Category: Mental Health & Whatnot

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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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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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Do you ever feel stuck?

Stuck in the meaning that no matter what you do, you are still in the same place you don’t want to be. You throw tantrums, overthink absurdities, slack on work, procrastinate, binge eat, act different from what you really want, then writhe in shame the night(s) after.

It’s like, urgh. Why can’t it be easier? Why can’t I be more normal? I must grow up at someone point, no?

They always say in therapy that it gets worse before it gets better. As in, if you have a problem, it will become really hard, and you will suffer, and then it will be fixed.

But no one told us what or how much we would lose until we got better. Will people stay here after our internal storm? Or have we left too many scars to mend? Did we really leave an open window for them to escape us when needed and come back later? How much of the damage can we repair?

I trust the process; I trust the therapeutic approach that assures us that it gets worse before getting better. I need to trust it, to be honest, because if not, I really am going into a malicious tunnel, and I will definitely destroy myself and everyone around me. Hence, lol, no therapy is good, and I trust therapy.

It’s just that I am stuck in habits I want to get out of but are too rooted underneath. It’s exhausting because it’s a vicious cyclic dilemma that I do not want to be in, yet I find myself the queen of it.

I’m currently at work, with a cold espresso to my left, a dried bread to my front, 6 chocolate bars to my right, courtesy of my new cute colleague. And my water mug. As usual, I’m swamped with unending tasks, and as usual, I am seeking this blog for some entertainment.

I do not exactly fathom all that is happening, all that I am feeling, all that is coming. I do know one thing, I need a break from this, from myself, from the nonsense that is my world.

Today, I was validated at work; my new colleague recognized how much I work, noting that “I’ve set the bar really high” if I ever left. For someone that always feels like I am not doing enough, this had a certain sweet taste in my mouth. Thank you, dear person, for recognizing what I still suffer to admit.

I am currently freezing because the AC is so high, and I’m wearing somebody else’s jacket, and I need it to be a bit less cold because I almost cannot feel my fingers. I also slept at 2am yesterday, so the act of opening my eyelids is painful on its own.

What am I listening to? Nothing special, really. If anything, I need song suggestions if you have some. Help your girl out; maybe music would distract me from the mess I am making.

I need to go back to work. Talk later. Soon. x

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Is sadness a choice?

sadness

Sadness is a choice, you said. I wish it is, sadness, I wish it is a choice. I wish I could wake up one day feeling super happy and go like, “I am kind of bored with this feeling of joy; I shall squeeze my heart to suffocation and cry for three days.”

This is an actual conversation I had with a friend, a dear friend, I must say. I usually am quick with shutting people out, especially if they talk about mental health as a choice, but he’s such a dear friend, and it upsets me so much that he doesn’t understand. I do not feel sad by choice; I do not like being sad. Sad is not healthy for me. Sad is painful.

I wish it is, though. I promise you, if it were a choice, you would never see me so much as frown. Hell, I would delete this whole blog. If sadness is something I can pull in and out of a magic hat, I would pull it out and feed it to my friend’s stray cat who ate its children, twice.

I wish I can be normal, be worthy of you. But I am not, normal, and I am trying so hard but I am failing. And I am sorry.

I wish I could stop whatever I am feeling and go back to whatever I used to be, or whatever you want me to be. I wish I could turn this off, sleep it away, close my eyes, and when I open them, I only feel peace in my heart and warmth in my soul.

It is back. I feel anxious, a lot, and I lost my safe space. My anxiety is terrible these days, and I do not know how to fight it. I am trying my best, believe me. But the fear in my heart and pain in my bones make it so hard to be normal, and I am sorry.

I am sorry I am not the friend you expected, I try. I know I dramatize everything; I make things so much bigger than they are. I know I am over-sensitive and easily triggered, and I know I am a crybaby. And I’m sorry, but all I want for now is someone to hold me tight and hug me to sleep. I am sorry for being so needy.

