Month: November 2022

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Hello Hello :)

Hello Hello and bonjour. How are you? How are you feeling on this fine last Monday in November? I hope you are doing well, and learning how to heal from all that you went through the past few days, months, it can be a lot, and it is okay to give yourself a moment or two to reflect.

I am doing okay, just very hormonal and cramping, but other than that, it’s fine. I just found this wholesome song called Heartbroken by Hooverphonic. Hooverphonic is a Belgian band formed back in 1995. The song speaks about someone who is getting out of a controlling relationship and who, even though is expected to be heartbroken, she is not. She remembers all the fights and bad memories, and she insists that she is doing okay, and that she is not heartbroken.

I think this is probably the first song I have listened to that does not depict heartbreak but portrays what it’s like to be strong and empowered. There is nothing wrong with feeling weak, with letting yourself sulk in the pain of loss. But it doesn’t always have to be this way.

Idk; this song got to me.

It’s world cup season, and I, as assuming most people, absolutely love world cup season. I love the ambiance, the obsessiveness of people with the matches, spending time with my family watching the games, and spending time with friends.

I remember eight years ago, two world cups ago, I was walking back home from my friend’s house and I remember I could hear the echos of the commentators and the live game on the streets. Everyone was watching the game, nonchalantly, and excited. I remember it was that moment that I fell in love with the world cup season.

It’s cold again, and I’m wearing my new favorite boots. A lot of changes are coming, changes that I am not sure I am brave enough to face. Nonetheless, I need to pass them to be able to grow and reach the place I want.

It’s scary, but I think I am in a place where I am aware that with every rainbow, there needs to be a storm.

And a heavy storm is coming.

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One year ago now

One year ago

One year ago now I probably was drinking my second cup of coffee, at 9:37am, in our old dark office and listening to Dorian by Agnes Obel. One year later, I no longer drink coffee in the morning, and most days, I avoid coffee because it’s causing me acid reflux – you know, grownup shit.

I’m finding it so hard to concentrate because this weekend was a lot, and I’m still healing. I spent my morning searching for flight tickets to Bulgaria, and I found one for USD 176, and I was this close to booking the ticket before realizing that I would need to apply for a Schengen visa first, which of course, won’t be granted in two weeks. So I refrained, and I decided to search for more tickets early December and maybe think twice before booking the trip.

I’m listening to a song called Aman (‘safety’) by Bilal Shabib – it’s a song I discovered last year around the same time as now, and it’s basically a one-syllable song where he just repeats ‘Aman’ (safety) for two minutes. It has 9.1K views on YouTube. I tried making others listen to it, but it didn’t get much hype. But I love it.

I also found myself searching for home tattoos this morning. Something that maybe can guide me home, to the safety I am forever looking for. Something to remind me that it can exist somewhere, like my compass, and I found this:

It got tears to my eyes. How beautiful? The stems growing from concrete, steadying a perhaps unstable house. The crooked house, leaning to the left, with a badly drawn window in the middle of the brick roof. I’ll make this feel like home. I’ll create my own safety. I’ll try to love this body I’m in, and I will try to act as if It’s my home.

Do you think getting a third tattoo in three months is too much?

I don’t.

I’m going now, as I have 14 big tasks to finish today, and I’m not planning on staying over hours because I want to see my aunt. My aunt just got back from Canada to a house without my grandma. My grandma was living with her for the past three years, and my aunt hasn’t seen her children, who are in Canada since. She decided to go to Canada in early July to see them, and two weeks later, my grandma passed away. I hope coming back wasn’t so hard. She doesn’t deserve that.

Goodbye for now. I hope you’re safe.

