سکوت – Stillness

Time. Can you count it? Seconds, minutes, hours, years… yes years. They pass. Can you count them? Ofcourse you can. It’s been 2 years since we last met. It’s been two and a half years since i last layed on this bed in my room. Where time stands still, like all the toys in the huge wooden shelf standing tall against one of the walls. All my dolls, books, teady bears, trophies from school and college, photographs, diaries and my old broken computer. My whole life. My everything summed up. It all stays here, on the same spot, collecting dust and memories. Silent. Still. Nothing ever moves. My mother, who is a bit weaker now than she was two and a half years ago, she doesn’t let anything move. She pickes up things, cleans them and put them on the same spot as they were. It’s been two and a half years since i last visited my room. It’s been 20 years since i put my toys in their spots for the first time.

My room.. it reminds me of you. All those years that i spent talking to you in this room, when a second would feel like eternity. The air, it smells of you. Of us. Of what was never meant to be. Out of all the feelings bubbling up in my heart while lying in this room, your memory is the strongest. It stands still, on its spot, in my room, in the air. Like other toys in the big wooden shelf. It won’t move. Years would pass. Years have passed.

But time… it stands still. Frozen. It hasn’t passed. It can not be counted. Like years. It has made my father older, my brothers stronger and my mother weaker. But everything else is the same. As it was two and a half years ago, three and a half years ago and five years ago. I am home. I feel as if i float here, weightless and still. Burden on the shoulders feel lighter. Walls surround me, walls of unconditional love. Walls that once suffocated me. After years now, they make me feel safe.

Some things, just a few, have changed though. All those years did not pass in vain. They have filled my father’s life with some more hardships, some more pain that’s intense. My mother’s life with some more dreams and uncontentment and my brother’s lives with sime tough life experiences. Their faces look mature now, it breaks my heart. Their eyes shine with the same naughtiness that was there, years ago. One of them is still the most sensitive, one still the most angry and one still the most calm and sensible. Like they were before the years passed. When we were children. When i lived with them. Here. In this house. Where time stands still. Nothing has changed after all the years. This, is still my world. I belong here. In the world that doesn’t change with the years that pass. The world that holds the six people, who mean the world to me. Yes, including you. It’s still you. It always were you. My heart, after all those years, never opened again. Like time in my house, it stands still. On its spot. Closed. Shut. Holding my world of straws. Protecting it from years that pass. Through time.

Time. That can never be counted. Only lived.

 

— My visit to Pakistan. 10th March – 24th March 2019.

About A Dream.

Dream. ©Lala Rukh

There is this beautiful garden fenced in by tall trees. Some flowers along the sides, a bench in the corner facing the setting sun. The kind of bench in tales. Where you dream to sit with the one you love, staring at the peace lingering in the air. Where leaves are somehow greener than usual and where flowers smell better than most expensive scents of this world. Where birds chirp to compose melodies so soothing that you wish time to stop there for a while. Where grass dances with the wind and tickles your feet. And where we, us together, sit and stare at the sun trying to hide away in the clouds, being brighter that ever. Diffusing warmth inside our hearts. And where our hands touch,meet, as if they were made to be in each others embrace forever.

Perfection find it’s meaning here. May be it’s heaven.

May be it’s a dream.

But then. Something, may be reality, yanks you to life. Or may be it was life itself.

You discern. You realize.

This place. This beautiful place. That felt almost enchanted to you, it’s not special. It’s ordinary. Nothing is perfect here.

You realize, perfection lies only in dreams. And you remember, your dreams were always meant to shatter.

The air, that you imagined holding peace, suffocates you. The leaves are not so green either, they turn black, they wither and fall right in front of your eyes. Birds here don’t sing. They mourn. Flowers smell of burning desires, grass doesn’t dance either. It moans with it’s head down.

The beautiful garden, is not beautiful anymore. Not so perfect. It’s ugly.

The sun, it’s burning everything alive. It always burns. You were wrong to expect warmth from it. You were wrong to expect at all. Expectations are meant to be failed.

Your hands, sitting comfortably in each others embrace, shiver, are pulled apart.

And then you realize, you were all alone there. Always alone. Forever alone. The person you love was never meant to be a part of your dreams.

Your dreams, huh, your dreams. Dreams which were shattered once, so hard and so painfully, that your eyes would quiver with fear before thinking of watching them again. Dreams that once injured your heart and your soul so bad, that blisters there would ooze blood every time you took a breath. Dreams, that you promised yourself never to watch again.

How dare you break that promise? How dare you see a beautiful dream again.

It was meant to be shaken up, broken and shattered. It was meant to hurt you once again.

You realize, doing the forbidden never brings Love. Just tears. And tears are words that need to be written, after all.

