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My mum cradled me to sleep yesterday

It was 9:00 pm, and I couldn’t breathe from all my crying, and my mum hugged me tight and cradled me to sleep. I had a panic attack, and I wanted to stop crying; I did (I do), but every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was you, heard your voice, smelled you, and as much as I tried to get you out of my head, you kept maliciously growing, like cancer.

I had a fever all night, and all my hallucinations were about you. My current fever is 38 celsius, and it hurts even to cry, but if only I could control the way I feel, I would have taught myself how to forget your name.

Every time I remember that I will never hear you sing along a song in my car, make you coffee, make fun of the way I talk, wake you up in the morning, stay up all night while you tell me about the most inane things, things that are only interesting when you tell them.

Every time I think of the fact that, out of all people, you left, taking away all my safety and all the security hung by a threat, I die a million times inside.

You promised you would always be here for me; you promised you promised. Is this your definition of being here for me? You were my definition of warmth, and I cannot believe I was this lucky to have you. Do you know those illustrations, where a girl is all covered with black and noise, and then someone holds her hand, and not only the noise and black disappear, the world is recolored with brighter light. You were that to me, and now you are gone, and I don’t know how to go on without you.

I’ll miss you forever. Your memories are unending, but I probably have four memories of you that struck the most, that make me want to pull the pain out of my hair. I will write them, with all the details burning inside my mind, so I keep you alive everywhere, so you keep feeding off from my happiness. I will write them down, so every time my mind even thinks of forgetting that way you felt, it is struck with the fact that all I am now is because of you.

Come back.

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But it’s our home, Cecilia

This was written on September 2, 2021. My definition of home has drastically changed since then.

My Finnish colleague just returned to Lebanon after an extended stay in Finland; she was greatly affected by the Beirut blast, physically, and has been suffering from psychological trauma ever since to an extinct where working from the office was too much of a trigger for her.

Reflecting on coming back to Lebanon, she felt too concerned because even though she misses Beirut, we never notice how burdened we are by the city itself until we leave it, and it’s like, please don’t make me go back.

But then we come back, and we get attached again, almost too much that despite the pain and the extremely unnecessary stress, we don’t ever want to leave.

It’s a toxic relationship that could nearly kill us, yet we choose to stay.

This isn’t my case anymore. I used to be like this, so in love with the city and everything my land stands for. I loved every nook and cranny and defended Lebanon against all that criticism, and I was so full of hope and dreams, and I could see myself with a future. Right now, I am burnt out, exhausted, angry, and I just want to get out. I seize every opportunity to leave the city for a couple of days, and even though I stay in Lebanon, I make sure I am detached from all the daily corruption and starvation.

I know what I’m saying is terrible; I should not be so oblivious of the reality, I should not put myself first when people are starving, but honestly, I cannot anymore. The case right now is not that I can’t help all the people; I don’t even want to. I am frustrated with all the missing solidarity that we Lebanese don’t even know, yet we gash about it day and night. We don’t care for each other, not one single bit.

In times of literal starvation, people are stealing from the poor, exploiting shortages and outages, storing medication until it expires, murdering for the money, the rich are getting richer and are feeding off from the flesh of the poor, the warlords are drinking their expensive wine in the comfort of their penthouses, the corrupt people in charge are still in order, and people still support their leaders.

How can we survive something so broken? As if we’re holding on to shattered glass, our hands are all bloody, and it hurts like hell to hold on, but we are addicted, and just like heroin, it is impossible to sober up.

This country took away everything from me, it took away my safest people and havens, and I am holding so much grudge and bearing so much agony. If I were anywhere but here, they would still be around me, loving me, keeping the safe alive, they would still be here, and I would not be counting the seconds until they leave and take away every piece of happiness in me and leave me in an endless void.

Lebanon, I love you too much; I just wish you could find it in your heart to love me back.
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Let me tell you about Younes

I think one of my saddest personal news that happened in 2020 was that Younes café closed down in Bliss. I felt like a little piece of me died as I read the paper saying they were “moving.” As if they could move a whole world and justify it. How could they?

You might have passed by Younes once or twice, and if you passed by the Bliss one, you are fortunate. It’s a little vintage coffee shop with wooden chairs and tables and wooden everything. It can get crowded during exams, but I was lucky enough to reserve myself the “terrace” spot for years.