I keep asking you to wait on me, but you have every right not to. Nobody wants someone that brings the group down; nobody really wants a sad friend.

I won’t ask you to wait on me, or understand me, anymore. You can leave; it’s okay; please do leave if you feel so uncomfortable, if I have upset you in any way. It is okay; you do not have to feel bad for me. I know you love me, or at least loved me before my drama, but you can leave.

I’ll get through this; choice or not, I have to get through this. It doesn’t seem like God wants me any time soon, so I’ll have to fight it, whatever it is.

Thank you for sticking by for as long as you could. I appreciate you.

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Everybody leaves

Everybody leaves. Maybe I’m a bit too hard to love, and maybe it takes a little more effort to stay with me, an effort you don’t want to make, and maybe I am not worthy at all to care and be cared for, and maybe this is why no one’s here when I need them, or even when I don’t. 

Maybe I’m just a little too ugly, a little too loud, a little too much, and there are so much more important things in your life you can’t really bother with someone as broken as I am, and I don’t blame you for that.

I would never blame you for leaving, because why would you not? I blame myself for staying without really looking twice if you’d really care if I stay or leave. I blame myself for making myself think that I could ever be worthy of this, of all of this. 

I blame myself, for caring too hard, for loving too much, for putting you first when you really didn’t care to put me second. I blame myself for giving you my all and when I wanted you to give me a little, you weren’t even here.

Maybe it is me, maybe I give so much that I make you independent  of me, maybe I encourage you to use me and only come to me when you’re bored. Maybe I have taken the role of the prostitute in your life; you come for a night of pleasure and throw me away the very next morning. Maybe it is me, I am too broken beyond repair and you didn’t want to put up with that. 

I know you love me, but not because you care about me, but because I care about you and you need that. This is why you are never here in my low points or high points,you only come for yourself and never for me. And it’s okay, I understand that, it’s just me who anticipates shit that isn’t there.

Thing is, I expect you to neglect me. I expect you to do less and care less despite what you think or feel. I expect  you to forget me, to leave me, I expect the worst of you because I expect so little of me and I will never believe you can actually care.

And the funny thing is, you didn’t really prove me wrong. You haven’t really proved to me you care, and you have mastered the skill of neglect, and you have endeavored the act of me chasing you that now it has become a confidence booster to you. 

Maybe I’m too awful to love. Maybe my skin’s a bit unclear and my double chin is a bit too obvious and my voice is fucking terrible to listen to. Maybe my lisp is too annoying and my hunchback is disgusting and my clothings are a bit too chabby. 

And this is why I will leave. Because you make me feel like the cheapest doll and I don’t want to reach the point where you break my plastic body and throw me in the garbage. I will leave because you make me feel all those things, you make me feel like a beast and, forgive me, but I no longer want to feel that way.

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My blog turns one today🎂

Dear lovelies, the awesome readers of my blog,

My baby’s one today. Happy birthday, nourslittleuniverse; I am over my head with thoughts and impressions, and I am so proud of you.

Being the uptight structured moi, I am overflowed with so many things to write and so many bits and pieces to share, and whenever I feel like writing too much, I freeze, and I would get writer’s block because lol. The life of nonsense is me, and I am it.

As per the aforementioned – ;), I have categorized my thoughts into the following points, and I’m hoping I make some sense because when I’m excited, I lose words, and I just end up smiling like a creep, and since you can’t see me smile you’ll probably think I am a mess-which I am, but I wouldn’t want you to think that.

Embrace yourself; this will be a long post.

Anyway, the points are:

Songs you can listen to while reading this🎵
General overview: a- Typos b- Content✍️
Feedback📝
FAQ❓
Photos – cover photos🖼️
Today🎋
Plans & future🩰
Round of applause👏

Songs you can listen to while reading this🎵

I am currently listening to two songs:

Eid Miladek – A5rass: I discovered this song in March 2021. The song is so simple yet so alluring. The theme revolves around a girl he loves, who is currently in a relationship with another person, but he still wants to be part of her life; he makes her laugh when her partner upsets her, and he cries so many times while her hand is in the hands of another.