 

Thoughts Of A Stormy Night

Sitting there on the floor in the middle of the night and staring at the fog covered window, she looks like a complete mess. She has sore red skin around her nails and her back aches like hell. Tears are rolling down her cheeks that sink into her messy hair making them a bigger mess. But she don’t care. Nothing matters anymore.

Everything around her is awfully silent. This carpet, the walls, the golden vase in the window, the overly caring sleeping husband, the ticking clock, one of the two hearts in the room…. Everything. Except that scary gust of wind that shoos away the silence from time to time. Reminding her of some nostalgic moments back home and of the fact that she is awake. Not sleeping. It’s almost midnight. And she doesn’t have insomnia.

There is no moon today. Sky is all dark and red and frightening. Like in horror movies. Where suddenly a vampire jumps at an innocent victim to suck blood out of it. Only, the difference here is, the victim is already devoid of blood, and life. There is just a lot of hollowness and quiet. This much quiet is dreadful.

Why isn’t this fog disappearing? And why isn’t time moving any faster? And why isn’t this mind shutting up already? It has to do a lot of thinking tomorrow. Once again. Lots and lots of crap. About her painful past. And fruitless present. And fearful future.

Oh and I forgot to mention, she does just go with the flow. Smooth. Because you know, only the dead can go with the flow. The alive, they fight. Till the last breath. And she? She hadn’t took a breath in for a long time. Along the road of breathing through an oxygen mask somewhere, she forgot to do it on her own even when she had a chance. Some things we can choose to forget, some things we can’t.

Oh and did I mention, that that ‘she’ is me? Right now? I think I should get some sleep. This sound of rain, it makes me feel dizzy. Stormy gushes were a lot better !

Preamble Of My Death Note

You know some people, they are like barren land. Vast, sorrowful, grieved. The mud that forms their skin loses life and gains the gloom of empty, fruitless desert. They breath dry mud. Instead of blood, they have misery flowing through their veins. Barren land and barren people, both are hopeless. Unwanted.

When rain falls down on them for an instant, it gives birth to hope. A dangerous feeling it is. It kills with the most blunt knife ever. Hallucinate you with dreams and then break these with it’s own fist, into your eyes. The shards of glass cut through the eyeballs, blood falls drop by drop, for centuries. Yes centuries.

May be if hope wasn’t there at the first place, life would have been smooth. It is easy to develop habits and live by these, whether of painful moments or living forever in the dark. It is simple to go with the flow, with no flowers and sunshine, if one hasn’t EVER seen flowers and sunshine. Going back after taking a long journey is tiring. Really tiring.

Have you ever experienced the torture, when your fingers cry and eyes can’t ? When your heart yearns to vomit out pain but your eyes, they don’t let it no matter how much that sting. No matter how much your mere existence pricks you like a thorn. No matter how much you want to put a pistol on your head and shoot without any pause, but you can’t. You just can’t.

You feel lonely in the middle of a crowd. Rain falls from the sky but leaves you dry. Green leaves of spring turns to yellowish orange ones of autumn around you. Chilly winds suffocate you. You can’t breathe. In that moment, no one knows how much, HOW MUCH you want to close your eyes and die in peace.

But you can’t. You just can’t.

Just Sharing A Thought…

You know the thing that suffocates you till you can’t breathe anymore? That’s a wish. And then that dark shadow that occupies your mind and shuts off the light of your eyes just before making you unconscious? That’s despair. And then a sudden air that forces it’s way up your nose and mouth and pumps your heart very hard and makes you feel alive again? That’s hope.

It is raining outside. Whenever it rains, my heart talks nonsense just like that.

I don’t hate rains like other people do here (By here I mean, here, In the city where I live now. where weather is cold almost throughout the year).

Rain is still like a mystery to me. I haven’t experienced getting wet in it with hands stretched in the air and face towards the sky. I don’t know what it feels like to sit on the stairs in front of my home with a mug of coffee in hands and staring at the rain drops pouring on the ground beside me. I don’t know the warmth of hugging someone special while standing in the rain showers. I’d also like to scream and laugh out loud in the streets though there might be a risk of being caught in this.

All I have seen of rain is from my window glass, while reading a book or staring outside purposelessly. Sad, Quiet.I want to know it more but I am scared. I am scared that if I’d know and experience everything about rain that’s mystery to me now, what will I do then? There would be nothing left to wonder about. It will all be over.

Then, I’ll start hating it like others.

I know that’s absurd. I am being strangely honest. I am so scared of taking one step further and I don’t know when this habit took control of me. I can just think and think for hours of getting out of my comfort zone but I have no courage to step out practically. I am not brave enough.

May be I am still circling around into the darkness of despair or may be, I am breathing that fresh air of hope but I haven’t realized it’s there.

Dead I am.

