The "luxury"

She tells me she thinks it's a luxury to listen to your heart.
She blames me for taking the time to sit with myself. To listen.
How she thinks it's not really necessary.
How it's not really convenient to do so.
And she laughs.

Why is it that I feel insulted and angry by that remark.
Like all the work I've put in me in the past few years wasn't "necessary".
Like all the time I spent tending to my pains didn't lead me to healing.
Like all the softness I payed to myself didn't salvage me from rage.
Allowing myself the "luxury" of listening to myself and loving it was the only way I could save myself.

And when you've been bruised this bad, when your heart's been raised and grown oppressed, beaten, and silenced,
when it's been for too long learning to become invisible, and you've learned to dismiss its pleas like an itch,
how ignorant it is to call my right of ridding myself from all this baggage a luxury. 

City.

The heart is an untrustable thing.

القلب من التقلب 

It has the astounding ability of turning into something so alien of what it used to be, in a very little amount of time.
It could switch from holy and sacred to sinful and shameless in a night's time.

When I decided to shut my heart up on itself (for a while), it was because it had started to be as noisy,
and as crowded,
and as dirty,
as a city at night.
I strolled within its streets and I didn't like what I saw.
It was alive, yes, but not because it really knew why,
not because it really wanted to.
It was alive like a drunken city before dawn.
Loud, but on the brink of falling.
Thrilled, but only to live the moment.
Cheering on top of its lungs, only because it really doesn't want the night to end,
really wants to be as wasted as it can get.

When I decided to shut up my heart's doors,
I realized I had been longing for belonging for some time, I had lost sight, I had lost lead.
My chest has become filled with all the wrong things, it had become tightened up, it was hard for me to breathe.
I walked to find a home but it had been filled beyond that, occupied to its every corner.
When I found myself a stranger in my own heart, I realized something must be wrong.
I found myself weary, always weary.
I found no light within.
I searched for God but crowded hearts are not worthy of holy presence.
I tried to pray but my heart waned and failed to pray with me. I sat there on my mat looking at it; balled up and sleeping, snoring and drooling, like a child after a party.

The heart is a scary thing, if you turn your gaze away from it for just a little while, and come back to it, you could find what used to be a pious being has turned into a clown.
When I did shut my heart up, and all was empty, and all was quiet..I realized how long it has been since I was able to be alone with this heart that is so drunk off this dunya, how much it needs to be slapped to sobriety. Where are you going ? What do you think you'll get out of this ?
The verse

(فأصبح يقلب كفيه على ما أنفق فيها و هي خاوية على عروشها) 

snaps it back, and I know the verse was about a story but the words really sum up what you'll be left with if you only pursue dunya, it really portrays the end result. خاوية.
I close up my doors at night, the city sounds diminish with the gentle thud of the doors. I isolate myself from everything that is human, even myself. And at that moment, the setting apart of body and soul in my head, or rather of soul and drunken heart, is so clear, I can visualize it.
Sometimes I find myself giving it excuses like, it's still young, let it live! Or, give it a break, so what. Why do you have to give it such a hard time, now? 
But the world we live in today has become so scary, so Godless, so filthy, that if you don't hold on to your truths with claws and teeth, if you don't keep your light alive, if you don't keep your heart clean, teach it to play without being played, to party but still have God forever and always within, superior to all else, the world will swamp you with its pretty games, and drift you into oblivion.

