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.
Walking today in a Palestinian refugee camp, I almost felt like I know what I wanted.
With my life, I mean. The career I want to pursue. I know I absolutely love people, and I absolutely love spending time with them. I wonder if being with people is why I exist in the first place. To give people a little bit of what they give to me, some validation that I live for them.
As I sat with people who not only believe and support Palestine but actually lived the cause and had a thing to say to free their lands, I felt a sense of belonging to a cause so dear to my heart.
I interviewed a Palestinian woman called Amal who has a leading role in a Palestinian movement/political party and is now part of mediation groups. She started telling us the incredible stories of the strength and stubbornness of Palestinian women.
Amal told us what happened during the Israeli invasion in 1982 when they destroyed the whole camp and kidnapped and imprisoned the men, how women stood high, holding their illiteracy in one hand, and the years of housewife-ing in another, and rebuilt the camp.
They rebuilt their houses brick by brick, reopened their husbands’ and fathers’ stores, and taught themselves how to do business. They protected their streets and made sure they were safe enough for their children. When men came back from the war, they were surprised that the completely marred camp they left is now blooming.
Amal also told me the story of her imprisonment, how the Zionists performed the worst kind of emotional and mental torture to break her; still, she stood strong, how they used the women’s menstrual cycles to humiliate them, how they would only call on the women in the middle of the night for interrogation, using the women’s fear of night and rape against them.
She went to tell me about the resilience of women in times of conflict and the mediation skills they have by nature. Amal told me when things got intense one time in the camp, and two parties started shooting at each other, how women held their babies, brought their chairs, and sat in the middle of the streets, daring the men to shoot.
They have a cause, and they live for it. I would like to live for their cause too.
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.
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):
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.
Today, like the many other nights, I found myself wide awake at 4:00 am. I’ve been waking up an hour or two earlier than my alarm for years, but never for three consecutive weeks, like now.
Today, as I was awake at 4:00 am contemplating existence, I might have understood why I’ve been waking up this early every day.
It’s the only time that I’m awake where I am not obliged to be productive, where I do not feel like my presence is at fault if I was not working or being useful. It’s the only time that I get to wake up, look through the darkness, and do nothing.
How lucky am I that my God wakes me up to feel and see the idyll of dusk? My body is still asleep; I’m too tired to move from under my sheets, and I’m too warm to feel anything. I exist here, in this room, with nothing but my thoughts lingering in the air and the sound of the music I’m listening to.
I was listening to Honesty by Pink Sweats (slowed and reverb) and I thought-maybe also overthought-of everything about yesterday; all the smiles and insecurities, and all the things that might get better. It’s okay, it will pass.
It’s another Monday today, and the time is surprisingly moving fast. It’s already 2:17 pm, and I’ve already finished all my dues, and I even did a few external chores. I still have time to continue my InDesign tutorials and then read my favorite travel blog, and I’m not feeling all the heaviness I was feeling last week.
On another news, I now have a pretty good relationship with my supervisor, and my colleagues are different shades of something new and nice. I’m still the youngest, by a lot, which makes me feel less competent, but for today, it does not feel like a problem.
I’m not sure if I’ll carry this feeling with me for Tuesday, or Wednesday, or for the rest of this lighter week, but I’m glad that today I’m doing okay.
Plans for this evening:
My former roommate invited me over for dinner and cinnamon rolls, and since Cinnabon has lost hope in Lebanon-sad eyes, sad eyes- and closed all its branches, she is now my only provider of these bites of happiness.
I still have my therapy session to go to tonight and then maybe watch a Sofia Loren movie? I’ve been thinking a lot about how amazing It Started in Naples was and I would really like to watch it again. Today seems like a good day to reminisce on good memories.
It was safe. A whole day of safety? I could almost jinx myself, if I hadn’t already. Slowly, everything is moving away and I am scared of getting close-like always-and it’s a bit uncertain.
But it was a wonderful day.
It was a cold frisky night, yet I was warm. And I looked at them and smiled, and they smiled back at me. And at that moment I forgot all my worries and all I could think of is that my heart is happy, and that it needs to stay there.