When I try to absorb inside me, the warmth of this beautiful sunshine, I feel nostalgic. Putting “The alchemist” upside down half opened on my neck, I lay down on this big sofa in my sitting room and close my eyes while the sun rays caress my face and take me back to the winters of Pakistan. Three  months of winter were a real treat after nine whole months of summer. Laying lazily outside beneath sun was my favorite hobby back then as well.

I love winters.

And I love reading books. And I love going out alone, walking by the streets or at sea front. I love going gym and trying aerobics, cardio and weights as well. And cooking… I love it too.

If I can go whenever I want, to a nearby library and browse through books for hours while forgetting completely about everything happening around, feeling a beautiful emotion running through my blood vessels after grabbing a book in my hand to take home…

If I can go to gym daily in the morning and enjoy working out different schemes in different days, sweating out smelling bad but still feel awesome…

If I can take long walks by the seaside with hands tucked in pockets and stare at the sea sitting at my favorite peaceful spot and listen to the whispers of water and winds….

If I can cook anything from curries,rice,steaks,soups,pastas to cakes and brownies… anytime I feel like giving myself a treat…

Then, Why am I still not SATISFIED with my life ? What is it that feels missing, what is this silence that seems to be a permanent part of my soul ?

I am happy. My life is almost the same everyday, but I am happy with what I got. I don’t have any wishes at this point in life. I don’t dream for anything at all. There are no particular regrets left to haunt, no broken dreams to pinch my heart, no fresh wounds dripping blood.

Then what is the reason that I feel empty? I am struggling to take one step forward at this point of my life, whether it is about knowledge or love or spirituality… There is a strong desire in my heart to push myself forward, to do something but It seems like I am stuck at this point and some force is pulling me backwards to stop me from taking a step forward.

The irony is, I don’t know where to put my foot after taking this forward step. I don’t know what exactly to do with my life.

Why? Because I didn’t struggle back then for my destiny and let myself go with the flow ? (Paulo Coelho)

Whatever it is, They say that if your life is same everyday, then you are already dead. You just don’t realize it.

Maybe that’s the case.

May be I AM dead.

 

 

 

New Country, New Life, New Me !

The fear of Change has always scared me to death but changes turn out to be the best for me every time. Sitting on the floor right beside a big glass window in my room, sipping a warm cup of Mocha latte while taking small bites out of the bar of whole nut dairy milk chocolate, I think about my new life.

It is freezing outside. But inside, it is warm. Inside my home and inside my heart. The life that haunted me for too long, that made my heart cry and that gave me shivers. I am living that life now and it is nothing like that. If I would have to define ‘perfection’ in my words, I’ll define it as ‘My Life’.

What is happiness? You get to know the answer only when you struggle to drag yourself right through the furious thorns of life. What is Love? You get to know when you feel it inside your heart and someone rips out your heart along with your love. Answers are simple, the procedure of finding them out is difficult. But you have to pass yourself through mines to turn yourself into gold.

When I was sitting in the plane, I peeked through the window and thought of how far away I have left my life. And whether all my pain and sorrows have been left there with it or they are coming all along. And then, my husband held my hand while he was asleep during the flight and all of a sudden I got my answers. For the first time in my life, I became sure how satisfied my life is going to be.

After all the sense of security, the love and care and the respect that my husband gives to me, It is worth forgetting my painful past and moving on with my new life with a fresh start. It’s been two weeks since I moved here, and life is good. It is peaceful and nice. I like my new self and I am sure you’ll like it too. No more tears, no more worries, InshAllah.

More about my new life in the coming posts. Hope you all are doing fine.

P.S: I moved to England from Pakistan on 22nd Nov.

 

 

Fire, Water And Humans !

A fire festival in Fukushima.

Fire and water, two opposite forces forever lost in epic revelry. Fire seems to be the destructive one, which strangely proves out to be  the most fruitful while providing food to humans. Water be the constructive one, floods away civilizations with it. Isn’t it strange ? What force urges these to change their entire nature ?

That was the question that hopped into my mind a couple of weeks ago. It was 7 in the morning and I was sleeping in my room with air conditioner turned on when suddenly a pungent smell entered my nostrils and woke me up. It took me a while to figure out what had forced me to wake up and when I recognized that smell, I turned my neck back and here it was. With all it’s glory it was fiercely shoving it’s orangish-yellow sparks up towards the roof as if it will consume everything coming in it’s way and turn it to black ash.

I hadn’t seen such a big fire live in front of my eyes before. I am so afraid of fire that I had never lit up the stove for cooking food by myself ever in my life. Witnessing this kind of fire that closely was a night mare. I got up and ran outside shouting for help. My room was all covered in thick black smoke and when I opened the door that smoke started spreading all over the TV lounge. My dad figured out what has happened and turned the main switch off. My mom and brother filled up buckets with water but when electricity supply was cut off, the fire extinguished slowly by itself. I stood there with shivering legs and thumping heartbeat and it took me some hours to get back to being normal.