Younes cafe was my favorite place on earth, the warmest. My waiter, Mohammad, used to call me “the ashtray girl” because I always asked for an ashtray. They didn’t have any ashtrays because they didn’t have a smoking zone, but for someone that uses tissues as much as I do, I needed an ashtray. So Mohammad started to get creative, getting me small plates and paper cups. On my birthday, he cut out a Younes cup and wrote “happy birthday manfada (ashtray).”

He was so welcoming and sweet. I started going less when my best friend traveled, and I promised Mohammad that if I ever came to Younes with anyone but my best friend, it would be with my crush. I broke my promise and came with others, and I would have to tell Mohammad that “no, this is not my crush; you can stop with the goofy smile and winking at me from behind the glass.” I never came to Younes with my crush, and just like my crush, Younes went away.

Nestled in a busy street near Bliss street, Younes is a vintage cafe with a wooden interior and beautiful atmosphere. I’ve had breakfast near the window on a rainy day, had my heart broken and drank my Ethiopian coffee to wash it all away, waited to see Ghassan Kanafani movie, and sought comfort after one of my very first anxiety attacks. A place like this is too hard to be forgotten and too hard to let go of.

They re-opened a few streets away, in an old yellow building, one of those famous old Beirut houses, they even took the chairs and tables and all, but it wasn’t the same. They don’t have honey mustard chicken ciabatta anymore, and the people are too modern and different, and I never saw Mohammad again.

I had so many photos of the interior, from the big dining/meeting table to the portraits to mirror selfies, but they are lost in between the endless photos and memories. I’ll leave you with a few photos that I saved from my social media accounts.

Hot chocolate with cream 🙂

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I am listening to a song about depression

As my friend drove me home last night, she gave me this song about depression, and as I listened to a preview on the car radio as she sped through the dark street to the roundabout, the song consumed me.

It is so raw, so real, so painful.

The song starts with soft whistling, almost a plea for the simpler time where whistling in songs was to show nonchalant. Then the piano starts echoing the notes of the whistle, and the singer begins describing depression at its best.

Depression is controversial. The opposition and the hypocrisy of this feeling feed off every part of rotten skin and grow the fungus within. The song explains the battle inside us that is too suffocating for anyone to see.

The silent killer. I see it as a behemoth ebony beast. The beast is bigger than a human being yet lives inside it- imagine the weight of a bigger body residing inside your body. The beast is always laughing, with sharp teeth and spitting saliva all over because nothing outside your body is worth making you this sad; the monsters outside are not worth not smiling for. It is the beast inside of you that is the problem. The beast within you mocks your fragility, tells you that you are too frail to speak up.

On most days, the beast disallows you to show part of its gruesome teeth out in the open. The beast tells you that no one cares, that no one will understand, that they will leave you. They will abandon you if you so much shed a tear. Every day, the beast cites all the reasons why everyone you care about will hate you and stop wanting to be friends with you if you tell them anything, and you believe it because why would it lie to you?

The song explains depression as a him, the singer.

“A voice inside me calls me from far away. I recognize it but I go astray. It’s a drop of white in the darkness, it is flesh calling to stone. It’s naive innocence, which I, the two-faced world, always disown. I am its cellmate and its jailer, locked in; I hold the keys but I’m too cowardly to open. I am the perpetrator and the victim. I keep on asking why, although I am every reason. He is I, and I am he. War rages on inside of me. It’s deep in me, it’s killing me, I can’t escape or flee.”

A drop of white – Cairokee

Then the song intensifies, the words get lost between the many musical instruments being played fastly. We run as the music runs and the singer’s voice gets higher. And he tells us that time waits for no one and that it is his fault for believing all the false promises, and it keeps on running, and the loudness gets higher and in the middle of intensity of the emotions and self-blame and loathe;

The music stops. Complete silence, except for the sound of a whistle. The same whistle we heard at the beginning of the song, the same rhythm.

It has comforted me.

Fyi, remember the chicken I told you about in the previous post? The cover photo above is it. (:

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Stressed out

Every time I come back here after a while, my head in between my legs with shame, I start singing Stressed Out by Twenty One Pilots, and I’m Tyler in every word he says, and I am insecure, and I care what people think.

I’m at a Starbucks, and some dude just passed by me, and he is wearing a godly perfume. I literally can not concentrate anymore, literally forgot what I wanted to write. I am about to get out of my chair and sniff him. He smells so good.

How are we? Really? It’s not that I can help you or anything, I can barely help myself, but it’s good to hear how you really are; maybe you are having mental breakdowns and existential crisis issues, and you would like to see if somebody else might be as messed up as you are, because in reality, we all are, messed up, and even messier.

