The eight-year-old me thought her dreams will come true if she wrote about them, so she did. The seventeen-year-old me is now writing her thoughts and stories from her imagination through the journey of making those dreams come true.
Blue
There is this thing about the color blue: It’s not so dim that it darkens one’s surroundings, but I also cannot speak delightfully of its utter joy when the birds fly and the rainbows glow. All I know is that blue is the color that swallows me in its suffocating, romanticized melancholy, a bitter-sweet melancholy; I know that the feeling I’ve got is blue. I was going down in the blue, drowning. There, I remembered it all.
I saw her in the corner of my physics class; I saw her in my bedroom scrolling through her phone in the middle of the night while I was trying to sleep, and I saw her reflection in the mirror when I was taking the last look at my outfit before going out with my friends. The tall woman with the short black hair always looked at me sarcastically as if she could read through my mind. Are you feeling confident? Remember that time when your cousins bullied you for your wide, loud laugh? You are feeling happy? You should be ashamed of how useless you are. You started to believe you’re good enough? Others are just better and you’ll eventually compare yourself to them until you rot in grief. Trauma accompanied me all of the time, saying these words that aborted my attempts to enjoy genuine happiness or warm comfort.
The other day, she was watching me silently when I was making my morning iced coffee.
- Won’t you make me one?
I turned the coffee machine on.
- It’s funny how you watch things happen and you have nothing to do but stand still, huh? I poured my coffee in the cup
- Only if you could listen.
I can’t handle an open, burning wound.
- I’ll never leave if you leave everything as it is.
I no longer want you to leave. I no longer feel, Trauma. My heart is a charred stone, the banned son of the flames you effortlessly ignited in my chest. I’ve been running in circles trying to let go of her. The more I try to run away, the more she tightens her chains around me. All the chances I missed, the questions I couldn’t ask, the words I didn’t dare to say, and all the love that I lost. It was all her; she colored me blue. Trauma was my winless fight. I tried to keep us oceans apart but little did I know that I was
only pulling her closer. The only ocean was the one I was drowning in. Going down, I regret it all. It was my fault. Only if my self-gagged mouth could speak, I could have healed the wound that I refused to unveil all this time. At the end of the day, and to the bottom of the ocean, it was me; I deserved it all. She’s watching me now. My body hits the bottom as my soul rises up. She is smiling; she has won, and the only loser is me, whose guilty soul has left but her body is down there to speak for all that happened and all that should have been.
Graces
Gratefulness is like wearing a new pair of glasses: it’s a whole new approach to perceiving the surroundings. In Islam, we thank Allah (God) in each of our five daily prayers for this reason, let’s say we’re polishing the glasses to recreate this feeling in our souls five times a day. However, whenever I find my thoughts grabbing me slowly into doubting what I have or questioning if life is actually worth living, I put the glasses on to shed a light on a couple of things to remember before I jump straight into a deep depression. The road: As weeks go by, I grow fonder of the road from my hometown to the central city of my governorate: sunsets on the canals in the middle of farmlands, the smell of the freshly watered soil, and the blowing wind that only blows on my face through the car window as if mother nature has given me the ultimate privilege of enjoying its glory all at once. I usually accompany this complex of senses with some music so I can get lost in my thoughts with some background noises of high-quality beats. I long for those moments of peace every time I feel that life has taken away all the comfort I’ve ever known. The sun is always there to enlighten the dark roads, the rain is always there to heal the barren lands, the wind is always there to tickle the lonely leaves, and the moon is always there to listen to the broken limbs. The road reminds me of the grace of nature, and what a grace to remember! The red blanket: I have this red amaranth blanket my mom gave me when I moved to my boarding high school. This blanket has seen me cry, laugh, and grow. Now, it is in the dorms witnessing the movie nights with my friends, the stressful finals weeks, the shared meals, and the endless stories my friends and I tell each other to waste our time or maybe get some rest. This blanket, besides giving me the best comfort on the coolest, loneliest nights, reminds me of how much I’ve grown. It reminds me of my family and how proud of me I want to make them. The memories, the beloved ones, the eagerly awaited dreams. My amaranth blanket folds them all together.
Our minds wait for huge changes to occur so the hormones of happiness may run through the neurons of those tired brains, but our hearts sense the presence of the graces in the smallest details of our lives. Happiness is hidden within fathers’ smiles, mothers’ hugs, coffee cups on rainy mornings, mind-provoking books on boring evenings, lemon and mint smoothies on flaming hot afternoons, and the thoughts of the countless graces surrounding
us with their light yet dominating presence just like colorful butterflies. Each graceful detail ties whole stories to remind us of the reasons why we’re here and the reasons why we should stay alive; each plants a flower in our souls to gloom despite the thorns. Each small grace is the birth of a savior to our minds from falling down the steep mountains of grief.
HowMathWasInvented
I could never imagine life without moments of silence, the silence that never failed to induce deep questions in my mind. Deep conversations with myself got me reaching a lot of deadend streets, and others opened whole new worlds in front of my eyes. Does silence have a sound? Or is it just the conversations in my head starting to feel so real that I can hear them haunt me? Do I see the silence? Well, it displays my present as if it was a free flight to another dimension where dreams come true and silent prayers are heard and answered. Does silence have a taste? Sometimes it’s as bitter as a piece of clove as I discover dark spots in the back of my mind and memory with which I cannot deal, but sometimes it’s sweet and fulfilling as I find peace and comfort within. I feel and absorb the silence with all my heart, soul, and senses, but eventually, all the tastes, the sounds, the images, the darkness, or the lightness that silence can cause come to shed light on the questions of existence, how, when, and why. The fertile ground of curiosity in the human mind is watered in silence, and the more it’s watered with this divine water, the more it flowers and flourishes. The fascinating complex of the human mind and the silence drove us mankind to where we are now. From basic Sciences to Social and political sciences to morals, thoughts running through one's mind are the origin, and science is behind it all.
In silence, as I am deeply convinced, philosophers once felt the same silence and began to think and wonder. How does the universe work? What strong power ties all of this together? Are we the glitch disturbing the harmony of this work of art? In silence, they invented the keys to the science that took them by the hand to answer those big questions of existence and see the beauty of how all these repeated patterns around the universe can tell how the universe worked.
To more questions yet to be asked and to more moments of silence yet to exist to find some relief in the answers; may the human mind never come to rest and may the silence forever come with answers. Until this eternity arrives, one may say that in a moment of silence, that's how math was invented.
Moon
Your face with the little brunette hairs bending on your forehead to the wind used to remind me of the moon as its shimmering light passes through the leaves on a moonlit night. I used to tell the moon to keep an eye on you for me. I’ve always wished to keep you close, but the moon seemed to be doing the job as it should be. However, I am finally taking over. When I’m standing by your bed to watch you while you fall asleep as you hold your stuffed rabbit in your arms, or to watch you staring at the ceiling in the dark, do you ever see a glimpse of my shadow when all I can see is you? Do I ever cross your mind when you never left mine? You used to tell me stories of the souls of the dead and how they invisibly haunt their loved ones to finally have the love they longed for all of their lives, so, my love, will you tell your girl about my story when you find out that I have been there all the time? Will my eulogies mention that I have never had your love, the love that you’re giving her now? I came by every single night to watch as you angelically sleep, and I don’t regret it anymore because now, and only now, you’re mine; little do you know that I’m yours as well. It seems worth it when I feel the warmth of your palm lighting the cold soul of mine; it is worth the life I have paid for it, my own. The moon knows my secret, but I’m sure he won’t tell.