Our Ac got burnt but there was no other loss by the grace of God. The story may be told dramatically, but it is hundred percent true. That scene still give me shivers whenever it flashes back into my mind. If I wouldn’t have got up that time, the smoke would have made me unconscious and I might not be with you right now, telling you stories.

Children affected by flood in Pakistan, waiting for the rescue teams.

On the other hand, there is water, which has recently played havoc and drowned whole lot of  villages and cities in Pakistan. Watching footage of families standing on roofs of their destroyed homes, waiting for getting rescued, watching their animals and luggage flowing away with water. Watching a mother crying for her daughter whose dowry flooded away– It breaks my heart. Army troops are still busy rescuing hundreds of families affected from this devastating flood.

We sit here and watch them suffer. Say some sympathetic words and change the channel. And we are Humans.

What force urges things to change their nature ? I have no idea but, if this force is strong enough to change HUMANS, It sure can prove out to be a weapon of mass destruction.

 

Once In A Blue Moon

This world’s pain, so intense and vast

My pain seems very little in contrast

I forget my pain as I start to mark

Human’s wounded soul & bleeding heart

Every once in a blue moon, a phase comes in everyone’s life where they have to stop and look back—To compare what they had with what they have and to assume what they will have in future.

This phase comes in my life very often. A crucial time when a sharp beep echoes in my brain and urge it to think day and night without taking any rest. This beep cuts my nerves and bleeds them to death. Leaving me no choice but to cry it out for hours to get rid of it and then my mind goes back to being numb and dumb.

This phase has left me with a question this time, ‘Is Love necessary for a successful relationship?’

I put care, respect and fondness in one plate of the measure pan and Love in the other but nothing seems to be heavier than the other. One of them has to go down….

At this point, Love brings a slight sadness in my heart. Sadness that gives me a feel of warmness and care. A feeling that assures me of being special. An emotion that still awakes every sense in me and digs up every cornered grave in my heart. Love, that is abandoned but still lit up a candle of hope in me…. Hope that never sees whether it is needed or not.

On the other hand care, respect and fondness—as much they appear to be a permanent part of my whole life, seem valueless. As my mind gets lost while wandering between these, my heart drags itself along.

My absurd philosophy makes sense only to me but let me say, Love brings expectations with it and coping up with the expectations is very hard. Without love, you accept whatever life offers you. So for me, Love is not necessary to have a successful relationship, though I would never say a dear and a peaceful one.

As I would be busy straightening up my tangled emotions right now, this world would be grieving–over the deaths of loved ones, over living under the line of poverty, over suicides, over corruption, over terrorism, over being divided into sects, over unemployment and low literacy rate and over dying because of hunger.

Is my pain really worth getting written here? I don’t think so.

 

 

Cracked Pink Mirror

Holding a small cracked pink mirror in her right hand she would stare at her bald head for hours. Her lifeless stone eyes would feel focused and concentrated as if they were trying to break the mirror into pieces with their melancholic gaze. Left corner of her bottom lip was swelled with bruises and clogged blood on it. A similar kind of wound could be seen at the center of her neck near the collar bone. Sometimes when she couldn’t stare at the mirror, her hands could be seen scratching her wounds with her sharp nails. It was impossible for her to rest her hands even for a few seconds. That’s what her Mother would say, three years ago, when she would keep herself busy in doing unnecessary chores along with the necessary ones. Three years later, her habits were more or less the same.

Close your eyes and think about the happy moments in your life if you want to end your depression, a voice would echo in her head. She would close her eyes but she could see nothing except the haunting black darkness. You come alone in this world and you have to return back alone. At some point in life, every relation fades away from your life. It is you who are left, hanging alone between the sky and the ground. Just start living for yourself, the voice would continue. She would look around gently and smile. He would smile back. She never was alone.

Thick tear drops would come out of her stone eyes and get absorbed in the pillow when she would yell and cry her throat out. Her feet could be seen rubbing against the hospital bed. Her fists clenched, struggling with immense pain. Eyes, closed so tightly as if they would crack themselves from inside, like her cracked pink mirror. She had to go through the same, everyday for three years. Her cracked pink mirror wasn’t broken yet. He always gives you the amount of pain that you can bear. She sure was made tough enough.

It spread in her blood through her veins, like the same way love spread once. Suffering was the same. The only difference was that love used to kill her everyday while this would kill her once and for all. Waiting for death is awful. Waiting is always awful. Death on the other hand is comforting. It gives life. It completes the cycle.

Love was necessary, so were the departures.

White is life, black is death. Living in the shades of grey is always painful.

She has Him. Who knows He would hold her hand gently and walk her to the black meadows or He would let her rejoin white.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

——————————————————————————————————

 

 

 

Just Sorting It out.

Why can’t I think like normal people ? Why can’t I behave normal ? Why can’t I pass my day and nights the way normal people do ? What is NORMAL?

