It has become something which festers and aches and heals over and then the scab gets picked too early and it bleeds and scars. Something uncontrolled, something that needs outlets but shudders to put out that toe and emerge from its dark cavern. Negative thoughts, negative emotions constantly swirl, thoughts which are damaging, and restless and repulsive to the soul. Thoughts one can be half-ashamed of.

You know you are that person who has had a lot to go through in life, situations created of your own doing that were impossible to run away from. And yet, run away you did. Whenever you got the chance, you ran away. You got yourself into a mess, panicked, and backed off. Sometimes you fought it out, tried to reason with yourself and your mind and your heart and with others, sometimes you could not convince them, sometimes you had to quiet yourself. You let yourself be kept quiet too often; too often, you let others make the decisions. All sorts of decisions, all sorts of things that would end up hurting you. Until you got used to following them, believing in what they said, doing what they thought ought to be done. And you did wrong with yourself, letting them hurt you, it was wrong. External pressure made you take initial wrong decisions, being 'too polite' to actually stand up straight (you always were a sloucher) and speak your 'mind', even though we both know it was your heart yearning to do the talking. Your heart knew. It always does.

Time passed, and bonds developed. You were the peacemaker, they were the conflicts. Each of your little packages decided to create conflict with every other package you owned. Too many times you lost. Your pretty trusting packages had too much takabbur in their hearts; too much jealousy, too much hasad. You were owned, you were diced and divided and quartered. You gave out what you had, they slurped it up and asked for more. You began to feel like being sucked dry. You were told off, you were the sore, the festering sore that was raining on everyone's parade, the one doing so much wrong. If you could just learn about limiting factors, it should be alright. So they thought. They forgot to glance into their own misguided hearts, peek into their own curtained shortcomings. They forgot. They saw only you, and you alone.

Your guilt was insurmountable. Yet you ploughed on. You tried to don indifference as your newest tool, because every other emotion was faltering and failing. It worked. Only, they gave you new labels. Callous. Shameless. Cold. Stone-cold. Your heart, they thought they could read it. They thought they alone, each one of them, could read it like an open book. They constantly stood next to you, and then pinched the heart that adorned your sleeve. It was your habit. That became theirs.

You wanted happiness, you gave happiness, you got happiness. You also got much unaccounted-for pain. You took no toll on it, you reciprocated with no revengeful feelings, for you were softer, much softer. Wont to forgiving and giving leeway. Wont to letting the decisions be made and imposed upon you, letting yourself be used. Did it please you? I know not.

They moved on, suddenly adopting normality, often too cheery to be natural. They walked all over thoughts that had previously been theirs to begin with. You stood there confused, unable to figure out which was reality, and what exactly was it that they wanted. You knew you couldn't move on. You outwardly did, but inside you still felt pain, still winced inwardly at moments that they made out as 'jokes' now, still wished you could heal yourself as they appeared to have healed magically. You couldn't. You didn't. You were the abnormality, so you hid away the hurting bits and pretended to not notice them whenever they throbbed.

You saw them change, and worried. You repented your own foolishness, but now you started to feel impacts of your actions rubbing off on them. You worried constantly about your bad influence, because you had to take the blame, it was something you had always done. You were sure it was your influence. You tried helplessly to stem the tide, hold back the incoming waves of mistakes you saw surrounding you, tearfully tried to rip apart iron bands with your bare hands, but you could do nothing. It seemed the damage had been done. You cursed yourself, and in an enlightening moment, perhaps received the pounding from the curse. Fie on you, and fie happened.

Bitterness had been welling inside you for a while; pain had been secretly working away in a grimy corner, unnoticed by you, creating inside its workshop things like resentment and anger. Oh, so much resentment, that has taken years to siphon away, and is still lingering. Then, all this was happening so quietly you didn't hear a whisper of it for a long, long time. All you knew was the clingy film of pain that was coating all your innards and the breaking of pieces of you that floated aimlessly. You felt aimless.