He tells her that he will hide her from everyone’s eyes, and he will protect her from them, and on her birthday, he will sing her all the songs that have been sung until this day, and he will still not do her just.

I cannot even?

Malibu – Miley Cyrus: I heard this song first during the summer of 2017, and every time I listen to it, I close my eyes, and I see myself sitting on a shore on the last days of summer, looking at a sunset and feeling a slight chill because autumn is near. This song reminds me of healing, reminds me that after summer, there is always winter, and winter is always happy.

Please note that I don’t have a music identity and that I listen to Miley Cyrus, System Of A Down, Pink Floyd, The Smiths, Abdulhalim, Alternative Arabic, all in one playlist. But we can discuss this later.

General overview: a- Typos b- Content✍️

Where to begin? When I first created this beautiful space, I was at B-Hive; Maysa was helping me with organizing my volunteers’ database, and I was supposed to reply to emails, but all I was doing was designing this blog from scratch. The template, font, color, photos, categories, tools, widgets, appearances, everything. It was too thrilling, and I was so intrigued to borne something so dear to my heart from empty white canvas.

It has been an incredible journey, and I think this blog is solely the best thing I ever did for myself. It is healing me in so many ways I cannot describe.

Looking back at the past year, I cannot but think of all the insanely magnificent people I have met, hugged, loved, cried for. The ones who left and the ones who stayed, the people that shaped me into what I am today, the ones who broke me and rebuilt me, they all are immortalized here, in every word and every photo, and I am in bliss.

On spelling and grammar mistakes – I would like to sincerely apologize for all the typos and grammar errors in my writings. I acknowledge most, and my camera roll is full of screenshots of typos that I find when I reread all posts, and I say I want to fix them, and I never do. I will someday, I promise.

Content – this marks not only one year of blogging but also my 100th post. Granted, I expected to write more in one year, but 100 posts mean one post every four days for a whole year and??? wow.

I know that the figures are inaccurate, that I have probably written five articles in one day, and that I have skipped July and August, but the range is good enough for me, and I am so happy I committed for a whole year. I did not expect that.

There are times where I thought that if I didn’t have anyone reading my blog-as per my analytics-I would be discouraged to write, but that was not the case. There were many times where I had zero visitors, and I still wrote because I enjoy writing, and even though I LOVE it when you read my posts, I am also happy to write for myself.

Feedback📝

The outstanding feedback you have given me the past year is too heart-wrenching to even speak of. I absolutely loved your feedback, and for those who read my blog in silence, please do talk to me, give me feedback, feed the confidence of the 12 years old nour that lives inside me and that dreams of people loving her and what she writes.

Your feedback not only encourages me to write but also keeps me alive. You have no idea how much it means to me that the one thing I absolutely love, the one thing I think I am good at, and the one thing that has accompanied me through all my life, is something you think I’m good at too. It’s like telling an insecure bird that it can fly. You encourage me to spread my wings, and I am so grateful.

Your words, I remain in awe.

FAQ❓

A question I frequently get is: who’s the person you keep writing love letters to? The answer to this answers the other frequent question: why do you not tell me what you write about?

Because if I could speak about what I write, I wouldn’t really write it. I created this blog to be able to share all the things I cannot talk about, so I can never really explain to you the context behind most of what I write about because I honestly cannot express it.

There’s always a face to my letters, there’s always a certain somebody that I am thinking of as I write, but it isn’t really one person. I have probably written to/about at least five persons, and if you’re smart enough, you’ll figure yourself out.

But forgive me, I can never tell you more than you are reading, so you’ll probably have to read through the lines.

This answers the following frequent question: why so depressive most of the time? Because I am not accustomed to sharing when I am sad, which is why I would only write them here. It’s not really about me being depressed; it’s really just that these are things I cannot express or talk about, yet I need to rid myself of them somewhere, and et voila, I have a blog for that.