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One sample post

One look you gave me

And I understood

It was clear

Very clear

That hand of yours

Is no longer for me

It was obvious

From the look you gave me

That I am done, I am free

I shall no longer think of you

Whenever I think of me

And you think that this is what I want

That is what will let me be

Unaware that there is no sunshine anymore

That I no longer feel happy

That the cold hand of yours

Did not feel like mine anymore

That cold heart of yours

Were as cold as the Baltic shores

Were as cold as the first drop of rain

On a day in May

The inflicting pain

Writhing in me every day

I looked at you

Straight in the eyes

Crying

Begging that I be anywhere

And everywhere

But any place

Not here

Sitting in front of you as you wait for me to speak

The unforgivable sin

The momently bleak

It was dark, and not just the way you made me weak

The room was dark, the lights were off

I could see you vaguely from all the tears

And the ugly sun from the balcony

Flashing your eyes so unashamed

Looking at me as though I am naked and hideous

As though I am the most disgusting being you see

As though whatever you see, you wish to unsee

As though if it were me and you sitting next to a sea

You rather throw me to the sea

Than take another look

At me

So I spoke the words you wanted to hear

And I waited, heart dropped to my legs

I waited in fear

Knees weak

Storms wreaked havoc

Vision bleak

And I thought, surely, you would not leave me

But you did.

You sat right in front of me

Skin dripping torrential poison

You sat one inch away

Held me to your chest

Took me sincerely

Spoke so delicately

Whispered to my ears

All the words I did not want to hear

You held me, but I could feel like you were no longer here

That I am hanging on a dead body

A body that no longer breathes for me

The warmth I was addicted to

The safety I preached

Was packed in a suitcase at the other end of the room

Waiting for a deserving person

To unpack

And I lied there, clenching my chest

Praying that you stay

That all the words you said

To please, unsay

I sobbed to the corpse I killed

Begging for forgiveness

Begging that whatever happened

Could not happen

Begging that the sun did not shine that day,

That we are still stuck on the first rain in May

That I no longer loved you

That the pain in me,

Would someday free me?

That you are happy, without me,

That you hold her hand and you feel complete

In a way, you never felt

When you were with me.

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I’m listening to a song

I’m listening to a song right now that I have listened to for the past six years. I’ve always felt it, one way or another, but tonight, I felt as though it literally just happened. Would you like to hear the story of the song? I will tell it anyway.

“I came to you in the morning. I ironed your shirts, and I made you breakfast. I played you the ukelele till you slept. I sang to you.

I put you on my shoulders, and I brushed your hair because you told me to do so. I then brushed my hair, and now my hair smells like yours. Then I took you home and waited until you turned your bedroom lights on, and then I left.

This is not a normal feeling I am used to. It’s getting fast and more serious, and I never asked for it. I never asked for your smell to be stuck in my head hours after you leave, hours after I stop smelling anything at all.

You need to make this better for me and you. Could you possibly disappear, go away? Even though it is not your fault but I’m scared to get used to you. I hear you like my voice and that we may become closer friends, but my friends would push my car down the road even if it’s a 2 passed million after midnight. Do you want to do this?

It’s getting louder. I can see you in a crowd, I can hear your voice very clearly. I should’ve turned my back on you when I met you; I should’ve not done this, I didn’t know I would love you.

I’m scared of commitment.

I’m scared of commitment.

I’m scared of commitment.

I’m scared of commitment.”

This is a bit of what I understood of the song. A bit of what I am listening to right now.

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Be still my aching heart

Be still my aching heart as the weekend is over. My heart is very heavy. My muscles are tired, and I can feel the fog blinding my eyesight. It’s a haze, it’s pain, it’s agony, it’s the bleak that we fear. It is unholy to feel this pain, it is not fair.

Yet we feel it. And this feeling is not that common. We do not feel our heart often, we often do not feel it hurting us unless we actually have a cardiac disease maybe, like when you can feel your hurt stopping to the tip of your finger. Or when you are heartbroken.

Have you ever felt this feeling before? To have your heart hurt so much that you clench your chest because you know that there is nothing that you can do at that moment, at that very second, that will make the pain go away.

That no matter how much you scream, or how much every tiny cell in your body cries for help, no matter how much you sweat, how much you cry, how much you feel like you are being stabbed with a sharp and poisonous knife to your chest thirty times a second, you know that it will not go away.