People change with time. No, actually their perspectives change with time. The way we see the same simple normal things in our lives. The way we react to the same familiar situations and the way we think about the tiny little details of life. Perspective is all that matter.

I was tired asking myself all these questions some time ago. I was mad for being normal. I was jealous of normal people. And now when my life has turned into a usual normal life, it feels boring to me. Now I have come to know what I have lost. I gave up a life of awareness and enlightenment for a so called casual NORMAL life. Huh.

What normal life is actually ? A life passed in a conventional way. A life in which you don’t question what, why and how. You just do what others have been doing for thousands of years, you just follow the rules. You run behind life without any aim and at the end you end like a puppet in the fingers of nature. When you don’t feel the craving to look behind things for their logic, for the reason of their existence. When you lose the purpose for which you were born at the first place.

I have seen people living that way, very happily. I mean they have their lives all settled and families to share their achievements and problems. People who lay down to enjoy a good night sleep at 9, at night and wake up at 6 in the morning. People who don’t need to cry every other day and people who can share their things with anyone they find. People who are friends with many people and they don’t have time to figure out who is the best one of them.

I am that kind of people these days. I mean not completely, but more or less the same. My mind don’t feel connected to the weird and supernatural feelings and my heart feels hollow and dead inside my body. I wake up, pass my day doing nothing and then I stare at the dark and sleep in the morning. I don’t think…. I seriously don’t. Not about who am I, not about why am I like this and not about should I live or die. And I don’t cry, literally I don’t !! I feel like my body has been boiling with thick foggy clouds and it will burst out one day. And…. I am bored ! Fed up of this life where nothing at all seems to be making any sense. I don’t want to be a puppet. I don’t want to be NORMAL.

Allah was the solution of every problem I had for the past few years but He has stopped looking at me. I may be responsible for that but now when I need to get out of this cursed life, I find no help. My hand is being rejected by Him since long. And I am tired.

This post was the only way for me to sort out what I really want and what is actually going on in my mind. My mind don’t talk to me these days either but I can trick it into writing everything down, which I just did. Sorry for what you had to read. Just forget it.

And yeah HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY to all my Pakistani friends.

Moving on….

“And yes, you moved on… So easily ! It didn’t even take you a while.”

He cries with a voice brimming with pain.

She sighed. That’s what she do when words cut like knives. Words… That are not actually words, but boiling emotions seal packed in some random alphabets.

“You say I moved on…. Yes,maybe I did.”

4 whole years of painful depression were quite enough for me to understand that ‘this’ is not life. Life is something else…. Something better. Four years, i prayed for you….. He listened to and replied to each prayer i made but this one.

“aur insaan shar ko aisay mangta hai jesay khair ko… Aur insaan bara hi jaldbaaz waqay hua hai”

Your ishq led me to His ishq… And i did kufr for four whole years by holding on to mere ishq e majazi along with the ishq of supreme. You taught me the meaning of love…. But you never knew it yourself.

The minute i stopped praying to be with you….He announced his descision….His will….His orders.

And now after just 3 months of my marriage i have learnt…..He is after all the best planner.

The person He gave me loves me….and this love is the sacred one…bounded in the walls of marriage.

Tell me one reason to hold on to you still… It doesn’t matter now who i love…. What matters is that i have to live…happily..for the persons who love me….for myself.

And i am happy…. Expectations hurt and i don’t expect. Life gives me a new surprise daily and i am accepting His will. 

Your love lies inside my heart….like a bare thorn pricking and tingling the walls but it can’t come out…. My heart cries but there is someone now to wipe my tears off. You were not made for me…. Our love was forbidden.

And they say forbidden love teaches you the lessons and secrets which no knowledge can. 

May be that’s why people pass their whole lives searching for Him while He lives so close to them…but they can’t “get” Him… He likes to be searched.

You say i moved on…. 

Should i continue trying to move on or should i hold on and fight with what He wants? 

I’ll do whatever you decide.”

He stares at her with red stone eyes…. 

She spread her hands to pray for him…..

Love never dies but it can stay in the abandoned graves of heart….

She weeps and prays for him…till she return back to her “moved on” happy satisfied life…

Things have always been complicated for them….thet still are. Trying to solve these complications is the key.

She tried…. he’ll too one day.

“…….aur pher hoga wohi jo meri chahat hai”

                     ………………………………

This post is not edited…. just wrote it on my phone and felt like posting it. I’ll reply to all your comments and start regular blogging in a while. Thanks to all of you who still read my useless posts.

 

Your Thoughts ?

With that same old empty mind and heart, I sit here again and write. No specific topic in mind and no idea how long or short my words can weave this thread. I don’t know this connection, I can never understand it. The connection of my heart with your words. They say you always learn when you sit back and listen to the silence.  They say it right. This sheer silence tears up my mind… The echo of fan piercing through the calmness of summer afternoon tells me tales…. Tales that are weird, unimportant but very interesting.