I should be doing well. I want to point out all the nice things going on, the usuals that I tell myself about, and then wonder what’s wrong with me, but then, honestly, what exactly is the definition of well?

I paused. I don’t know, really. I often feel guilty when feeling a certain way despite all the good things around me, and I am reflecting on all the good things I wanted to list, but all the points have loopholes, a little something that is making me a little stressed. And I think it’s fine. It should be fine.

I’ve been in a kind of emotional burnout, where I cannot with any more stress than the usual stress of literally surviving. I’m like for traffic, mum complaining about lettuce prices, friends obligations, extra hours of work: “please, not today. I will probably start yelling at the wrong people and cry the whole night, and I literally and wholeheartedly cannot cope with any stress.”

It [the burnout] started around May, heightened around August, and I am working on myself; I think I am improving, but I am still in the distress era, and I cannot handle you telling me anything I do not want to hear. For once, let me fight my demons the way I want to; let me rid myself of them and be free.

I am going to the gym – I actually started going last week (I went four times!!!!), but I won’t be able to go this week due to all the messed-up life and because I *fingers crossed until they’re red* am traveling next week. I am extremely patiently waiting for my passport to be renewed, and I still need to apply for the visa, which could take four days; I intend on traveling on Friday, and I really really want to travel.

But maybe I don’t, which is also fine. Usually, I trust the process.

Need to log off and go to therapy. I’ll see you around 🙂

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The Madonna-Whore complex

Have you ever heard of the Madonna-Whore complex? It’s a psychological term that Sigmund Freud identified in describing women’s depiction by men who love the “purity” of women yet desire the “sensuality” of another.

According to The Latch, “way back in the early 1900s, Freud identified a psychological dichotomy in his male patients known as the Madonna-Whore complex. Men (back then, but relevant to all genders now) with this complex saw women as either saints or prostitutes, loving the first and desiring the second — though never intertwining both.”

We live, observe, and experience the reality of this every day but often enough, we never put a name on it. If it were to be discussed by-God forbid-women and girls, the reality is often ridiculed, called “a man’s nature,” and the girl or woman is shamed for having any thought regarding sex and misogyny.

Thanks to my job, I am no longer ashamed of talking about women’s right to adequate sexual reproduction and health. Periods and women’s needs have long been stigmatized that women themselves are stuck between a pretense of virtue and mere human nature.

The Madonna-Whore dichotomy is a vibrant concept in our modern Lebanese society, with so many men advocating for women’s rights yet would not wed a “non-virgin.” It is absolutely ridiculous and mundane how a women’s “eligibility” is based on abstracts and gender bias that are long fed within societies and communities.

Whatever one’s opinion on premarital sex is not relevant to the argument that girls should not be labeled “dirty” or “too slutty” for marriage. This is not the point. The point is that girls should not be labeled as Madonnas or Whores, they can be any of them, and they can be both simultaneously, and all that should not make any difference in a girl’s image and should definitely not put her a victim of obscene remarks.

The polarization of the Madonna-Whore concept forces women to be defined as either a slut or a virgin. This is a gross dehumanization of women and is indeed degrading of men’s Madonnas, to the very least. What baffles me is that men want Madonnas as wives because “they have not been touched,” which basically is an indication that men see their “pure women” as sex icons and therefore contradict their whole belief!

I once watched a live documentary about a human trafficking house in Lebanon. Part of the documentary was real interviews of men asked by the interviewer if they are married, and if the answer is yes, why they seek prostitution. “I am eating chicken every day; sometimes I want to eat meat. Is that so wrong?” One man answered.

In short, men want to marry girls who are too “clean” to have been touched by anyone yet are praised for their sexual endeavors. A man wants to marry purity but is in constant search of lust outside his marriages from women that he labels “whores” and “easy to get,” then justifies his acts by saying that “his male nature authorizes infidelities because men have needs and these needs must be fulfilled.”

And none of us, damned as the “gentle sex,” are entitled to an opinion. If we voice any opinion, we are labeled “sensual women” or “women with no dignity.”

I want to make this very clear: if I, or any girl or woman, talked about sex-related topic, it is not because of sexual oppression or “asking for it,” we talk about sex-related topics from a gender equality lens and because we are so sick and tired of gender discrimination that justifies men treating women as sex slaves and referencing them as “dirty or clean lollipops.”