Insomnia

Sitting up in bed at 2:32, paying my dues to the pains that are demanding to be felt.

Insomnia is the punishment we get when we don't feel the things that need to be felt, or when we don't think the thoughts that need to be thought. 

Well played, brain.

Hero

It's 1:21 am.

It's been an exhausting week. 

My daily lack of sleep is building up. 

I'm in over debt with sleep. 

And my body has this thing that it does that drives me crazy.

When I get TOO tired, I get insomniac.

It's insane.

Like can you please make sense ? Because you're not.

Anyhow.

It's 1:21 and I'm in bed for ages now.

I check my Ask (yes I still use it, I know it's pre-historic, and I don't care) for the random questions it suggests.

I get this question: 

What is the most heroic thing you've ever done ?

And I remembered my story from the ICU today. 

So I held this woman's hand. 

She was in the ICU. 

I took her case. 

As I was checking her charts, I noticed they were removing her breathing tubes, so I wanted to see. 

The room was filled with nurses. 

All I could see, though, were her eyes.

Now, mostly in the ICU, you'd expect patients to be unconscious, right ?

Yeah, me too. 

And I believe they wouldn't have wanted it in any other way. It's a very itchy place.

Beepings never stop. It's quite, cold, and there are no windows. You don't know how long you've been sleeping, don't know what day it is, what time it is and what exactly happened to you. 

And you find yourself in grey rooms that feel like cold metal and desperation, that reek of sickness. It's a demonstration of humanity's attempts against its own futility.

The patient is surrounded with machines.
Endless lines and monitors.
The rooms are relatively spacious, which is worse. There's room in there..and it feels worse, because it's empty, except for all those machines.

So this patient was conscious, unlike the majority of patients there. 

She was a middle aged woman. She underwent an open heart surgery and was admitted for post-op complications. 

But she was conscious and all. 

And this woman had fear screaming in her eyes.
Her eyes screamed so loud to me, it ached my heart.

They were so wide.

I could tell she was wondering how close she is to dying. 

It made my heart sink. 

Like all those people around her and all these expert doctors in this great facility yet not one of these people sensed how mortified this woman was.

How all she needed was a hand to hold. 

She couldn't speak because of all the tubes. 

She was gesturing, she wanted someone to hold her hand. 

So I did. 

And I assured her with my eyes, and squeezed her hand. 

Before they removed the tubes she was gesturing something else to me but I didn't understand. Then I realized she was asking me not to leave her. I said I won't.

And just seeing how different her eyes were right then...

She had the look of a wounded prey that had just found shelter.  

I was there when they removed it and I saw how painful it was. 

She later told me she felt they were killing her. 

When she was able to speak again, she prayed for me.

Such prayers aren't like any other prayers. 

My heart squeezed in on itself. 

I wiped her tears and told her she's okay.

Before I left I asked if she needed anything. She said she wished for fresh pomegranate juice.
And you wouldn't believe it, I got her just that lol. I got pomegranate juice for an ICU patient.
Wow huh.

So yeah, these are the kind of moments one should write about. 

And that, folks, is the silver lining of insomnia;

I wrote my heart-warming story. 

Good night. 

4th of January, 2016.

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.