Happiness, contentment….. the two things I wanted the most throughout my life. I got them…. I was a cry baby, as you know it, when I left you guys almost three months ago. In these three months I enjoyed the most happiest moments of my life….. My world turned upside down but guess what ? The down side was not that bad. It was good… It pleasured me with the most exciting tastes. I am happy with the guy my parents chose for me….. The nightmares I used to see are gone.

But…I am afraid to share my feelings right now with you. You’ll judge me wrong. I am happy but still, I feel the need of writing in distress, In the saddest hours. Life is going good…. at least for now. My past is still with me but I have learnt to live the present. I’ll share these tales some other time.

A weird thing has started happening to me. After a week or so, In the nights I have severe depression and panic attacks. I cry out loud and I don’t know why does it happen and I feel like I am drowning in darkness or something, I don’t actually understand the feeling. My mind pricks me and this condition lasts for an hour or so and the dies. I don’t know why it happens but it is severe and painful. Do anyone of you has any idea why does it happen or what it is ?

 

Wounds That Turned To Wisdom

Credits : This is no dream by Alessio Radice

There was a time when things were different.

At that time, I wasn’t aware how life’d treat me. I was in school when I came home with my first hole. After repressing the pain while I had lunch with my family, I locked myself inside my room and bled for too long.

Then, the next day, I came home with two more holes. One on my upper thigh and the other one on my shoulder. A stinging pain sprout out of them that made my whole body, a wound.

The next day, after returning back home, I left my mother shouting and hustled towards my room while leaving a trail of blood on the white carpet. I slammed my bag on the bed and lifted my shirt in front of the mirror. Half a dozen holes were revealed that dotted my stomach and chest. It was hard, bleeding for hours that day. I needed someone to treat my wounds with gauze. Instead, they were left open. It took half the night to stem the flow of blood and I was exhausted. Excruciating pain was the price of healing.

In the morning my mom made my favorite pancakes for breakfast. I wished she’d have kissed me on the forehead instead of stuffing me with those delicious pancakes.

I returned home that day, more battered than usual, covered with holes from head to toe. I gazed inside my mother’s brown eyes, longing to see the reflection of my holes. Instead, they were filled with every other dilemma our family endured.

I locked my room that day, and stood beside the mirror with blood pit-pattering on the linoleum. The holes looked like tiny flickering tongues. A sucking wound on my back, square between my shoulder blades was hurting me the most. It was too wide, too deep and a gentle touch brought back the memory of my best friend at school. May be that’s why the wound was the worst.

I stood there for too long, dribbling blood on the surface of clean mirror and staring at my face. The taste of loneliness mixed with the sleepless night was bitter. I heard my family talking, my brothers fighting over stupid things. My mother knocked at my room’s door. She waited for an answer but silence was all she could hear while I struggled with my cries, cupping my mouth firmly with both hands. She screamed and called my dad.

I got up, wiped my eyes brutally with one hand while holding a knife in the other. After hiding it under the bed I slammed the door open. My eyes saw fierce expressions on their faces and their lips moved angrily but my ears heard nothing. A shrill sound as if a drill was making a hole in the wood echoed in my head.

After it was all over, I shook my head and locked the door, again. My steps felt heavy as I motioned towards the mirror. The two days old wounds sprang open. Blood spilled out of the crusty scabs that were peeled off.

In the morning, I left the bloodied bed sheets as they were and headed towards school with my head cast towards the ground. I came back that day with more holes but they didn’t hurt that much as they did before. Because, I made dozens of holes that mustered over my torso, to avoid pain from the ones given by others.

“Soon these holes will all turn into scars and they’d be the reminders of how tough I’m“, I thought. The light had started entering inside me, through my wounds.

I bled that day on my bed but the door was wide open. My parents passed by as I lay there, un-noticed, for they had their own monsters to fight with -and I had my own.

“She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.”

That was the day I promised myself, that I’ll try to fix my daughter’s holes with gauze, made with love and care. But as they say, life is what happens to you while you are busy making ‘plans’.

Every one of us has to unfold one’s own myths.

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This 695 word story is written for Speak Easy. The task this time was to use “There was a time when things were different” as the first line and to give a reference to a photo that was of parrots. I should admit that, while writing this story, my mind started wandering in my own past and when I read my story now, it seems more like my real life story than fiction. I have decided to leave it unchanged, as it reminds me of my ‘fresh’ old wounds.

This story can be an end, or a new beginning of my writing career. I am getting married this coming Friday and life had been hard on me, lately.

Meet you after my wedding ! Miss me and pray for me, Please. Love you all.

Can You See My Fingers Bleed?