Would you take negative feedback? I’m sorry, but no. If you have negative thoughts about my blog, please refrain from sharing them with me. The blog is too personal, it is me putting myself out there, with all my raw emotions and personal experiences, and you criticizing means you are criticizing my feelings, my personality, and I’m not confident enough to accept that.

Photos – cover photos🖼️

Out of the 100+ photos shared here, only 5 of them are not mine, but all photos reflect a very personal moment, a cherished minute, a loveful memory, a second that I wanted to immortalize. All photos have meaning and a story behind them; it usually takes me considerable time to choose a photo.

As for the cover photo, it was taken at Concierge coffee shop while I was with Ghassan during one of our infinite study/work dates. Before COVID-19, Ghassan and I met almost daily at coffee shops, mainly New Yorker, to work and study, and they were precious times. Thank you, Ghassan, I may have never thanked you for the lovely memories, and I hope if you ever read this that you know I am grateful.

Maybe I’ll change the cover photo? To mark one year of this baby alive and kicking, but perhaps I don’t because I’m boring and because I don’t like change. I’ll think about it 💭

Today🎋

Yesterday was one of those sweeter days where I had my moments of being a social butterfly, and I made new friends and held tight to old ones. I

finished work at 8:00pm, came back home, showered, and reflected on how much I enjoyed every moment of this Wednesday. It’s 1:15am right now, and I will probably finish this by 1:45am, and I will probably be able to fall asleep at 2-2:30am, and I need to wake up at 6:30am tomorrow because I need to be at the office at 8:00am to finish pending tasks from yesterday, and I will be finished work at 6:00pm because I have a meeting at 5:00pm, so that is ten hours of work, and I will be waking up dead because I need my 9 hours of beauty sleep and I won’t have that.

But, that’s alright, writing all this here is worth it, plus my friend is taking me out for Shawarma after work, so it is okay.

Plans & future🩰

I plan to continue writing, to bore you with the details of my pain and the thoroughness of my days. I plan to tell you everything, share my days with you, write poems and short stories, and everything. I plan to keep loving this blog as much as I do now, and maybe more.

There are some things that I really want to start with, like taking creative writing courses and enrolling myself in aerial yoga, but I am not good with resolutions and, given my crunched schedule, I will not give any promises.

Round of applause👏

I am forever humbled that you take moments of your day to read this. Honestly, no words amount to how grateful I am for you. For the readers and my friends and the strangers, I am forever thanking you for being the most beautiful souls.

Thank you for giving me a chance, for loving me in all the times I did not deserve love. Thank you for all the memories that I cannot fit in this very long post; thank you for yesterday and all the tomorrows.

Thank you for everything, thank you for this blog, thank you for a world so wonderful. Thank you, and good night.

🎤

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You whiny baby

But nour, you’re a whiny baby. You love being alone. You keep referring to everything scary as dark, yet all you wear is black, your nails are mostly painted black, and you can’t wait to turn off all the lights in the room, and your favorite coffee is pure black.

Nour, you talk almighty about being around people, yet you choose to stay in on a Saturday night because you want to write about your pain, and you crave silence.

You just skipped a very social weekend to clean your closet and bookstore in peace. You’ve upset more than five people as you drink your pot of coffee and your eyes hurt because of all the crying and all you want is to sleep alone in your empty cold bed and wake up at 4:30am on a Sunday to walk for mental health awareness.

Nour, you speak of desolation, yet you only love walking alone and you hate when someone offers to walk with you.

You’re listening to a song with a chorus that says: “Patient, dreamer, I want to see a better day than mine. Dead, strong, outcast, I don’t live in my worries,” and you don’t even know what it means, but it seems sad, and you’re okay with just that.

You baffle me with your moodiness and over-excessive sentiment. You’re alone, you always have been, yet your heart hurts because your loved ones left, and you want them around you the way they have been. You preach the quiet, and you miss the loud.

