Category: Bits & pieces of everything

This time last year, I was working at a shelter for kids from abused and traumatic backgrounds. This time last year, I was living through so much uncertainty that I cried in front of my supervisor. This time last year, I was still the happiest I could ever be.

But we’ll get to that later.

The kids at the Home, my kids, they are the most wonderful creatures in the world. They are God’s gift to the world, to me. There are no words I can use to describe how much I love them; I wouldn’t love my own children as much as I love them.

I was visiting today, and I saw one of the girls (we’ll call her Grapes) upset and angry. She wasn’t breaking anything or hitting other girls, the way she used to do whenever she was upset; she just stood near the door.

I sat next to her on the floor and asked her to sit next to me. After a few attempts, she sat next to me, and that’s when she started crying. She cried her eyes out, desperately pleading, desperately trying to ease the pain away.

Grapes did nothing wrong but be a child in a world so cruel. She has the eyes of an angel and the smile of a goddess, yet she was used and abused by her father in the most vicious way possible. She was left neglected, unattended, uncared for, for so many years inside and outside the Home. And she did nothing wrong but exist.

I’m not sure how many years she’s been living at the Home, but Grapes lives in a shelter all alone. She does not have many visitors, and she can’t get out and live outside the Home because she’s 12, and life outside is so scary for her with real monsters and terrifying family.

How awful is that? My heart breaks for her, for all of my beautiful kids stuck at the Home because all they did wrong is be children.

I’m not sure I’m ready to open up about the Home, my time there, my people, and the children who shaped the person I am today. I have endless stories, beautiful and sad ones, but I guess it’s still too heavy for me to reminisce, to share.

I guess I’m still trying to recover from all of it, from the fact that I left my kids, who I promised myself never to leave, like everything and everybody else in their lives. I guess I’m still not ready to talk about the life and soul that I was forced to leave behind.

But I’m here for you, my little Grapes, I always am. I may not always be able to hug you while you cry like today, but I’m always thinking of you, and I love you because you’re so lovable, and you deserve to be loved. God, you are so loved. I wish our kids can realize how loved they are by so many people who worked for them, including myself.

You are so loved. You so are.

I’m back to a life I don’t belong in.

It was like any other day before the one week break, a corporate day full of corporate tasks and eight hours of work behind a desk. After work, I got stuck in traffic, ate cold dinner, and went to my therapy session.

And now, I’m back here writing, rethinking my day, rethinking how simple last week was when I was not bounded with hours, when I was not strangled by expectations that make me over-work myself to be competent enough to work in the biggest humanitarian organization in the world.

Last week, I took control of my life again. I chose what to do with my daylight hours and how to be productive according to my own schedule, and I was simply in control, which is major because I’ve been driving a car with no breaks for months.

Why can’t I do what I want? Why can’t I simply be? A lot of people take gap years, sabbatical, yoga retreats for self-development. Many people have the privilege to put a halt on their lives for a while; why can’t I?

I would leave and take a break from the labor market for a month or two, or three. In a different country and under different circumstances, I would do that. I have enough money to sustain me for a year; I can study quietly and work on my self-implementation and decide what to do with my hours accordingly.

I would read again. I would go back to the life of the 80s, the books and the movies and the music and the communism and the resilience and the cause, the one cause.

I would go back to being frivolous, light-hearted, free. I was always referred to as an “air signed” kind of person; even though I’m a water sign, I would go back to that. I would go back to being irrelevant, to being someone that exists for me and not for everybody and everything else.

Please don’t think that I am ungrateful, because believe me; I am not. I am so privileged with so many blessings that I don’t deserve. I am so grateful for all the things I wished for and had granted. I am so grateful for my life and my God, I am so grateful for my God. There are no words to describe how incredible my God has been, and I’m grateful for simply that.

But

Why can’t it be simpler? Why do we have to grow up?

“Growing up is what we call it when we feel like our parents can no longer protect us.” My therapist told me this today, and I’ve been overthinking. According to him, it’s when we can see ourselves living without our parents, without feeling our parents’ protection and security. How awful is that? That I might have reached this?

This daylight saving changing time is not doing me well these couple of days. I spend all the daylight hours behind a desk! I mean, I don’t know how people usually do it, but it’s not making any sense.

It’s like, I can literally say I spent all day at work. And specifically today, my day literally just started.

I need to go shopping for a Halloween event tomorrow, and I need to get my sister the last props for her engagement tomorrow, and I need to get yet, another pair of slippers, because… slippers.

Did I mention that today is also the last day before my 11 days leave? I didn’t? Well, TODAY IS MY LAST DAY BEFORE A LONG 11 DAYS LEAVE.

It’s the longest I didn’t have work in, like, 3 years.