Pleasures began to wane, purpose began to be lost. Things went from out of focus to bleary to full-on blurry like viewing through a rain-washed window. Helplessness was pinning you down as you struggled to breathe, struggled to feign interest in things happening around you, struggled to keep afloat, even as you were pulled below the surface again and again. You were the spectre, the dark shadow that affected everyone who was in your presence. Pain came again, distances were created by putting up walls, and you felt support slip away. You wondered again and again how your actions could be seen by them as a personal affront to their beings. But that's how it was apparently. They left. They took steps back, and then never came forward again. It hurt. More than anything, the leaving hurt. You didn't know what to think because it seemed you must have pulled back from them when they needed you, for them to be doing that now that it was your turn. Your memory shows you nothing of the sort, but it is what you choose to believe, to help lessen the pain and confusion and pretend, yet again, that your faults are what are causing you to reap whatever 'rewards' life is throwing at you. You take the blame. They sit back content, their hearts accepting with grim pleasure as you struggle with weights you're carrying around your neck.

Suffocation is next, or perhaps was even there before. You try to throw off the pillow, try to ease your necktie, but breath is limited and your mind isn't doing so well without the oxygen. You feel again those binds holding you down, feel resentful at the mistreatment and long to shove it into faces as hard as you can. The expectations branded into your skin like a prized animal, the expectations need to be torn out. You tear it with so much force you leave half of yourself behind. You are free, but only half. It is frightening to not be whole. You cry. You wish for the agony to end, but when you turn around to share the anguish and try to put out the many fires burning in your wake and within you, you see nothing but fog and haze. There is no one. They have left. You die inside more. You know now you are alone.

You set about trying to figure out the winding road, picking up scattered pieces of yourself you find on the way. You are desperate and want to cling on to something, your nature is not so easily undone. You find, you cling. You begin to feel like a cup having hot tea poured into it. You feel better. But the pain-blankets are now heavier than ever, the chains around your neck ever more menacing. You weep. It seldom helps.

You reach out again and again, trying to desperately tie threads with your swollen, blistered fingers, unable to see through the blinding screen of tears that will not cease to flow. The threads keep breaking. You try it again with a smile on your face. They break again. You keep trying. Childhood insecurities begin to snake their way into your consciousness, and you start falling prey to them like you haven't in a long time. You start to retreat, to places inside of yourself where pain is already residing. It is not a happy abode, but it is the only one open to you now. Once-welcoming arms have now closed and you are alone.

Slowly you start cutting down on the bitterness and slathering on coats of a hard material you don't quite recognize. But it is serving your purpose. Coat upon coat of hardness. You start closing your eyes to telltale signs and pretending you cannot see, cannot feel the looks, the actions. You tell yourself you are not alone and can get through this. Your heart knows that there is no going back, but you tell it to yourself anyway because you know you have to bide time on empty words, for there is no other comfort to be had, nothing else is coming from anywhere.

You start to wean them off of you, pushing yourself into crevices when possible, let yourself stay unnoticed, reduce the shadow of your presence. You know you are the shadow. You realized they would be happier, better, without your influence and your constant presence. Or so it seemed. So you let them move on, let them revel in their happiness, their achievements, their big plans and goals, while you quietly try to snuff your candle and sneak off. You slowly let go, feeling yet again at fault for being the one always holding them back from being their great, amazing selves. They apparently do not think you need them, so you decide for them that they do not need you. Too late, they didn't need you anyway. You are flickering into invisibility. It hurts a lot, but it must be done.

Resentment and anger are finally given birth to, and they are staggeringly overweight. They flare in uncontrollable waves and some part of you is scared, but unable to understand how quickly the changes inside you happened. You spent broken moments, then pulled yourself up and made yourself stone-cold, and then all this happened. Underneath all the anger, you want to yearn for their absence. Your cold side ruthlessly suppresses it. It has had enough of pain. It doesn't want you moving towards it once again. You know you must give them up. Nerves scream, but you ignore them. You cry. You try to move on.

You want to question all those empty places, want to ask them to account for all the aches that surge through you again and again, but you know you no longer have the right to ask questions. That door has been closed. Not slammed shut, just closed slowly with a horrible creaking sound that dragged on forever and clawed at your insides. You want to ask who changed, who didn't, what changed what, what happened to who, questions and questions and questions. You want to plead for sincerity, want to rebuild and reforge. Nope. Nothing. None for you anymore. They are gone. So will you be soon.

You know you are on the right track, if there is any right and wrong. You know if you have lost them along the way, if you have found Allah, if you have found a measure of tranquility, of peace and stability, then you have won. You are no longer the wanderer, the helpless, the lost. You can't keep track of everyone anymore, but you know where you are. Right here. Now. This.

So many thingzez to talk about!

