You’re doing fine and the next second you feel an
overwhelming wave crash over you and you’re having trouble breathing. For a
whole minute you are trapped; thinking you will never, ever make it or function
properly again. You think: it will kill me, there is no way I can survive this
unbroken. Bewildered and terrified, it will be one of the worst moments of your
life.
You will make it out alive. You just need to remind yourself
how it ends next time it happens.
….
It starts in your heart. A sting. Brought on by a favorite
song that has always moved you, a kissing couple in the subway. Flicking a
cigarette and catching sigh of your hand. Then it spreads, all over. It takes
you over within a minute and you find yourself involuntary disconnected from
everything around you, acutely aware of how hollow you have become. You feel a
thousand years old worth of yearning, and the force of a hundred suns holding
you back, restraining you, in the here and now. The here and now.
It fades away. But it comes back stronger. Always.
….
A terminal search for silence. And because quietness and
peace are not always synonymous, there seems to be a need for a pacifier. It’s
an incredible gift to know how to be still. What's even more incredible, is to
know how to teach it.
Sometimes it takes you a while to understand yourself, to
decipher the code. To understand for example, that you are extremely sensitive
to change, way more than your average person. To understand that your mood
swings are not the end of the world, and that it takes work and practice to
navigate them, that it might be hard work but not entirely impossible.
Growing up is hard, it’s about choices. And picking up
yourself when your choices fail you. When you fail you. It’s about making up
your mind and deciding. It’s about learning your own controls.
Sometimes you wake up and the world has ganged up on you,
and there is not a shred of comfort to be found anywhere, not even within the
safe havens of your mind. Sometimes, you will turn to the person closest to
your heart for comfort. Most times, you won’t find it. The problem with people
who feel too much is their un-quenchable thirst for sincerity is often
misleading. You will never touch the other side so long as you keep your glass
doors and expectations up so high. Don’t be genuine, be human. Don’t be
perfect, be the somebody they need you to be. Then disappear. No one will
notice anyway.
Stop feeling. Stop feeling everything tug at your soul. Stop
feeling under your skin. Learn the wonders of superficiality. Learn not to
care. This is urgent: learn not to care. Stop breaking your own heart. Fool.
I am on the brink of completely losing interest in the world.
Today, I sat in a little café in Cairo’s downtown that is centuries
older than I am. I watched as every reason why I fell in love with this city
passed by my window seat. I thought about how beautiful the people were, how
resilient and brave to still find the courage to laugh in the midst of all
this, and that, chaos. I thought about all the reasons I had forgotten to
remember that I’m in love with this place, have been for as long as I have been
alive. Today, I said my own little early goodbye and I said a little prayer: I
hope you don’t forget me while I’m away.
يعنى
ايه حزن؟ و ايه الفرق ما بينه و ما بين
القرف؟ و التبلد و الإحباط و اليأس؟ ليه
لازم ابقى حزين لو محبط؟ ليه لازم ابقى
سلبى لو محبط؟ ليه مش ممكن اكون بس..
محبط؟ وليه لازم
اكون إنهزامى لو محبط ؟ ليه مش ممكن بس
اكون.. محبط؟
ليه لازم اتوصف بالمطلق و عالعموم.
ليه مش ممكن المرة
دى يكون الشعور على قد اللحظة، على قد
دلوقتى. و
مش دايماً و مش عامةً و مش علاطول. .و مش لازم تقلب
بوزك اوى كده و انت بتعايرنى انى محبط،
او تشفق عليا انى مضايق او كفران.
انا بكره هبقى
كويس
Steaming
coffee, beautiful Fairouz’s voice soothing into my soul, my new laptop and
doing my new dream job, which I actually love and have wanted for so long.
Realization:
I’m grateful.
I’m so
grateful it brought tears to my eyes. I’m grateful for this moment. A moment which I paused, to revel in. I stop and think, wait, I should enjoy this. I should
be grateful for this. And I am. And I think, isn’t this what happiness is
almost like? Perfect little details and satisfactions that make you feel
alive and thankful to be right here, right now. Then I wonder if it’s a little
sad that I have to probe myself to recognize happiness. I wonder if this makes
me sad, then realize that no, it doesn’t.That there is a difference between melancholy and sadness, and that it
shouldn’t be sad sad sad all the time, and that a little melancholy is ok, is
fine. It doesn’t make you depressing.
Have
I been mislabeling myself all this time as sad? Instead of maybe nostalgic,
apprehensive or, as in this case, melancholic?. Has a limited emotional vocabulary
instilled a depressing image of myself into well, myself? Could I really not be
as sad as I sometimes think I am?
All these
thoughts and one thing for sure, I’m grateful for right now. I’m grateful for
feeling like I belong in a place somehow, a place in my head. Or feeling fulfilled
in a way, even it’s just a job.
It feels
good. There’s so much magic Fairouz can do to you.