As I think of my week now, I realize that I planned my schedule in a way where I won’t really have time for myself, which means by the time this leave ends I’ll probably be exhausted from the social and all the other things that I would need a few days of rest, but that’s okay. I would not have any responsibility dawning upon me.

Which is also a new thing. Right now, I finished all evaluation forms for volunteers and I-FINALLY-applied to my second BA, and I did all the call-outs and talked to everyone I needed to talk to, and I don’t have meetings schedule ahead. It’s like I exist without the pressure of existing, which is pretty exciting.

I hate it when I care. It’s not a nice color on me, when I care. It makes me feel too much, and we all know how much I hate over-feeling. It really doesn’t compliment me, because I’m not as healthy when it comes to these things, I tend to think in the strangest way possible, and I convince myself that it’s reality, and it’s just a beating.

But what if it’s not true? What if it’s not personal? How can I convince myself that caring isn’t a vulnerability and that sometimes people’s actions are not directed at me but are directed at the universe in general?

It’s so hard to convince myself, to either care healthily or not care at all. I prefer the latter really, it’s less thinking and more apathy, and even though I’m not fond of apathy, I’m not fond of weakness either.

As I listen to Halloween music and try to shake this frustration I’m feeling; I find myself searching for new opportunities and new things to fill my life with, knowing that I don’t even have a minute to spare in my back-to-back schedule.

Maybe I’m searching for an opportunity to replace another? Because that’s how it is, whenever I’m feeling the way I am, I leave, and I tend to want to hurt myself as a way to hurt others, and I don’t even know why.

Yet here I am, casually applying for a volunteering opportunity with a center dealing with Alzheimer’s and Dementia patients. I always wanted to volunteer beyond what I usually do with the elderly, and I’m kind of excited to meet these new beautiful people and listen to their stories.

I think I’m trying to find distractions, escaping the vicious dilemma I’ve put myself in. Funny how the safety I once thought I had is now the thing I’m trying to get away from. It got too heavy on me, too inconsistent, and now all I want is to rid myself of this feeling of clinginess and the idea that my priorities might be different.

It’s weird though, how dependent I sometimes get, and how easily it gets manipulated. Why do I do that? Why do I keep putting trust and giving chances, knowing that it won’t change and everything needs to go its own way?

I feel a certain discomfort that I cannot shake.

It’s like I’m in the wrong place and with the wrong person, yet I don’t know where the right place is and who the right person is. But I know this is not it, I know I’m in the wrong place.

It’s like I lived in a cloud for a while and now I’m slowly falling down, without a ground to fall on. Like the person I was sitting on a cloud with is standing at the edge threatening to shake the stability of the cloud, only because this person can.

I don’t feel like I belong in where I am right now, I’m not feeling the belonging I felt anymore, and I don’t feel in control. I hate now being in control. Why can’t you be here, with me, why can’t you do the thing(s) I told you to do and say to me all the things you probably never would say?

So frustrating to wait for you to understand, yet you never do. Why can’t I control you? If all that you say is true, you should understand. You need to understand.

I wish I can rid myself of dependency, of over-feeling, over caring. I would like not to worry as much.

Some people are luckier than others.

And I don’t mean in the context of “In Lebanon, some people are luckier than me”, I mean some people are luckier than the Lebanese.

Imagine growing up in a country where human rights is not a myth, and corruption can be tackled, and when you graduate, the chances of getting employed are very high. Imagine being in a place where you spend money on luxuries without feeling guilty because tomorrow, there is no possibility that you might end up on the streets.

Imagine not worrying about hot water and electricity hours; having proper air conditioning in the summer and central heating in the winter. Imagine not having to worry about all of this at all!

Imagine not understanding politics and not having to. Imagine voting a politician out because of their sexist remarks or their cheeky emails. Having to worry about minor stresses, imagine having the privilege of security.

It baffles me when foreigners decide to live in Lebanon. I understand wanting to visit Lebanon; we have a beautiful country. But living in it? Why bring so much unnecessary instability in your life?

I don’t mean to sound so negative, but I’m honestly so tired. We have to worry about basic human rights and needs, whereas it has become too much of a fact in other places that they don’t even think about any of this.

At work, we’re not even fighting discrimination against persons of color; we are just fighting to end slavery under a messed up system called kafala (sponsorship). Imagine still struggling to convince people that they can’t own people based on their color?

Writing this makes me laugh to myself, as I was always the most positive among a group. I can’t believe that Lebanon has already broken me and that I don’t see hope in everyone and everything anymore.

It should be easier than this. It really should.

I don’t like reading other people’s blogs, which is why I don’t. I don’t like reading Wattpad or people my age’s-or younger-stories/articles/blogs, because I always find myself challenged and I’m not confident enough to compete.