Firstly, our daily dose of kitty stalking:

Unfortunately, they do not belong to me. A cat gave birth to kittens in my backyard, and they live there in some hidden corner. Since my room is at the back of the house, I get to witness them being ado'able wittle kitty cats (and secretly record their finest moments using my camera). My parents are usually not too pleased with stray cats having the run of our place, but I've noticed they never really try hard enough to get rid of them, so you see, I bet they have got soft spots for them too =p Big old softie-hearted parents, yeah!

Also, I baked:
(Muffins. Shame on you for thinking of kittens)

Sooo many chocolate chips *om nom nom*

Close up fail.

I've realized that although I've had this blog for years, I was never concerned about actual readers (plural yeah, didn't think anyone would actually be reading this!). But for a month or so now absolute STRANGERS are visiting and leaving comments (he-he, just kidding, I'm actually flattered by the attention). So it seems I will have to make an About page or something, because I follow a lot of blogs now and it's a thing apparently. I can imagine people visiting here and then going like..but who the heck is she?! What does she do? (or even people who will read this sentence and say Oh I just figured out this is a girl's blog). Because my blog has never followed any chronological events in my life, and I have never really said anything about myself at all in posts, I guess I'll have to divulge a tiny bit of personal information in the form of an 'about' page. The truth is, for four years, people did occasionally look in on me here and leave a comment, but I always considered this space to be for me...more than for others to read. I've changed a bit regarding that recently when I finally started discovering blogging communities and liking the feel of the atmosphere where people care about other people's writing and lives without actually knowing them. And I stopped being a nameless reader to all these amazing blogs I followed quite consistently and actually started leaving comments on them. Let's see if I ever get around to wanting to attract more readers to stick around =p.

I've noticed how open people are about their lives on their blogs. That is something I have never been able to do. I'm not sure I want to, but sometimes I have felt it would be liberating to talk openly of people and things and events and share things with bloggers who can tell you they understand. Going through the archives here, you would find lots of random pieces of abstract writing, some poems, and the occasional entry that was actually written in the first person and shared something about myself. When talking about something personal, or that holds a lot of emotional weight, I tend to slip into this writing style where I use metaphors to let it all out. After all, this is all just exactly what my paper journal would have looked like for the past few years if I had been writing it out instead of typing it on an internet page. I wonder, is it allowed in blogger-land to treat your blog like a journal with casual indirect spouts of wordiness and the virtual equivalent of doodles?

Anyway, yesterday I had a conversation with a friend, the type of conversation I have not had with anyone for a long time because I've been keeping a lot to myself lately and staying home mostly with family. It started off quite randomly and quickly became this serious discussion regarding changes in the past couple of years, and new things and the future. Without actually going into personal details of things we've both been through and experienced, we had a general talk about good and bad changes in ourselves, and I ended up talking a bit too much of my 'dark' side. But my friend had positive and supportive things to say to me which made me feel so much better about myself. I let on about how I needed time to go over things and kind of decide how to steer my life from this point. All the negativity I was spouting obviously made my friend say that I was in a dark place and perhaps over-thinking stuff; the truth is, I was in a dark place for a long time, but I feel now I am out of it and on the path to healing. I do have a lot of thinking to do to help keep my head above the surface so I don't sink back into the misery-abyss. But for the most part, I feel the worst is over, and no matter how much I dread the winter that's coming, things will actually be good *ignoring the impending daily loadshedding of gas and heater-less bum-freezing situations*

P.S. -  WHEN, WHEN WILL I BE ABLE TO HOLD IN MY HANDS AN ORIGINAL COPY OF THE FOURTH ERAGON BOOK INHERITANCE, JUST NEWLY RELEASED? GAAAHHHHHHH

Currently re-reading:  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Watched: 3 episodes of How I Met Your Mother

My search..for...

I started my search in familiar places. Some I entered quickly, rapidly, set my hand against the brick and ran my fingers against its cool smooth surface, and felt the crevices, and searched. I paused for a moment on the step as I closed my eyes and breathed in empty air that reminded me of nothing.
The pause. The replay. The pause. The replay.

Other places I entered hesitatingly, haltingly, walking along with a forced nonchalance as if I had wandered there (not) on purpose. Head down, raking the ground with my eyes only to give them a place to look at while I reached there. I stopped. Stared. Dawdled. Lingered. Felt nothing good, nothing happy. Only anger. I molded it, swallowed it. Retraced my steps back to the world of noise and people and...reality.

Other places I avoided completely. The alcove does not miss me. I do not miss it.

