Home

I have known many homes in my lifetime – there was my childhood home – fraught with conflict. Home in my heart, home in the heart of hearts. My first loving home was AKU, in the rooms of my friends those walls will always reverberate with everything that we have experienced together, all of us there, all together. That was my home. Then I had another home, it didn’t last very long. And now I have another and will soon have another. It seems to me that all homes are meant to be transitory, I leave them when the time comes, but I think of them. Memories of some give me the warmest comfort in coldest of winters. Others make me cry with sorrow filled with loss. And yet, they all were homes I think.

I have spent my life feeling Hiraeth. It is the most beautiful word I can think of. But it is my home. Every moment has been my home, every heart every soul. I have inhabited different homes, I have felt at home in different ways in my own body, so how can I ever want my home to be the same? It is like the body of the phoenix – bound to change at every cycle, carrying the ashes of its past always and forever, because that is what makes it unique. The footprint of all the ashes of all its cycles are embedded in the phoenix’s wings – they give it color and they give it flight. Who am I to say that home is to remain constant? When my own body is bound to change, the seasons of change have never stopped so who am I to want them to stop. I can just see them pass by.

Hiraeth. Except I have always been home. 

Recomposed by Max Richter - Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, 1. Spring

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLDvbnK_Sqk)

Broken Records

Break ups feel like a broken record

I miss it. I miss all the times we were so madly in love, nothing could tear us apart. Not even the distances. It was us against the problem. It was us, even with no end in sight. We spent most of our time on our phones with each other, not really trying to make it work because it all felt so effortless. I miss that. I miss being in love. I miss the feeling of warmth and love that you get, just by looking at your partner. I miss that.

But here is also why we broke up - I miss being in love. I don't miss being with him. Because being with him also meant being with all the uncertainty, all those feelings of disgust and betrayal every time he would promise something and then not come through. That feeling when he backed out of my graduation, that is what really cemented the fact that I lost all my love and respect for him.

Khair, this is how you know right? Things happen and a relationship either stands the test of time, or it does not. So I don't think I wish for him. I wish for love which can withstand the pressures of time and change.

It is interesting falling out of love. You don't even know it is happening, and then one day something happens that makes you look at the big picture. You start looking at how the relationship had been ebbing away, eroding at the edges with every false promise made; with every lack of effort; with the constant desire to be in a place where we can't be; to be promised support that never comes through; to just not hold weight to your own word; to feel disrespected and hurt every time he made an excuse for why he did not come through - everything anything, all pointing towards how we just shouldn't be together.

Break-ups suck. Break-ups sound like a broken record. But even broken records played so beautifully once. And that is what you miss right? The times when it played so beautifully, so effortlessly to the rhythms so naturally ingrained within it.

Maybe the anger will also go away with time. The anger at him, at how I wished he made a little more of an effort, that he was a little braver, more maturer to stick it out till the end. But I know that anger will dissipate with reason - knowing all too well that maybe the circumstances just weren't optimum from the beginning, that we just were not meant to stay together beyond the time that we were. Differences in our personalities, in our approaches to life and the effect we had on each other.

It was good until it wasn't.

I miss us talking for hours, not knowing where the time went. I miss hearing his voice so that it brings me comfort and joy. I miss all the times we laughed and joked around, and how he made fun of me, and how I could be dramatic, and how just gave me so many virtual kissies, he would just tell me that he loved me. I miss him telling me that he loved me so much, and I miss loving him more than anyone I have ever loved. I miss trusting him; I miss feeling like he has got my back; I miss just being with him. I miss those moments of connection, those minutes we spent looking in each other's eyes with love so pure, so unbothered by everything that was to follow.

Break-ups are like broken records. And I miss loving him. Break-ups are bittersweet.

Song: To the Girl With Red Converse

The Ever Afters

Well, I graduated.

So much went right and so much went wrong, but all that seems to matter is that right now I am sitting with my beautiful, soft, warm and furry catto - Tofu, and I have La Vie en rose playing. Its cold, but I have a warm bed in my own apartment to keep me warm.

Song: La Vie En Rose

You and I
We dance under the moonlight
I wish for you
I wish for all the right things
I wish for all the things
that couldn't have gone wrong
I now know I will never have you
we feel more distant, torn apart
So close to breaking
Stretches of distances
Have snapped open
The recoil hurts
I cant keep stretching
Love is suffering
But it cant be this much apathy?
It wasn't supposed to be easy
It was supposed to be forgiving
How does it become the one thing
Which I have to let go of
To ease the discomfort of every day
Wasn't there a promise of comfort?
a promise of safety in your arms?
How have the things you say and do
Become so hurtful?
How did all the love I have
Evaporate into thin air?
How could I feel everything
And yet, nothing?

You and I
We keep dancing
I wish for you
I wish for all the right things
I wish for all the things
that couldn't have gone wrong
I wish for the end.

Do I put this out there?

I want to write more and I want to keep writing. I want to write and write and write until I once again start feeling like myself again, like I wasn't just a fragment of my own being.

And I just don't want to write about what is happening in my life. I want to write about what I am feeling and thinking, not about things that are happening in my life, but about things that are just out there untouched, that used to be a part of my thought processes. Like listening to songs and writing about how they made me feel.

