Myself's Recipe

Truth; Loud and unyielding. Bold and unafraid. 
Righteousness; I shall speak the truth and seek it. The world can do back flips. The world will see. 
Value; What am I investing myself in. What are the reasons behind my thoughts and feelings.
Perseverance; I know what I want, and I'll get it.
Transparency; I am no denier of who I am. And I am not ashamed of my humanity.
Judgements; I left them for God.
Wisdom; If life hurts too much, at least there's a cause for all of it.
Acceptance; God made me beautiful. God created me for a reason. God knows where He put me.
Honesty; Your heart needs discipline. People need reminders.
Sensitivity; Where truthfulness comes from. Where acceptance comes from. Where delight learns to smile in the face of harshness. Beauty and pain coexist, richness and bleakness balance each other.
Delight; Laughter is the cheapest medicine.
Kindness; Love and teach self-love.
Wonder; Joy comes easy.
Ruthless; I will not allow the world to trick me into thinking anything other than the truth when it comes to myself and my life. I will protect my sensitive heart, my purity, my authenticity. Yet to learn not to punish others for not communicating love and for not being as brutally honest as their souls need them to be.
Beauty; Private.

- 2015 draft

A break up

 I see you.

I can feel your bottled tears.

I see the child in you, who learned to swallow down their cries, grew up to be the adult who has swallowed down so much, they’re sick with bitterness.

I hope the all Merciful guides your soul to salvation. I hope the all Merciful teaches you to show mercy towards your own pains.

I hope you cry.

I hope you cry until your chest burns and your throat burns and your eyes burn.

I hope you cry until all your blisters burst and all your open wounds bleed and your heart gets swollen. 

I wish you cathartic sobs and full body shakes.

I wish you would discover how pillows wet with tears sometimes invite the most blissful slumber. 

I wish you wake up with swollen eye lids and a gentle sadness. 

I wish you would finally allow your heart to break, because that’s the only way for it to open, to breathe. 

I wish you light. 

Maybe you’ll laugh genuinely for the first time in ages. 

Maybe your passive aggressiveness will turn into child-like joy. 

Maybe you’ll see why you were so afraid and burdened by your loneliness, why you were so afraid and burdened by the thought of facing yourself..and all this pain.

This gaping wound can, and will, swallow you whole. 

But the only way out, my dear..is through.

In another realm, I would hold your hand. I would let you lean your heavy head on my shoulder, and kiss your teary cheek.

But instead, all I can do  is wish and pray.

I wish you healing with all my heart. 

Running Free.

Written in 2016

I have a story.
I believe I'm not the only one.
I believe we might be all going/gone through this, we might not even realize it.
I've been through a crisis lately.
An emotional crisis, you could say.
You know, before this, when I would hear about people "losing themselves", it sounds nonsense.
But now I know what this means.
I know how it feels.
I swear...it's the worst non-feeling there is to not-feel.
Because I felt nothing

It started with the feeling of wanting to kill parts of me because it felt like they were inadequate.
I did that. I started doing that some long time ago without even knowing.
But lately, it got worse.
The busier I got, the more of me I felt I had to kill.
I wasn't practical I guess.
Cause you know..
It's not practical to be emotional.
It's not practical to feel...feel anything.
It's not practical to stop and respect your pains.
It's not practical to stop and praise your progresses.
It's not practical to stop and reflect your growth.
It's not.
So I thought let's just hide all that till I go home.
Being a medical student this meant...never lol.
So I literally reached a point where I felt...estranged. Where did Yasmine go ?
I was fine...by the known sense of the word. But I wasn't fine at all.
I was nothing.
I wasn't me.
I didn't know what the hell I was anymore.
It took me so much time I swear, to feel like myself again. Just to feel familiar with my mind.

And then I started to question.
The first question I got was omg I can't do this I cant afford the time to go so deep and dive into the abyss of me to bring me back to life ? It felt that way. Like losing myself and retrieving it would occur to often.
Don't people normally go back to chill after a long day and that's what is needed ? but for me it took TOO LONG to feel like at home again.
I asked myself why.
Then a friend helped me. She told me that it's because of how you distance yourself too much, it becomes too far away to reach back to again.
And that was a mind blowing moment.
It made perfect sense.
I knew I couldn't keep doing this to myself.
It's not that I don't want to, I can't.
 It was literally costing me my time, and my health. Because I am not kidding when I tell you that it made me sick.
So yeah. I made the decision.
There's nothing to hide.
And why should I hide
No body's worth preening up falsely to.
And it's not a sane thing to do to choose the parts of you that are "suitable" to be shown.

And now..a month or so afterwards, I swear to God it makes me so sad to feel like I'm digging her up from somewhere so old and deep.
When did I kill you, you poor thing ?
And what did you do to deserve to be killed, by me.

But ohmygod don't I feel the rush.
I swear to god it feels like running free.
Like running free. 
I 'm rediscovering everything about her again, about me, but I like to call her her because I swear I don't even seem to know her.
Shes surprising me.
I am only now coming to knowing myself after all this time thinking that I do already.
But the rush!
Ugh I wish I can describe it better.
I'm discovering that she's loud.
So loud.
And sassy.
And she has such a unique humor.
I love it.
It's sad..to come to know only now that I love her..I love me.
I've disconnected her so badly that she's a different identity from me.
I'm seeing how silly and cheeky and childish and radiant and upbeat and excited for life she is.
I'm sure I killed her before she got the chance to face life with me.
I've been going without her, a shell.
And I do recall very well; the time in my life when I started learning to create this shell.
And by time that shell has grown thickness, grown so much, I thought it was me for real.
She was put to sleep before she got the chance to mature, and now I see how young she is, too young.

God..it feels like a new beginning.

From Scratch ?

It's a Friday night.
Almost 9 pm.
I am here. I am home.
2019 was all about finding home, in many ways.

2019 was long, and hard, so, so hard.
But I would dare say call it triumphant.
It was hard but living good.

I found a trauma specialist and an art therapist.
I delved into the wonderful world of using art to understand complex emotions and get in touch with myself.
I found out the core reason behind my career confusion.
I spoke up about my trauma openly like never before.
I stood up for myself against abuse.
I took more space than I ever though I deserved to take, and made my voice heard.
I, for the first time, am recognizing my worthiness, and acting upon it.

So 2020 does seem like a clean slate, a new canvas, an exciting road waiting to be taken.
Restarting life.
Dis-assembling how I view my contribution to the world, paint a new picture of how I would like to live my days.

Never thought I'd be here, but here I am.
And as scared as I am, there's no other way to go but forward.