I was planning to write poetry or fiction for some challenge today and here I am, sitting, staring at my laptop screen with my vision getting blurred every few seconds. I wipe my eyes with my already damp hands and start staring at the screen again. I feel an urge to hug my laptop right now or kiss it. And I feel an urge to go out for a walk in the woods with my laptop and never come back to my real world.

I have got the best friends, brothers and sisters here with the help of this little box, a machine. Who knew machines would be understanding feelings more than humans, someday ? Technological advancement or Humanity decline ? I know If I’d cry right now, there would be someone sitting right beside their computer ready to embrace me with their words. I know if I’d share my darkest feelings and the most strange emotions there would be people understanding these without judging me.

Unknown people who have no idea who am I and where I belong, what my country, cast and religion is. People who just know that there is some soul out there, craving for their sympathetic words. Craving for the Love that real world failed to give it. Craving for the care that everyone wants, but doesn’t get it. Craving for someone who could listen, just listen to what it had to say. To listen to the rants of a restless soul.

The time I spent crying while laying in the dark, for 20 years is spent writing now. My fingers dance on the keyboard of this very old model, slow laptop and ‘words’ come out along with the silent tears. My tears cried for 20 years and it is time to give them some rest while I let my fingers cry out loud. There is a difference, no one listened to my crying tears but now everyone listens to my bleeding fingers.

No matter how hopeless and depressed my real life is, my virtual life is awesome. I got to understand life, happiness and care –  The strange words which don’t exist in my real life dictionary. In this life, I am not a depressed bipolar soul….I am the queen of my world, my blog ! I walk here with pride, that my real life can’t snatch away from me. This is my world…The people here are my friends…My beloved online community is the best thing I have….And I am grateful for everything this virtual world has offered me.

Words can’t express my gratitude and Love but my tears can. And I know you can see my fingers bleed, while reading my wounded words.

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Linking to Daily Prompt and Dungeon Prompts : Community. Head over to Speak Easy to vote for my story “Waiting for a dead promise” If you like it. Do read and vote for other awesome submissions too.

Cyclic Inception

Credits : Thomas Leuthar

Life ‘Inception’

                    Riddle wrapped in Enigma

                                          Prehistoric pen shrieks

                                                                            Echoing Like

                                                                                              Tunnels in Labyrinth

                                                                                                                       Reflecting tales of illusions

                                                                                              Time follows the quest

                                                                             Of Unreachable stars

                                              Struggles and failures

                      Bleed into Hope

The cycle Continues.

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This 33 words piece is written for Trifecta Challenge. The challenge this week was to write a 33 words response to the Picture given. Click on the Badge to read other beautiful entries.

I Don’t Need Chicken Pieces….

Source : This

She is stirring Chicken curry in a black stainless steel pot when I see these thin tiny wrinkles on her hands. She pours some of the Gravy with my favorite chicken piece in a white bowl and hands it to me.

“I’ve made your favorite food today” A confused smile captures her beautiful face.

Her eyes fighting with a fear that her daughter might still be angry over last night’s fight and her heart assuring and reassuring her, No she isn’t.

One warm desperate tear flows out of my eye.

I can see my soul that gets up and hugs her passionately leaving my stone-heart body behind.

I take a bite of chicken piece that cuddles up with the tears stuck in my throat and a soothing peace occupies her face.

She puts a glass of water beside my plate leaves the kitchen.

All these years I kept complaining to myself and she kept cooking my favorite dishes. She never understood that I wanted more than my favorite chicken pieces and I never realized that I’ve to tell her that.

Nodding my head upside down wasn’t easy that time but her face glowed with an ethereal shine and my heart swam into the pleasure. The pleasure of watching happiness on her face because of me, for the first time. This time, she didn’t even try to hide it, she ACTUALLY hugged me.

She didn’t realize that all my life, I never ate the pieces I didn’t like.

I’m waiting for the surprises life has to offer after 10 more days.

I wonder how beautiful I’d be looking, wearing my bridal dress on a body in which a stone pumps white blood in the ruptured veins and it spills out on the grave of broken dreams caged in shackles of love and respect for my parents.

I hate chicken curry now and she doesn’t know that.

I wish she could know, ever.

Untitled Again ! (Because titles are not enough to portray feelings)

 

This is a photo of a boy from Syria who is sleeping next to his father’s and mother’s grave. I am gazing at this photo and I am crying so hard and so loud. I don’t know why… May be because sometimes you need something to initiate a spark inside you that allow you to let out what you have been collecting inside for a long time. You wrap your pain in layers of fake laughter and smiles and indulge yourself in the colors of this mortal life and at one point, all your tries of faking it dash to ground. You come out as the same weak personality that can’t even carry the weight of itself. The burden of problems and pain seems unacceptable;e at this point.