There are more things out there but what are those things?
How do I find myself again? Do I go travelling? Put myself at that discomfort and see if I can discover myself in the process? Or do I just stay put, hoping something will happen?

I am feeling a little better, every day.

Though I wonder if they could have made the medicine a little less bitter.

To smell the Flowers

As I sit in my room which I refuse to light up because for some reason I prefer the calmness of a dark room, I think back to what my first year Urdu HASS teach Sir Asif Aslam Farrukhi had said in our last class together.

He said,
"Don't forget to smell the flowers"

I understood him, albeit differently than I understand him now.

Back then, I thought he was talking about the importance of just smelling the flowers, being in tune with nature and being in tune with your own humanity. It felt like it was a choice that we will have to make, and I was ready to do it. To spend a moment with my humanity, as an add on to all the other things that I will indulge in to sustain my life.

But today, as I sit in my room recovering from a particular dip in my life, I feel his words differently. I have mostly been curious as to how it started. When and how did my dip start? Always pays off to have a virtual boyfriend who can be your mirror and sounding board. I was venting out to him and he simply said,

"Its when you started spending all your time only studying babe."

It made sense. It was all gradually going downhill, maybe inevitably, when Bilal's bike broke down and I did not have something to look forward to on my Sundays. Those hours that I kind of looked forward to talking to my virtual boyfriend also became uncertain and boiled down to weeks of absence, because well, such is life, and my days off just became days that I was still worried about things. And then came exam season, and I took my free days away from me.

In conclusion, I lost myself.

I lost myself bad. Everything that I loved and held close to my heart, everything that was me, I kept putting it off because "I had to study". I put all my eggs in this one basket, and the hopes attached to that basket just kept increasing, I was hoping that this one basket will give me the validation that I needed, my expectations just kept rising, and in the end, the basket crashed under the weight of my own expectations.

I wasn't writing, because I didn't have the time. I wasn't reading, because no time. I wasn't practicing Spanish like I wanted to I just wasn't doing much.
And so I think my mind and body started rebelling. It had to come to this point for me to realize what I had been doing to myself.

Which is why I am sitting in my room reminding myself of what Sir Asif Farrukhi had said four years ago,

"Don't forget to smell the flowers"

And right now, I feel like it was never a choice that I had to choose from. It was a need. An inherent need to connect with my humanity, without which my soul (if I may) will rebel. It will act out against the deprivation that I was inflicting upon it.

I don't know how I will continue from here, but I do know that maybe realizing this much about myself is tiny steps towards feeling better. I don't know how I will manage, or what I will do, or how I will think, but I do know that right now, I just need to slow down, and smell the flowers.

A Radical Notion

Well, it's been quite some time since I last wrote.

It feels good coming back to this blog. Right now, when I feel like I am only a remnant of what I used to be as a person, it feels good to come back to something that I used to do, that made me feel good.

What I have been so far, I probably shouldn't discuss. I have done enough of that in the past few weeks, with myself, and everyone around me. Maybe it is time to start doing new things all over again.

I am a loss to see what will come ahead, but I guess I can also be curious about it. I am familiar with the darkness before sunlight.

Anyways, I don't think I came back here to indulge in some real life banter. I am here to reminisce about times gone. When I stressed and worried but it feels good to think about those times because they are gone.

I miss Mr. Monty to be very honest. It was quite a treat to be so in love with him, and to grasp on to him in times of despair as my only source of happiness. Mr. Monty was good to me. It feels good to remind myself of what I was, of all the things that I have forgotten.

It feels good to be back. It feels good to indulge in myself. It feels good to hear myself again.

Maybe I should listen to a song and write about it like I used to. Let's give it a try and see if I still got it huh? I want to feel that joy again

Song: The Sound by 1975

Tap, tap, tap
the music is on
I see your head bobbing
I see your shoulders moving
Grab my hand
Let's, you and me,
rock to this band
Let's, you and me,
move in unison
Let's, you and me,
laugh and dance
This dance floor
was built for you and me

It felt good to indulge in this. To listen to a song, close my eyes and see what it makes me feel and think and then write about it. It feels good to have this little space where I can unapologetically be myself and just do something that is not means to an end. I am doing it just because I am doing it.

It is only becoming apparent to me that I lost myself - in my studies, in my work, in my worries for the future, in everything. But one can't do that for very long without having your insides scream at you. This one, this time, yet again, was me telling myself that I am ignoring myself. I am not exactly sure how to rebuild myself or what I will do tomorrow, or how I will go about things, but maybe something else is to come, which requires me to feel this way for now. And it will be okay I guess.

I will indulge a little more in me. That much I know. Read books for sure.

Of Cauterized Human Flesh

The more time I spend in the field of medicine, the more I respect it. 

Who said it was easy to bear the smell of cauterized human flesh?

Or work eight to eight?

Or make sure that your patient is not left wanting for anything?

Or stand long hours giving another human the best chance of survival?

Or breaking bad news?

Or knowing that despite knowing all that you do, despite learning all that you have learnt, you still have limited power in controlling the outcome of your patients well being?

Or learning to maintain the delicate balance between compassion and apathy to preserve your own being just so you can do all this again the next day and again and again?

But I wouldn't have it any other way.