Reading other people’s blogs, especially people my age, makes me insecure because I always find other people’s writings so beautiful, and it makes me write less and less because how can I even?

Yesterday a friend asked me to read a chapter she wrote, and I found it almost as pretty as her. the positivity and wittiness of her writing were so meticulous; she’s so talented. It was obvious that she’s in love and that she’s in the state of content I aspire for. I think this is the strength of a skilled writer; when the reader knows details of the writer’s life without the writer implying anything.

He/she can write about the color of flowers and the reader would know that the writer is suicidal. That’s the beauty of writing, the reason why I think writers enjoy it, it’s because they can write nonsense and it still would make so much sense.

Writing for the961.com was so healing on so many levels. Not only did I enjoy writing about my country and being part of the intense journalistic world, I enjoyed working in something I actually consider myself good at (most of the time). I was the961’s most successful writer at that time, with the highest rate of reads. Tens and thousands of reads per article? That was unreal.

On a less known writing shenanigan, I have a story published somewhere on the internet. It’s 214 pages long and It has so many typos and grammar mistakes but it’s so close to my heart and I love it so much.

I started writing it during the summer of 2014 as a way to feel relevant. I’ve always written short stories and created dialogues in my head, and 2014 was the year I actually wrote a whole story with details and a hook and main characters that I had the privilege to live with.

Writing has always been my escape, the thing dearest to my heart, which is why people saying that I’m a good writer is honestly the best compliment I could ever get. You can spit in my face but tell me I write well, and I will love you forever.

My story was called Rape Me, inspired by Nirvana’s song of the same name. It went through so much with me. Even though I finished it around March 2015, the times I used to write and update the chapters were the times I felt most alive, relevant, and in control.

The story helped me overcome so much, including heartbreak and bereavement. It gave me a platform to express my views and reflect on many causes I’m most passionate about. It was more or less a fiction diary, with virtual people reading approving/disapproving. Setting up a goal to write a chapter every day gave me a reason to wake up in the morning.

I keep going back to it every now and then, revisit 16 years old nour. As I read through it, I can’t but wonder what would me at 16 think of me at 22. I think if somebody told me then that this is what I’ll do and what will happen and who I will become, I would never believe it.

I think 16 years old me would be happy. I think it would make her proud. The whole dazzlement of my life right now will blow her away, and I doubt she will notice the dark mental side of all of it. I wonder if she would believe me if I told her that growing up, I will stop listening to Bring Me The Horizon and start listening to Amy Winehouse.

She would probably laugh at the grandma I have become, and she would probably convince me to make Twitter the center of my life again. I can’t but feel happy knowing that 6 years ago, I never thought I would make it this far.

This is to you, for believing. Thank you.

Ps. I would never share the link to my story (I’m sorry). But here are some feedback I used to get (which still makes me ugly smile):

Thank you virtual people. I love that you exist.

I can’t stop thinking about the story my friend told me last Wednesday.

(Let’s call my friend Apple)

It was mid-July, and Apple couldn’t stop feeling like something bad is going to happen. She felt trapped, scared, and unsafe; she knew she needed to leave Lebanon. She talked to her boyfriend and wondered if they could go on a work trip to Turkey for a few months, so they decided to leave.

Before leaving, Apple was swimming in the sea on a hot July day when she felt an ocean current sucking her in. Normally an excellent swimmer, she felt completely paralyzed. “Instead of swimming parallel to the shore, I could not move. The current was slowly drowning me, and I could not do anything.”

Luckily, somebody saw her hand in the air and swam to her rescue. But she could not get over the incident. She woke up every night feeling trapped again in the current, and she just wanted to feel free.

But she got out. Apple and her boyfriend moved to Turkey for two months; they left a few days before the Beirut blast. She was able to explore herself and meditate. “Apple is in a yoga retreat;” her boyfriend jokes.

I’m pretty sure what Apple went through is PTSD, after the drowning incident. But what about the feeling before? The feeling of escaping Lebanon before the blast. What about the feeling of drowning for consecutive days after being saved by a stranger?

I feel like Apple has turned the abstraction of the metaphor “trapped and drowning” into an actual reality.

I wonder how many poor souls drown every day but are not lucky enough to escape. I wonder how many times they need to drown until someone finally sees their hands in the air. I wonder if they ever get out, out of the current, the country, the sea.

I can’t but wonder how many people never had anyone to save them and to see their hands and swim towards them. I wonder if they ever felt freedom.

I’m happy for Apple, that she was able to get out, because she deserves freedom and yoga and everything in the world. I’m happy that some can still fight despite the current, that some still raise their hands asking for help instead of giving up to the sea and its unpredictable tornadoes.