Growing Wings

When the tears come, they come gushing. I lay there thinking of the good in my life, thinking of those who love me, and I let the thoughts hold me. And I cry. I feel sorry for myself, I can’t help it. I think of myself; an adult, held down by a broken child inside. When the anger comes, it comes big, flaming, and it burns my insides. If I would, I could burn this whole place down with the fire in my chest. My subconsciousness is probably the reason behind my inability to sleep. I can only imagine the clogged crevices, the jumbled memories and unresolved situations all cramped up in there. I hold my beat up face, my swollen eyes with dark circles to the world;..look..this is what you're doing to me. Not that they take much notice. But hey, feel free, stare away at my miserable features. We’re raised and we live in an emotionally crippled country, where people are perplexed by the mere fact that you have an emotional response. They're so perplexed that you're not a robot. I mean..how inconvenient! I sit there mulling over this non sense, thinking, if I weren't to take hold of my own emotional (and future mental) health, if I were to wait for recognition of the pain that's killing me, if I were to keep wrecking my nerves over their belittling of my anger, I would lose myself. All they ever did my heart was injustice. They dismissed its existence, its intensity, its swollen nature, stepping all over it saying, there..now it should stay like that..flat and neat at all edges, nothing problematic. But it only swelled more. It swelled so big it took over my body, taking over my ability to function in the world. And I spent years mending it, trying to heal the damage, trying to find it beneath all these scars, I had forgotten what it looked like. Some days would come when all I do is cry. Days when my heart would be taken over by the old, stagnant murky swamp, and I’d be pulled under, and I'd be always, always struggling to keep my head above the water. I'd be always trying to step out of the dark corners in my head, peeping out to get some sunlight, before my fears drag me in the dark again. But my eyes shall always be cast up to the skies of my life. I'm creating a ladder to the clouds, steps up to a h(e)aven, and growing wings along the way. I'm not gonna sit there watching them as they break me without even realizing their ignorance is ruining lives. No. I won't allow it.

التوبة، أمل.

Guilt and gratitude,
Darkness and light;

Guilt is not a pleasant feeling, obviously.
It can drive you nuts. It can.
Guilt can drive you into addictions, escapism, self-hatred, or off a cliff.
We're such weak beings, aren't we..it can be disgusting sometimes, honestly.
How can we face that guilt..if we can't even bare to feel it.
And how can we live life not carrying loads of past experiences that we aren't really proud of, to say the least, if we can't face it and deal with it, and move on?

The thing about guilt, is that it is very much related to gratitude.
The more gratitude we have, the more guilt there is tagging along to it.
This applies to an array of relationships, including that with God, which is the one I'll be talking about its guilt.

You noticed I mentioned the word relationship and God in the same sentence, and I'll explain this.
I can't really remember the day I realized that there could actually be such a thing as a "relationship" with God. Or the day I actually started feeling such a thing forming.
I don't remember when I started seeing that it's not just about sins and good deeds.
There was a feeling that started forming. A feeling of.. I know Him, I think I love Him. He has done so much good to me, He takes so much care of me, and He's so generous, and never closes His doors, even in the faces of the most sinful people on earth.
And maybe just just maybe, I think He loves me, too.
There was this higher sense of emotion that no one taught us about. All they did was scare us from Hell and teach us that Jannah is the goal.
I don't know about you but that is such a dry way to live life, without love, I think. Too dry.

With this higher sense, I felt a relationship starting to develop. And that's where the gratitude and guilt I'm talking about started to take place.

"Why can't I just be an angel ? Why did I have to be human?"
"I'm awful, why should He ever love me.."
"I'm too embarrassed, I promised I'd never do it again."
"I'm such a hypocrite, I do good deeds and feel like I could stand a chance when in fact I'm so horrible."
"Wouldn't it be easier and less aching to be flawless and sinless?"
I used to get these thoughts a LOT. And they were drilling through my brain and my heart, and they were painful. Because it feels like letting Him down. Letting someone you feel immensely grateful for, down.
I hated myself for being human.

But, then I remind myself that,
(إن الله يحب التوابين)
و ما نقدر نكون توابين لو ما كنا خطائين.

On day 12 of the online writing course, they asked
How do you deal with the negative darker aspects of you?
And here's what I had to say on the matter,

The aspect of darkness has very much changed in my perspective ever since I started viewing my relationship with God differently.
And the relationship between myself and I also radically changed.
And the relationship between myself and the world didn't stay the same, either.