That feeling, that feeling, that feeling you may feel when you go out of your house wearing shorts, unaware that it will rain, that it’s piercing cold. And you’re cold, and there is nothing that you can possibly do to feel warm. You just got out of the warm house, what you once called home, and you know that you are not welcomed back again.

That feeling when, you’re sitting on a hill watching the sunset, a time that you usually feel most at peace with, but you’re not happy, you; ‘re scared. Because you’ve been thrown out, you’re exposed, you’re no longer in safety, you’re out, cold, naked, ugly, and in pain.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Or all of this is just blabbering, the two cents of the dramatic girl that is me? Can you possibly imagine for one second that all of those are actually emotions felt?

Felt for someone that is so deserving, someone that takes my breath away with a smile, a lip bite, an eyebrow plucker. Someone that meant the world to me, yet slipped right through my hand, because I could not protect from my own self.

I will write about him. I will give him justice. Just not today, not when I’m this beaten down and fatigued. When I have the strength to describe him.

When I am brave enough to let you know. To let you know.

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I hate flying

I hate flying a lot. I love seeing the world, but airplanes and airports? Oh God, they are a nightmare. I mean, I would prefer long layovers over long hours on an airplane, but still, the whole flying thing is so not my thing.

Airplanes make me feel so claustrophobic, and dizzy and sick and just so boring. I am so thankful that I only have one and a half hours on my next flight to Beirut, but right now I am at Sabiha airport in Istanbul, three hours in on my layover, and three hours to go until I fly. And I am just so bored.

I mean, granted, I could have booked a business lounge and sat on much more comfortable chairs, but I would have been so anxious that I might miss my flight that I would have probably left the lounge like three hours earlier, which basically would’ve brought me to where I am right now, on a crusty chair near some gate – as I still don’t know which gate my airplane will be in – with my butt hurting as I stretch my legs over my handbag.

I am not in my best mood, even though I am well fed(:, and I am sleepy, and I just want this three and half hours over sooner.

The only thing that is really getting me through this is watching Sex Education. I started watching it on my flight to Tbilisi, and right now I am on the last two episodes, which I find perfect because then I will not have to continue watching it at home and it will always be part of this mystical trip.

A lot of my colleagues recommended Sex Education. When I first started watching it, I was like wtf. This is a series about horny teens’ obsession with sex and unfortunate bullied victims who really do not have a chance. But as I made my way through the series, I realized that it is more than that, and I understood what my colleagues meant by homey.

It is a wonderful series that break the taboos about sex and address the topic as it is, unfiltered: humans are sexual beings and there is nothing wrong with pleasure, desires, and identities.

It teaches the audience that diversity is not only important but should be celebrated. That we should all be entitled to explore ourselves and our bodies and live through experiences to grow and learn. Our bodies, who we are identified as, and who we choose to love, are never wrong.

I still have two episodes left, and even though I consider myself progressive and a know-it-all, I learned a lot watching the series, about my body, and other people’s sexualities and identities.

I think the one thing I knew before, but the series has engraved it more in my mind, is that no one, no one, should feel the pressure to explain why they are the way they are. People are different, and it is absolutely beautiful.

No matter the color, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, belief, creativity, etc. it is to be praised and encouraged. Plus, I really wish Maeve and Otis end up together.

But I won’t spoil it for you.

I’m going back to watching the last two episodes, in hopes it get me through most of this painful waiting. The two episodes are two hours, so it will be 10:30pm by the time I finish them, which is only 20 mins away from boarding. So it should be fine.

The other option I have, except for reading (which I do not feel like I have the concentration cells to do), is to work on what is called a Daily Saving Allowance (DSA) package for work; each package needs to have 12 documents, and each document needs to be reviewed. And nope, no, sir. I know that I have been on leave for a week, but it’s still a Sunday night, and my leave ends on Tuesday. The last time I tried working on these packages was on my last layover and even though I spent two hours trying to sort the documents out, it felt like an endless maze.

Nope, thank you.

Back to Sex Education for now. I hope it’s a good ending, and I hope there is a fourth season soon.

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A peace of morning

A peace of morning was written on October 8, 2022.