The search is not over. It shall continue.

Winter afternoons

Afternoons.
*sigh*
Afternoons are not good times. These days. I believe it is the weather, the atmosphere, the routine that has an effect. For, winter afternoons signal the end of the day, the imminent setting of the sun, and the nearby transition to darkness, and evening, and cold.
Hence, they depress me.
Every afternoon finds me curled up in the corner, staring at the artificial flames, seeing past them, feeling so much all at once, and my body trembles with sobs, harsh sobs that may or may not hold tears.
Or, under the heavy quilt, which sees and hears and feels me then and at night, and tries to hug me into itself, tries to comfort me, warm me, and yet, the dying sun has set – and I am warm on the outside, but still cold inside.

I wait for times when memories will bring only smiles. And perhaps a tender touch of wistfulness.

I miss her, who hugs me only with words, and that is better than any bear hug.
I miss him, who wishes and waits and whose path I embellish with flower petals.

it could have been worse

I am miserable...and yet I am not. I shouldn’t be…it’s not like I’m lacking much in life.
I’m sad and I worry too much about someone…as I should.

I feel like I’m caught in a whirlpool; I’m going around in endless spirals and sinking deeper, fast. And that is something entirely different from the panicky feeling that rises up inside me sometimes, threatening to engulf me, suffocate me – and my head spins while my fingers scrabble at my throat uselessly, trying to save me from the cord that is choking me.

I’ve spent all morning and all afternoon shivering. The cold has been affecting me worse today. I had actually been keeping it at bay in recent days. It is seeping into me and clutches hold of my backbone, and then it spreads up from that low point in one sudden smooth, fluid motion up my spine, and the jolt pulls me up straight and sets my muscles all a-quiver.

It is not pleasant.

It has been long since I felt the need to unwind – and I mean that in both ways – my muscles have been taut with tension for too long; I needed to let my mind unfold from its twisted position, needed it to relax out of its tight fist.
I needed to be able to feel again.
I know I can get away with much because it’s so simple to become numb. It’s become as easy as breathing now – it goes on just fine until you notice that you are breathing and then it becomes more difficult to do. It’s like second nature.
But I want to do away with this shield. I want to tear off this covering as violently as possible and expose the raw me underneath. I want the cold and the heat to sink in fully and to set me ablaze with cold fire. I want to burn.
It isn’t fair that they may feel so passionately and I cannot. I want to feel as they do. I want to be embraced by that turmoil of passion that will tangle itself in my hair and hold me tight against the storm. I want that storm. I want it as my own. I want to possess it, and it to possess me, embrace me and clutch me with its cold stone fingers. I want it to scourge the numbness away. I want to feel.

of bad organizing, men's egos, and pantene!

The Performing Arts Festival…well, yes…it was good. I didn’t get to see as much as I should have, but the little I did bespoke of the talent and the level of organization that our people possess and can impart. And yet, I pass by Gaddafi Stadium everyday, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon, and I shake my head at the organizers. They had the Alhamra center and halls decked out in ribbons and banners, and they took them off once the party was over. Why not from the main gate, too? They’ve left those pink, blue and black triangles on the outer façade to fade and become as bedraggled as they are now. So far, they’ve endured rain and cold wind, and the general dirt and pollution from the traffic that has become so commonplace and so much a part of Lahore’s landscape that we don’t even bother to mention it anymore. TAKE THEM OFF FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! IT LOOKS UGLY!!!

*sigh*

Why is it that most men have this huge, huge indeflatable ego? I really wonder why most of them think themselves to be just the very thing that women want, the hottest object there could possibly be. They think that wolf-whistling and shouting out dumbass comments while they whiz past on their motorbikes is really the way to address a girl crossing the street, who, frankly, doesn’t even give a damn whether they exist or not and even if she does hear them, just walks past unconcernedly, vaguely thinking that men really are one of the most detestable objects on this planet. Too true. You’d think they’d have a bit more pride, but really, they chase after girls all the while claiming that it’s just a bit of a sport, and yet, it’s not as if their intentions aren’t perfectly clear to the smarter half of the world’s population.

There’s this guy in my biotech class who really is in need of a hair wash. He’s supposedly styled it, with all that gel and those spikes, but I strongly believe I should offer him a bottle of shampoo one of these days. He looks plain filthy, no two words about it.

There isn’t any gas coming. And my room is freezing! And there’s something wrong with my jaw; it’s kinda hurting me.