I remember the itchiness I used to feel, the darkness, the bitterness, the hopelessness, the fear and the guilt.
I recall the feeling of being stuck within my darkest corners, not being able to crawl out.
I remember feeling like I'm never gonna be worthy of His love.
I remember feeling helpless.
Stuck.
Afraid.
I remember.

What I want to describe to you, is the change I mentioned.
The change is that the burden of having two sides in you, trying to conquer each other, that burden is gone.
You see, it's not the good side of me trying to take over the bad side anymore. It's not as despairing and gloomy and doomed as that anymore. Because, really. Who has that much will, and who isn't terrified by their darker sides?
Instead, there started to be a higher, much more powerful governing command, a loving command, a merciful, patient command.
There started to be more transparency.
You're exposed, really. There's nothing you can hide. And yet, that gives you the salvation that your heart dreams of.
No longer human against human. Or rather, there is that...but the good in you has allies now, as you can say.
He is your ally.
If you admit to Him, and ask for His higher power, if you give Him your true honest promise, that you truly want to change, and put your trust and belief in Him; your whole heart's trust (not a suspecting, trial kind of trust), He, the Trusee, has promised to be by your side in every second of it.

I stopped feeling so secretive and ashamed of my chamber of secrets, the dark side of me doesn't scare me or appall me anymore, and I no longer feel stuck and hopeless in my shadows. I'm not afraid of you knowing of my sins, because I'm exposed to Him, and it's Him I fear, not you. (Not that I do want people to know, though. الستر محمود برضو)

He has shown and taught that there WILL be darkness within us, and that there WILL be darkness in the world around us, too.
So it doesn't feel personal anymore, it feels more natural and shared. Because it's not just within me, it's within everyone else, and it's part of God's creation, the Most Wise, the Most Merciful.
So this helps accept the darkness in other people, too, never judge them by it, because the darkness is there and present in all of us, just in different forms. And people can change, and what you judge people with, can someday be within you, too.
This does not mean that we accept it as it is and give up on ourselves, no.
That's where Tawba comes in.
No matter what you do, no matter how many times you fail to change,
لا يمل الله حتى تملوا
He will accept you and love you once you repent and seek His forgiveness, and that's where space for self-forgiveness, self-love, and peace is found.

Hope is a powerful thing. And once you see Tawba as a source of hope, as an endlessly open door, as an unconditional source of acceptance and love and a chance to love back, life will change.
Because He can bring all your baggage, the hidden stuff that anchor your heart, to the surface. He can salvage your heart and make it light, light enough to float above all the ugliness of us and the world, light enough to breathe.

I Shall Make Us Work

Late at night, it's 2 am, I gotta wake up early. 
My heart's been on silent all day. 
Parched, hungry. 
I read poetry, and the moving of my heart brings me tears. 
I feel despair.
Am I destined to shut off my heart to be able to live in this world?
But I hold on to a belief. 
God did not create me with a heart like mine so that I would shut it off.
I was made different. Then I must have been created for a different cause. 
So I hold on to the belief. I shall make us work. 
Us; me, my heart, and the world. 

اللي ما عرفناه عن التوكل.

The thing I learned the night of the first OSCE exam (a clinical exam unlike all other written exams I've been through) in medical school was a very valuable lesson.
Things like Tawakkul become super clear in times of despair and complete helplessness and fear.