I’m at this fancy hotel café, drinking sparkling water, waiting for my Belgian waffles and shakshuka, and I can hear crows.

Odd world, do you not agree?

Last week has been, well, not a typical week of the life of nour. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still uptight as fuck, but I tried to tune down my overthinking, and I lived a little.

I’ve been in Georgia for eight days now, walking in every nook and cranny until my feet bleed, listening to the noise of the city, and my music. I made so many friends, saw incredible nature, ate good food, went out on a date with a Russian guy, almost went out with a Georgian guy, visited Armenia, and Georgia’s countryside, and got a tattoo.

Remember the compass tattoo I mentioned briefly two years ago? Well, I finally got it. And I am absolutely in love with it.

It was all so sudden. I was with my American friend shopping at the flea market – which I am obsessed with by the way – and he just had the most remarkable exotic tattoo on his thigh, so I complimented it, and he told me that he actually did it here in Tbilisi. The tattoo artist is from Belarus, and she moved three months ago to Georgia and her work is nothing I’ve ever seen. So I booked an appointment on the same evening, and I got my compass (!).

For those of you who do not know the story of the compass, I’ve always suffered from existential and identity crisis, meaning, I never know who I am, what I want, or if this is really what I want from my life. I am scared, and anxious, most of the time, and I am forever searching for safety.

What is safety? Well, for me, safety is people, most of the time.

And as we all know, people leave, so when you associate your safety with people, you constantly find yourself unsafe and scared. And if you associate your safety with a place, you feel stuck, and being stuck is another crisis for me. So, as you see, I am still searching for safety.

And that is why I wanted to get a compass as a tattoo. Because a compass guides you to where you want, it takes you to the one thing you are searching for. And I want it to guide me to safety. My compass tattoo is a reminder for me that, on my darkest days, in my bleakest thoughts, I will look at it, and I will know that one day hopefully, it will guide me home.

Poetic, is it? Sorry, I’m just feeling serene. Currently, I am listening to I am scared of commitment by Jadal, which is ironic, and my breakfast i here. After breakfast, I am going to the flea market, for the third time this week :), and then visiting some abandoned haunted houses, then maybe meeting a friend over coffee.

The weather is magical, at least to me, there is no sun, and I am wearing a sweater. It’s a well day spent Saturday.

Adios now, I want to eat.

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Good morning from Tbilisi

Good morning from Tbilisi was written on October 3, 2022 (but never completed).

Good morning, bonjour, დილა მშვიდობისა. it’s a chilly yet sunny day in Tbilisi, and i’m feeling so tipsy on life.

Pouring down my Cappuccino Vienna, I am just observing the beauty around me. I am currently sitting at Santino Modcoffeebar, a Paris-like cafe in the middle of Tbilisi. To my left, a man is eating Shakshuka and smoking an e-cigarette, which makes me suspicious that he might be Arab or Lebanese.

Next to him sits a very interesting man with a very long Vikings-like beard, eating some sub-sandwich, with a stray dog looking at his sandwich, and the man eating Shakshuka throws him some of his food because he obviously didn’t like his Shakshuka. But every time the man feeds the dog, the dog returns to the Viking man because the dog associated that looking at the Viking man’s sandwich will get it food.

Fascinating, no?

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An explanation (?)

An explanation was written in September, before my leave.

Not an explanation actually. I just feel like I need to write this down, to have whatever I am thinking of outside me and not just inside my mind.

I have so many things flying through my mind, but none seem to make sense if I write them down. I guess what I am trying to do here is to justify myself and explain to you why I am acting whatever way I am, that is, if you even noticed at all, that is, if it is not only just in my head.

For those of you who might have noticed, I am distanced, and I might be acting defensively, a childish behavior, a mean attitude, in arrogance. If that is how you see me, then I am sorry; I did not mean to act like this or make you feel this way. It just changes are coming, and I am scared.

See, I have a coping mechanism to deal with all the bad things thrown our way. And I’m not saying I am any special, that I suffer more than you do; I am not special, at all.

