Day: December 3, 2020

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I started university today

You know it’s an overthinking kind of night when I’m listening tghayarti by el far3i. And not only because I think this is the most beautiful song ever made, but because I genuinely cannot listen to it without reminiscing.

I’m going through a lot of emotions, and they’re not necessarily bad ones, but they are a lot to fathom and absorb. I started caring again, and even though at times it makes me feel most alive, there are other times where I regret it. Caring for people only makes me vulnerable, and it’s not a color I like on me.

It’s funny how this world works, strange how different we are and how bizarre our lives might be, yet are all linked through eerie pretense of interdependency and social integrations.

I started my second BA today, and even though I could not attend any of my classes, it feels good to be back learning. Even though I would love nothing more than to exist in a university atmosphere and the excitement of still being a learner and observant of the later-on life, I know it is not possible.

Yet, I’m an optimist. I feel a certain ego of knowing so many things and being in so many places yet still learning the basics of social sciences and the methodologies of calculating demographies.

I’m not a study-type of person, I never studied as much as I should, and it’s not something I am proud of, but it’s also not something I was capable of doing. Even though I went through four years of university and 15 years of school, I never had an “overnight”. It’s not that my major didn’t require studying, because I know that most of my friends spent so many nights awake trying to study the hundreds of pages we were asked to memorize. But I never did.

I am not a study-type of person, but I am a learner. I love learning, I love people teaching me new stuff, and I would never skip an opportunity to learn about culture and history and the philosophical theories of being.

I may have a bad habit of wanting to know everything about everything, which is unfortunate as knowing everything leads to knowing little of every topic but never in-depth enough to discuss. Nevertheless, I still aspire to someday know everything about everything.

Even though my classes conflict with my working hours, I hope to attend a few classes. I attended the first 30 minutes of my demography class this morning, which was funny because our professor was a typical red-headed Lebanese University professor with tattooed eyebrows and a flattering red lipstick.

And even though one of the students had themselves unmuted and her baby was heard crying all the way to my supervisor’s office, and the professor freaked out because “why are you holding your baby in the middle of a class!” and a member of the student council introduced her to the gift of “mute all,” it felt like home.

What else?

Well, today, I woke up with morning anxiety, which was a first in three weeks. This morning, I realized that I hadn’t had morning anxiety in three weeks, which was the first time in I don’t know how many years.

What happened that even morning anxiety was gone, and why did it return today? I keep asking myself, and I might know the answer, but I don’t think I’ll tell you. I can tell you that a big reason behind my sudden tranquility is for sure due to the beautiful winter and due to the fact that Christmas is soon.

Also, I just started watching The Queen’s Gambit (thanks to bands for recommending!), and so far, I like it. I haven’t watched a good series since Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and it felt nice to escape reality for a few hours.

What else? I’ve been eating so much unhealthy, and I am very not proud of myself. I have also been drinking coffee a lot, which I know I will regret very soon. I was raised to stand against anything that is unhealthy and unsafe for my body, and the fact that I am eating so much chocolate and sweets every day makes me very wary.

Also, it’s Christmas soon.

I hope you’re doing well yourself.

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Loss

It’s scary how much we can love someone.

Never getting attached to anyone, always keeping a distance between ourselves and everyone around us in case they leave, in case they decide to disappear.

Then comes someone and sneakily breaks all the walls; we love their presence, their laugh, their talk, their silence. We remember them whenever we’re anxious, or whenever we’re sad because their memory is safe, it makes us happy.

It’s scary much loving them makes us feel alive, as if that’s it, that’s all we need from this horrid life, that’s all that is important amid hunger and injustice and destruction, loving them is all that is needed to stay alive.

It’s scary how much they can affect our days, our mood, and the rest of our week. An inane message, a word of kindness, or a smile – that one smile, that’s all we need to go back home at the end of the day and say ” ’twas a good day.”

Their talk, for once you don’t mind not talking, for once you want to hear their story without having to say yours. For once, you want them to talk for hours about everything and nothing in particular, and you listen so tentatively because even the smallest details matter. Because knowing what their favorite tree leaf matters to you, as long as it’s a thing that they said. It’s them talking to you; what can be more important than that?

And that smell, their holy smell. You close your eyes once you smell them nearby, their scented aroma precedes them, and you close your eyes because it’s too warm and it’s too sweet, and it’s too them.

But then what?

But then they leave, and it’s not a shock because the world is mortal and the prettiest flowers die, and everything must end. But it doesn’t make their loss easier. It doesn’t make the void feeling less piercing in a bleak abyss that makes its way through our chest and blackens the place where bliss once rested, because of them, the bliss and the blazes.

And then the feeling of the happy moments gets forgotten, and the aching nostalgia replaces those happy moments, and then comes the era of longing for a time where we were whole, where we were floating, where we were alive.

And we soon go back to closing our eyes every time their names are mentioned, every time we try to remember, every time we see a photo of them or affiliated to them, every time we smell a scent close to theirs. This time, we close our eyes not to preserve the moment, this time, we close our eyes to make it, the memory, go away, we close our eyes as if the loss we feel is before us, and if we close our eyes and don’t see it anymore, it might fade away.

And then one night, it’s 3:00 am, our bed is warm, our pillow is fluffy, and we still can’t sleep. And as we hold ourselves so tight in fear we might break, we wonder what would’ve happened if we never met them at all, because nothing-nothing-really seems worth the loss.