Do you ever have those moments? Where the silky wind brushes your cheeks and you look at your someone and you know that this is exactly where you belong, that even though it has been stormy, the universe was preparing you for a moment of peace that is worth all the trouble.
And that day, it was.
I keep remembering bits and pieces and I keep smiling to myself. Did that really happen? Did I really say that? How did it end? Why am I so clingy? Why did it have to end?
It’s like all my pain ceased existing. I could look at other people and not feel a gutting feeling; like they’re much warmer than me, that I am cold and stranded. I didn’t feel as cold; it felt like I am as warm as anybody else.
I wish we can live in our happy moments. Put them in a wooden box next to our pillows and access them in times of pain. The box can sense our unpleasantness, and would not let us access memory if we didn’t absolutely surpass our window of tolerance.
And by access, I don’t mean like seeing photos and reminiscing, I mean feeling every happy vibe back, remind your senses that happiness can still exist and that despite whatever, it was a good day because they all smiled at you.
It’s 11:42pm. I just finished work, and I’m very tired and sleepy, but I need to write this down.
It has been three days since I last wrote here; mylast post was the first day of my most recent anxiety. It passed—l hamdellah.
I’m now in phase two of post-anxiety; the severe exhaustion and depression, but that’s okay; I know it’ll pass in a day or two. This is not what I wanted to talk about; I need to talk about another thing.
I keep apologizing, to people, to things, to life. I was in a van going home, and I noticed how sad I get whenever I see anyone less fortunate or unhappy. As if it is my fault. As if their happiness is my responsibility. I find myself apologizing to them in a low voice and an aching gut.
To the old man who just got out of the van carrying tens of medications in a yellow Spinneys bag, I’m sorry. To the guy who is crossing the road wearing ripped shoes, I’m sorry. To the baby sleeping in his stroller as his mother exploits him to get pity money, I’m sorry. To the woman who is carrying her wallet in a black plastic bag, I’m sorry.
To the waiter and waitress standing all day waiting for customers, I’m sorry. To the children selling red flowers at night, I’m sorry. To the always smiling man selling gum near the Tayouneh roundabout, I’m sorry. To the cleaning man who fell asleep on the street, I’m sorry. To the people selling juice and kaak and corn in a trolley, I’m sorry.
To the sadness in my dad’s eyes and the desperation in mum’s, I’m sorry. To my sisters’ tears and worries, I’m sorry. I wish I can hug you all to safety; I’m sorry I am not of much help, I’m sorry I can’t make it easier on you.
I’m finding this extremely hard to finish, but I need to write this down. I’ve been carrying everybody’s burden on my shoulders for so long; It’s killing me more and more every day. Recently, whenever anyone tells me a story about a person in need, or a story about someone getting laid off from work, I turn aggressive. I’m sorry, but I will probably take responsibility for their poverty and unemployment, and it will kill me even more.
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I can ease your pain, I wish I can take it all away. I wish I can give you health and safety and stability and happiness. I wish I can give you life.
But I can’t. All I can do is send you wishes and carry your problems and pain upon my shoulder, hurting myself and not helping you with anything. I’m sorry my existence turned out to be this way; I wish I were not so broken and more of use.
I have been working on this extensively with my therapist; he’s trying to convince me to let go of some of these responsibilities. I’ve been learning how to let go of things I cannot control, of things that I did not cause. I’m trying to learn how to leave people’s pain and deal with mine. (I guess it’s harder than I thought)
But I’m happy I can finally acknowledge all of this. I thought it’s normal to carry everybody’s issues and treat them as my own; I thought that’s why I’m in the humanitarian sector in the first place. I didn’t realize that carrying the world’s poverty is why the humanitarian sector is alienating me.
I’ll learn to leave your sadness for you to deal with; I’ll learn how to let go of your responsibilities and focus on mine. I’m sorry you can’t afford your medication and your school and your rent; I can’t afford your medication and school and rent either, and I’m sorry for that;