I just have some problem that I am working on extensively in therapy, and that is I feel responsible for the pain of everyone.

I am responsible for poverty, unemployment, the crumpling education system, the legal injustice of women, the homeless, the orphans, the sick, the elderly. I am responsible for my mum’s exhaustion, my dad’s despair, my sisters’ pain. I am responsible for my friends not being happy enough, not reaching what they want to do. I am responsible for not doing everything perfectly at work, for all the mistakes that have been made by me and by everyone else that I have nothing to do with.

And this creates a lot of scenarios. I am responsible for unemployment, and I do not deserve to work. I am responsible for poverty, and I do not deserve to have money. I am responsible for the orphans and I do not deserve to have parents.

I am responsible for my friends’ problems because I was not there to solve them, I am responsible for my sister’s pain because I do not spend enough time with her, I am responsible for my mum being angry because I do not see her a lot. It is my responsibility, it is all my fault.

I am responsible for all of that, and the more painful responsibility I carry, the more tired I become. I am working on myself through, I promise, and I am getting better. But it takes time to take all that burden off my shoulders. It will take me some time, and I will eventually be guilt-free, and get rid of all the bizarre things that I have no control over whatsoever.

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It’s November

It's November

It’s November folks, and I just noticed that the last time I wrote here was August, which means that the last time I had a free moment to reflect was August. Wtf?

It wasn’t the last time I wrote, as I have four drafts that I will be sharing in a bit, but I thought first to write my usual interludes. I won’t give you reasons this time; I will not give you excuses. I am learning to stop feeling guilty over things I cannot control and stop overthinking and assuming that people will be upset. Because let’s face it, who the fuck really cares if I write here or if I don’t, except me?

I’ve grown a lot since August, and I tell you, a lot has happened. I traveled to Georgia and Armenia as a holiday, and I went to Egypt on a work mission, and I just celebrated my 25th birthday yesterday.

I have a lot to tell you. I have a lot to tell you about me, about things that are changing in me, about the storms and the rain and the voices that are actually easing up, about the taste(s) of freedom and certainty I got to experience, about my grandma who keeps haunting me, about him. I have a lot to tell you, changes that I cannot believe I passed through, people that I have let in, and people that I have let out. About space, about culture, about my switched thinking of how we should be, of how I should be. Can you believe that I’m actually drinking diet iced tea?

Fyi, for those who don’t know me, I do not drink iced tea, never. I’m drinking iced tea now as I write this, and it is not the first time I have drank iced tea in the past weeks. I am telling you this to measure the scale of change I have passed through.

Oh, and I got two tattoos. hehe. One of them is the compass that I briefly mentioned at the beginning of this blog. I want to talk about my tattoos, and show you them, but in a separate post.

For now, it’s November 2, 2022; I am 25 and a day, I am drinking diet peach-flavored iced tea at the office, and I am listening to She Passed Away Alone At Sea by Owsey, on repeat. I have an insane workload, but I finished most of the priorities and thought to myself, you deserve a break. I’m meeting my university friends after work, and it’s raining heavily, and my car is parked 5mins walking distance from the office, so that will be fun. I can see a rainbow just behind the mountains, and the music is consuming me.

It’s been a nice birthday week, even though yesterday I cried a lot. I had a beautiful birthday pool party on Sunday, organized by a wholesome being, and I had a lovely family dinner yesterday, and my sisters made the cookies I like, and today my colleagues at work surprised me with a birthday cake. My university friends will also probably celebrate my birthday today, and I am grateful.

It’s not all rainbows and unicorns, for sure. My heart is aching for a certain somebody in my life that I care about more than anything, but I am trying to let them deal with their problems without letting it affect me as much as it is right now, because, that’s how it should be. I’m trying.

Action points from my end:

  • Write a Georgia/Armenia overview
  • Write a Cairo overview
  • Write about my grandma
  • Write about him
  • Write about my tattoos
  • Keep on writing
  • Plan my Syria trip in two weeks

Also, it’s Christmas soon. yey.

How about you? You okay? Any exciting/nonexciting things to share with me? I would love to listen.