I had no idea I’ll write this post and I have no idea now what I am writing and where it’ll end. I just want to be real, for a while, for some seconds in front of a crowd and yet still in front of no one…. A crowd who don’t know me and a crowd to whom I owe no expectations and may be that’s why this crowd do more than I expect from them, always. Expectations are the things that create all those differences all those problems, No ? We’ll be happy on what we’d get if we don’t expect and yet here we are, expecting from others even more than we can do for them. Isn’t it funny ?

Sometimes my heart and mind needs a break. While engaging myself with this so called ‘life’ I sometimes get tired. At that time I want to run away from life for a while, I need to take a break from the artificial and live the real, I want to breathe in fresh air at a place where I can find no trace of my ongoing life or I need to sleep for a long time, very long time when no one could wake me up. I want to hide from the people who say that they love me and care for me, why ? I don’t know. I want to be invisible and see what these people will do when I’ll be no more around them. It’s not like I don’t know, but I want to see that.

I guess I have started liking this miserable condition of mine. May be that’s why when people talk of positivity and hope and happiness, their words don’t seem real to me. As if no such things exist in nature, as if they are just performing their duty to make a miserable person in depression feel better. No, despite all your words of support I am still standing here with the same hopelessness and empty hands and I have no positive thoughts.

Was I sent to this earth and given a life for this what I’m doing ? The world would be a far better place without me then why did Allah sent me here ? Any particular reason ? There is no answer. He wants to tell me but I am not ready to listen. There’ll never be any answer till the day they’ll be pouring mud all over my lifeless body. A body made of mud going into the mud. That’s the rule. That’s the truth.

And I am still crying…What should I do to stop this ? Any magical tablet any treatment that’ll stop all this chemical naughtiness going on inside my head ? There must be something that I’m missing…. But what ? My fingers won’t get tired of typing questions but your eyes will get tired of reading. I can’t do any good for anyone, I can’t make anyone happy. This task is not made for me. And that’s why I can stay happy.

And yet I portray myself as if I am the most sad pitiful being in the world. I don’t see that Syrian boy sleeping beside those two graves. What would he be thinking ? I know he is not sleeping, he just can’t. How can he ? He must be thinking about those four hands of Love that once used to hug him and slide their fingers through his hair, those two pair of eyes that had nothing but pure love in them and those arms that protected him once like no one ever can. They are sleeping now under layers of mud and he is still here, fighting with a fierce thing called life….fighting to protect himself from being eaten by life.

I don’t want anything from life…I just want my senses to get numb. I just want to stop thinking and enjoy a peaceful sleep, Is that more than enough ? I can now understand why people use drugs and alcohol and why these are forbidden for us. I have lost everything, and by everything I mean ‘everything’ that can’t be described in words.

I wished this writing might help me out but it hadn’t. Don’t know why. I don’t need pity, I don’t need ‘I am sorry for what you are going through’ and I don’t need “I can understand” because trust me, you don’t. No one can. No one has. No one ever will. I just have to live with my damn self.

Enchanted Illusion

Copyright-Dawn Q. Landau

She lives at a place far away. Perspiring sun rays of hope caress her face to welcome her mornings. She opens her home’s door and walk through the stairs like a queen. Butterflies take her to the seraphic valleys. She dances in ecstasy. Tickling winds make her giggle. Her laughs are loathed in euphoria. She opens her wings and flies with the birds. Sparkling sea water washes her feet. She sings with mermaids and fall asleep in ethereal embrace.

And yet in this monstrous world, resides her body void of soul – indulged in the weightless mysteries of naked truths.

The Meaning Of Motivation Changed.

A sign of motivation for me

Self  desire for actuation, some valid motivation

Lift up the soul enervated, with a new cognition

 

By the moment I complain of heartache unbearable

A person gets back his life, when heart beats go stable

Survival from a heart operation, his contentment grow

The meaning of “Pain” clarifies itself into a sacred vow

 

By the moment I blubber missing my Love forsaken

An infant cries for the lap of his  Mother forever taken

Craving for his Mother’s touch, his hollowness grow

The meaning of “urge” bounds itself into a sacred vow

 

By the time I sob encountering nights sorrowful, sleepless

A person couldn’t sleep of his hunger growing limitless

In the need of food, His chastity of gratitude grow

The meaning of “want” enslaves itself into a sacred vow

 

By the moment I refuse to see the hope of future bright

Optimistic dreams are seen by a person with no eyes

Wishing for a better life, His frenzy eagerness grow

The meaning of “hope” confines itself into a sacred vow

 

By the moment I refuse to thank, by the time I do complaint

The poor,The orphan,The needy ,The injured and the quaint

Satisfy themselves for what they have, as the life grow

The meaning of “Life” envisages itself into a sacred vow

 

Desire is the key to motivation,a changed definition

A pinch of enthusiasm, A heap of determination !

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Image Credits: http://www.eidhi.org.

Dungeon Prompts – Season 2 Week 1: Motivation.

Today’s Daily Prompt was NEW so this is my newest motivation.