You see..when they taught us about Tawakkul, they never really focused on the fact that they consist of two things:
Your work,
and His.
And that these two are COMPLETELY separate things.
Here's what happened.
That night, I just couldn't anymore.
I absolutely couldn't push myself anymore.
I was done, beyond exhausted. Drained. Over. Toast. You name it.
As I tried to push myself for like 6 hours (you can imagine the desperation), the clock struck 11 pm and I haven't studied shit. I should say, I haven't reviewed shit.
But of course, I broke down.
I was trying to hunt motivation from my friends, from anything, but  n o t h i n g was working.
I lay on the bed, on my side, feeling powerless, helpless, crying my heart out (dramatic a little, yeah. But hey a big deal of marks depended on this exam. My GPA is important, too)
I was scared.
Angry. Why could everyone do it but not me ? Everyone is just as exhausted.
I was disappointed.
And stressed.
My father, who's a doctor, called me.
He saw my red nose and puffy eyes.
I told him about my stress over my inability to study, and he told me to stop trying, that I've been studying for more than two weeks (I was actually studying medicine literally from the very first day, I've never stressed over any subject the way I stressed over medicine. I was insanely stressed at minute one LOL)
So he told me to stop, gather my things and put them aside, relax and do whatever I wanted to do.
I trusted what he said (baba is very hard working and he wouldn't ever tell us to do anything les than work as hard as we need to)
So I believed him. I didn't need to study tonight, in baba's opinion.
I went up to mum, and she told me to make my self some juice, watch a movie, and sleep.
I was like okayH (hahahaha, no?)
But that's exactly what I did.
I watched a movie and it was real good. I did manage to relax.
The hard part though, was when I was trying to sleep.
Of course I had turned off my cell phone because I wouldn't handle the stress of remembering how everyone else is actively involved in reviewing for the exam.
But still, the stressing thoughts were haunting me.
"I haven't studied this, I haven't studied that, what if they ask about this, what if they ask about that"

I remembered something I had read the day before that had really rung a bell.
I read how when you're reminding someone of the right, cautioning them of their wrong (نصيحة), then un-patiently waiting for them to change and see the effect of your reminder.
The thing is,
You do what you do.
And He will do what He wants.
You don't do what you need to do because you're expecting the result, no.
You do what you need to do to SHOW Him that you've done it, then the result is up to Him.
بحكمته يقدر اش يسير
So it really stuck with me.
When we study for an exam, we do it to seek the result, the good mark.
But actually that's not how it's supposed to be.
When we study for an exam احنا بنفعل الاسباب
احنا بنوري الله اننا بنسوي اللي لازم نسويه, بنية ابتغاء مرضاته في النتيجة اللي نبغاها
و خلاص
الجزء التاني من المعادلة منفصل تماما عن الجزء الاول
الجزء التاني ما يعتمد على الاول
The realization that the two are separate things was enormously comforting. So that is honestly what enabled me to sleep that night, that I truly showed him how I tried my very very best, and that inshaAlla my niyya is well and that I want to be a good doctor, and knowing that it's all in His hands.

My Imaginary Book Tour Speech

As written for the Write Yourself Alive online course:

