firing of my own neurons I would smile and order the faulty drive to backup and format. When I feel the virus of living death clawing its way through my soul I would restore my entire being to the last point I was functional. Time would rewind and my insides would rearrange until my past becomes my present and I am once again new and whole. If I was a computer I would lull my feelings into hibernation and restore the rest of me back to full strength.

Dark Through Light

November 12, 2015

If there is one thing I've learned in the past few years it's that sometimes we have no control. Sometimes no matter how hard you work, how much you try, how often you pray and will something into being it doesn't work out. That's just the way of the world. It spins even if you want it to stop. Life does things you don't want, and takes things you do.

We can't always have what we want or what makes us happy. I know as much, I've always known as much. But I've only recently realized that I am foolish, and that I let myself love so deeply that I dared want what I knew I wouldn't be allowed to have. I fell for peace of mind and comfort. I fell for having a purpose. I fell for things I haven't had in years. I fell for learning, and I fell for a home away from my real home.

But what does the world care? I am getting ripped from them anyway. I have to keep saying goodbye -but you know what? The fact that I keep saying goodbye just means that I keep coming back. Maybe not coming to stay, but I still manage to get a dose of my home, however minute it might be.

So for now let me attempt to divert my mind from the pessimistic and redirect it to the optimistic. I am blessed. I am lucky far beyond many out there. I have two homes, and that is something no distance or time apart can ever shake or change. Where people are homeless, I am overcrowded with homes and I have somewhere to run to when I feel suffocated. I have two families, one that I was blessed with when I was born and one that I found all on my own and joined their blood to my veins. I have two sets of people that make me feel like I belong, and I have such abundant amounts of love filling my life that sometimes it feels too much.

I lived a good life. I lost a lot, but I've gained so much. I am living a good life. I am blessed with things that I can't lose. Somethings are under my control, and seeing the dark through light is a choice I will make right now. I am full of love, I am loved, and I have things that make all the bad I go through bearable. I have things to miss, I am so lucky that I am crying because I'm leaving one home to go to another.

I am blessed beyond belief. I love you, my home, until we meet again. 

I Miss Him

April 14, 2015

Everything feels surreal. Like my life has been one long nightmare for weeks, and my mind refuses to admit that the nightmare is reality and not a dream. When I sleep I see him get better, I see him leave the hospital and I see him smile and laugh off what happened. I see him assuring me that he's alive, telling me not to worry, that reality was the dream and this was what's real. And then I open my eyes and I'm in bed and the truth sits on my chest and keeps my lungs from expanding.

He is gone. He did not get better. I saw him for the last time lying in a hospital bed, his chest vibrating as the ventilators fought to keep him alive. The last I know of him is a number on a machine. The last I ever heard his voice -I can't remember what he said. It kills me that I can't remember. I've tried so hard, but I can't even remember what he was wearing on that last night, or what he said before he left.

I don't even know if he ever knew that I loved him more than I ever showed. I don't know if he knew that he mattered.

All that is left of him now are memories that hurt more than I can bear. All that is left are things he left undone, and words he left unsaid.

I miss him.