How come you talk trash about pale, yet you’re so white? How come you’re laughing all the time yet you claim agony? It doesn’t seem right, nour, to be so in love with independence, yet all you want is for him to tell you he loves you.

You talk big about mental health, yet you’re your worst bully. You overload yourself with work, over-carry responsibilities that aren’t your own, shame yourself for not being perfect, talk loud when all you want is to whisper, ignore your loved ones when all you want is to listen to them. You hurt the ones you love the most, nour, and you complain when they keep distance.

And when it comes to people, you choose the easy way out. You don’t fight for anyone, no matter how much you love them, no matter how much it tortures you every second of every day, how much you want them to stay, you would never tell them, never say it out loud. You keep torturing yourself because being this self-maltreated is still easier than showing them you’re vulnerable.

Nour, you are your worst enemy. You love too much and act so little. You feel too much and show so little. You’re oversensitive, and you want them all to see you as the strongest. You’re happy to be called cheerful, and you’re that saddest person you know. Your loneliness is killing you, yet your time alone keeps you alive.

Maybe you need to start figuring yourself out before asking too much of people. Maybe fix yourself before asking people to love you, before expecting them to stay. Maybe then they will stop leaving you, nour, maybe then they will choose you, maybe then it will not hurt as much because you already know no one will leave you because you’re too broken for them to stay.

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I haven’t read a book for so long

I’ve probably started with a book (or five) the past year and did not finish any, and to be honest, the last book I fully read was in June 2020, and I am so ashamed. I can feel my language weakening and my words becoming less appealing, and I miss the feeling of wholesomeness when reading a beautiful book, but I haven’t, for over a year.

“Between pain and nothing, I’d chosen nothing.”

The past few months have been a rollercoaster, I honestly did not have time for anything, and I have not been alone for a second. Right now, as I said goodbye to my dear loved ones, and I sunk into my empty bed, with the cold AC breeze hurting my skin, I am alone.

I used to be a bookworm, I read all the time and anywhere. I would read a book, finish it in a few days, take a break for a week from all the emotions that linger after, then start with a new one. It was my life, to live in other writers’ worlds, feel feelings that aren’t mine, get consumed by the rush of events and excitement. Nowadays, I am too overwhelmed with my own messiness to live anybody else’s; I have ignored the one thing I loved: reading.

Right now, in my hole of loneliness, I am craving the books, I am craving to feel anything but my feelings. Right now, as I suffer from major separation anxiety (as expected) I cannot but remember my favorite book, the one book that describes loss at its best, the one author that describes loss so thorough that it’s too painful to read that I often found myself hugging the book and closing my eyes because the emotions are just too much to handle.

“Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second-hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.”

New Moon, Stephenie Meyer

You’re probably judging me by now, because you have seen the movie, or because it’s trendy to hate on Twilight, but I’m telling you, you did not read the book. You honestly do not know written pain if you have not read New Moon. I was 14 when I first read Twilight, and I specifically read New Moon more than 20 times, reading and rereading the pain of Stephenie that remains as anguishing as the first time, she describes what it feels to lose:

“It was a crippling thing, this sensation that a huge hole had been punched through my chest, excising my most vital organs and leaving ragged, unhealed gashes around the edges that continued to throb and bleed despite the passage of time. Rationally, I knew my lungs must still be intact, yet I gasped for air and my head spun like my efforts yielded me nothing. My heart must have been beating, too, but I couldn’t hear the sound of my pulse in my ears; my hands felt blue with cold. I curled inward, hugging my ribs to hold myself together. I scrambled for my numbness, my denial, but it evaded me.”

New Moon, page 105

This. Exactly this. This is what I feel whenever I lose my close ones; the hole in my chest is surreal that sometimes I feel like if somebody opened me up they will literally find a real hole twisting within my ribs. It’s fear adding to anxiety, I cannot lose people and move on. I avoid music I used to listen to when I was with them, I avoid our common places, certain streets, mutual friends, photos and videos, anything that reminds me of the someone that does not exist in my life anymore. I even avoid them if they tried to reach out, their memory is more powerful than them itself and I protect myself from it all.