"Welcome everybody. Thank you all for coming. And thank you so much for reading the little thing I had to share with the world. I've never actually imagined I'd one day have the chance to actually do this. But here I am.
I used to disbelieve the power of words at one time, thinking it can only serve as a pastime, a gateway, a relief, or an entertainment. But no. I do believe the strongest things in this world aren't tangible, the strongest things in this world are thoughts. And I do see from my own experience and so many others' how books, even stories, have the potential to touch thoughts, to touch hearts. To reshape, add, mold, whatever it can do. If they're powerful enough.
I do hope you have sensed truth and authenticity in my words, I hope it has reached your hearts before it did your minds, because what comes from the heart reaches the heart.
As for the inspiration, process, and reason.
First, I would like to mention that some point, again, I did not believe what I have to offer can have any effect or benefit. Who am I anyway, right?
But then, I realized how..it's not just from that side. It's something to do with my side, too.
Because I have a gift, and I thank Allah for blessing me with the magical ability to use words, to build worlds and kill others with them, so easily. And I think we're all responsible about serving the world, and pleasing our lord with everything He has bestowed upon us. And so He has given me a gift to use it to try and help spread good. And that's the only reason that rung true to me. Because I didn't believe I was special. I don't really think that word has an absolute meaning anyway. Specialty is a relative thing, really. So that was my reason.
As for my inspiration, it was actually an online course lead by Tyler Knott and Andrea Balt.
Before joining that course, I treated my writing ability as a gift, yes, but only limited it in my head to using it as a hobby, and that there's no more I could get out of it.
Yet, after 30 days (I finished it in 60 actually) I started to see differently.
I was literally intimidated by how so much potential I beheld. For weeks, I was perplexed by this vague, yet powerful sense of discovery, of a dream being born, yet I didn't recognize it at first.
I was terrified of the fact that I had what it takes to truly be a writer, terrified.
At first I was confused. I didn't know why I was so scared. But as the days passed, and the end of the course got closer, and I was comforted by the reminder that I was going back to the old habits, the old lifestyle..I saw it.
Because for 60 days, I would wake up and the first and foremost important thing to do was to create. To excavate my superpowers. To write. And oh did I write. I was astonished when, a few days after I had written something and went back to reread it, I would see how amazing it actually was.
Suddenly, huge potentials were digged out of me, put in front of my eyes to see, and to touch with my own hands.
I saw it. I touched it. It was there. Real and true.
Yet, at that point in my life, I was so close to graduating from medical school. I believe I need to say no more.
Yet here I am, years later, when I graduated I decided to follow my dream, to formulate my message to the world, and to work so hard on balancing lives: my life as a doctor, my life as a wife and mother, and my life as a writer.
The world is changed by those who are crazy enough to believe in their dreams. I don't know if I'm crazy enough, but I sure as hell am telling you all to be that. That crazy, delusional person who wants to follow their hearts.
Nothing's impossible.
It was hard as hell, yes. At first, I suffered. mostly emotionally, because I was blaming this dream for haunting me and ruining my life? But then I decided that I would stick to it. It is my dream. And I'm going to protect it. And I'm going to work my ass off to do it. Allah's strength is what makes you merely breathe, and do every other thing in your busy, efficient life. point is, Allah's strength just as it did feed you, helped you breathe, walk, live day by day, pass through hell alive, it can sustain you to live your dream.
I have never met a doctor who is also a writer. Maybe I'm the first.
As for the process. I first dropped the idea completely, when I was done with the course, I was like, yes I have a talent, yes I have a dream , but I'm going to just give it enough air to keep it alive but not to let grow so much it overpowers and takes over everything else. I started planning my feeding sessions of that dream. Weekly, monthly writings. My casual blog for my thoughts that I'd like to share. That was the weekly part. As for the formal, more formulated, planned pieces and artistic poetic writing, that was the monthly part.
And it was not, NOT, easy. Nothing is, is there?
BUT, I decided to see it differently.
To see it as a source of life.
A piece of me.
Without it, I'm weaker, more faded, less oriented, less energetic, less hopeful, and less dreaming. With writing, I indulge in the daily little things that others don't even notice. My heart, my eyes, my ears, my mind they're all allies, ready and set to catch whatever it can to be the inspiration for the next thing I'll write about.
Writing is essential. Writing is lively. Writing is visionary.
Yes, I did postpone the CREATIVE kind of writing for later when I did finish the hectic frekkin years of my life, but I never stopped, never starved, never let the writer in me fade.
Writing isn't just to produce beautiful words, no. But far more necessary than that.
As I walk through my boring, hard days, the words I would later write seemed to create a sanctuary because it was a different world there on the paper. It was like..I had it written down, I made it beautiful, I made it last, I made it useful, I switched its sides, I contemplated it.
It gives my mind the ability to see things differently, to train myself into seeing the beauty in the gutter..because a heart breaking poem about suicide is beautiful, isn't that correct ?
Finally, I hope you one day realize what I had realized the day my dream was born. Once it's there, once you feel it growing and powerful and strong inside of you, I hope you realize it means it's a part of you, and you cannot deny its existence.
Thank you."