P.S. - i saw today that there are white triangular ribbons as well...:P

social rant

Perhaps that is the beauty of mankind. The beauty of believing in what does not exist.

Typing while wearing gloves is a very tiring business indeed. But it does feel good, especially when one gets used to it. The only real problem is with the spacebar; I seem to press it at wrong intervals much more frequently.

There’s gas load shedding this year too. Like our government has been advertising on TV how they’ve set up this many new electricity and gas connections in rural areas; they’ve apparently exceeded they’re capacity, and now we’re forever short of it. The real thing is, I’m sure many villages were happier without electricity. Now the govt. first got them used to having it, and when we realize there isn’t enough to go around, you proceed with daily load shedding, with different intervals for different localities. And in summer, too. And the rurals are hit the worst. They’ve been going without electricity for 8-10 hours daily. Wasn’t it better to not give it to them in the first place if you’re just going to as good as take it back? I’m sure they deserve it just as much, but when you don’t have enough butter, spreading it thinner on more bread just doesn’t suffice. Gas, though, is something they really should be provided with. It’s a better alternative to coal (which causes pollution) and firewood (which leads to unchecked deforestation), and coz it’s really cold in winter! I don’t mind gas load shedding as much (as long as mom has cooked already) because that way I know poorer ppl might be getting the benefit of it. And there’s nobody who can feel the cold more than I can! (It’s this winter, actually, that’s killing me!).

I just shut off the heater.
It’s because I know that I’ve got so much that they haven’t. I’ve got fleece, and gloves. I’m in a strong, enclosed house with not a whisper of a draught from anywhere. I sit in my warm car, travel the 45 minutes to college in complete luxury and get off right in front of the gate. I don’t work all day or engage in hard labor of any sort. I’ve got enough food to eat. And I’m young and full of life…but whoever said ppl of the villages are tired of their life and existence? I think I kinda got confused in the middle. I started at one point and then went off tangent. Regardless! Im sure I can live through the cold…at home at least – it’s freezing in college and I’ve got reason to complain there!
But then, on to another point. A lot of poor ppl don’t have enough sense as well. Another fact. You’d think that with luxuries hard to come by, they’d be a bit more frugal, a bit more careful of resources and needs. But no! My own cleaning woman’s family tells of how they leave their water running and it doesn’t matter a bit. In fact, she went as far as to say that ‘jinne pani naal tusi kapre dhonde ho, onne de naal saada aik bacha mun dhunda hai’ *hmph* what can you do with people like that? There’s no knocking some sense into them. They don’t WANT to get educated. Some organizations have gone as far as paying kids for coming to school, and yet their parents still think it’s a waste; ‘what will they do with this education, how will it help them become better ppl or better earners, when they could be spending this time helping us out and contributing to the daily earnings for our 10-12-person-family’s bread?’
Yes, that is what they say. That is what they think.
The best invention, according to my cleaning woman’s family, is cable TV. They work in the morning, getting everything done as quickly as possible, so they can get home and watch movies. And then back to work the next day, cleaning up somebody else’s mess in somebody else’s house. Not just one house, though. They’ve all got to work at 2 or 3 to make ends meet. And their only occupation on getting home is to do their own chores around the house, or, the blissful television. For them, life is perfect. They do not want to increase their level of existence, their ‘quality of life’. That does not just mean to be rich and successful and equipped with the latest gadgets and a junkyard’s worth of possessions. It’s about being educated. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s education that makes all the difference.
The wb says that all the money they gave was spent on advertisement instead of the real work it was intended for. Daddy said so from the start. How pathetic is that? You think they’re all going straight, they’re the ones who seem to be making a difference, and then they goof up, and the entire façade crumbles and the stark interior is revealed. All the same. All corrupt to the core. All seduced by Man’s greatest desire: power. I know we can all sit comfortably in our homes and criticize leaders and rulers for getting greedy once they get the taste of power. But the real question is, if every one of us were in a similar situation, with temptation tantalizingly hanging before our very eyes, how many of us would be able to resist the greed and the lust for power? How many will actually be able to turn away from all that wealth and power and do what’s right, selflessly, for the people? That is a question every person must ask himself.



P.S. – I refuse to use the word maid as some people insist. ‘Cleaning woman’ may sound weird; perhaps rough and uncouth even, but that’s what I’ve always said and there’s nothing I can do about it.