And I feel pain inside my guts. I feel the monsters waiting for me to sleep only to wake me up in my most moment of comfort to remind me of what I have lost, to remind me that even though I will find happiness again someday, I will always lose the people I love most.

“I worried- late in the night, when the exhaustion of sleep deprivation broke down my defenses- that it was all slipping away. That my mind was sieve, and I would someday not be able to remember the precise color of his eyes, the feel of his cool skin, or the texture of his voice. I could not think of them, but I must remember them.

Because there was one thing that I had to believe to be able to live- I had to know that he existed. That was all. Everything else I could endure. So long as he existed.”

I will go back to reading again, I promise. Hey you, be a dear and recommend me nice romantic novels that also tackle mental health-preferably depression and loss-that is so compelling I would sniff the pages when finished. Yes, this is the genre I chose, no judgements please.

(I hope you never lose a loved one.)
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Let’s go away

To be sucked into a turmoil, unable to drift away, indulged in uncanny in denial and a lust for an escape, a swim in the middle of nowhere, fear of the heavily presence, and the inability to feel within the premises of internal agony and willing to live.

June’s almost over, and I haven’t written anything here. Maybe writing would bring me back, or maybe it’s a push, so I don’t feel like I’m not committing, like leaving in the middle, and then blaming myself for always taking the easy way out.

I’m not depressed; this is a fact. I am not even sad, generally speaking. I have my sad moments, and I am reigniting the shy kid involuntarily; even my sly social skills of not socializing at all are resurfacing, but I am doing okay.

It’s just I feel trapped, overwhelmingly more than usual. Granted, I’ve always felt trapped, and it’s part of my lavishing existential crisis, but it’s been severe lately. I finally understand people’s obsession with oceans; I’ve been craving the sea tremendously.

I finally understand the peace and freedom of diving into the middle of the sea and feeling like you own your space, like you own your liberation, like you can be nowhere, away, very far from your premonition and unbearable obsessions, leaving your heavily sedated baggage of unnecessary responsibilities and self-expectations on the shore.

Yet, no matter how much you swim deep, you can still look back and see the shore; it’s where you will land after you leave for a while. At sea, you sit stretched between the landing hole of maturity and life and the nothingness, and you rest assured that even though you can reach as far as you want into the nothing, there is still a land to go back to. That’s security; that’s my safety.

I am a child of trauma. No matter how much I fight it, no matter how much I act normal and try to blend in, I am a person who still suffers greatly from unresolved trauma. I see two therapists now; my usual therapy, whom I still love as much, and a trauma specialist that I hope can help me tackle the one trauma I want to overcome. I know it’s not healthy to see two doctors, and I don’t plan on juggling this for long; I’m just getting my feet wet and seeing if it’ll do me any good.

The trauma, my unresolved anger, the stress, it’s all getting pretty serious because it is affecting my physical health and not just taking a toll on my mental health. I’ve been sick for a while, but I usually dismiss anything that has to do with my physical health.

Still, two months of unbearable nausea that does not go away, significant weight loss, body aches, back pain, and a high fever on Sunday made me wonder. Nour, you may need to slow down and see what all the fuss is about.

I am a child of trauma, and my brain is wired to live on survival mode and internal search for safety, and I am still roaming deep. I have figured this out through my work with children from traumatic backgrounds; the resemblance in behavior and actions were intolerable, I realized that I have barely healed.

I’ve had great moments in the past month, some may be one of the best memories I have, and I remain grateful. Right now, I am picturing a sunset by the seashore, and I am listening to an idyllic song; I am in a state of peace. Maybe soon I can share a little of what has been going on with me lately, maybe soon I can return home.

For now, I need my sea time.