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.

Heaviness of Remembering

More serious than I think.
More heavy.
More grave.
More isolating.
Life, and it's true meaning.
Your presence in it. Your connections to it. Your responsibility towards it. Your perception of it.
If we weren't driven by systems, by routines, by rush, we would stop..and then we would be really afraid, really grey, blue, whatever. We would feel the true strength we behold, none. We would remember that we are leaving..leaving..gone.
We would stop and feel the heaviness of remembering. Of seeing life as it really is. Of seeing our responsibility towards it just as heavy and as scary.
Isolation..even if only in your head, can be good for you. You can redefine, re asses, review everything.
Ask yourself the questions that take some time to answer. Or rather..take some time to have the courage to pull its answer from deep within..where you hide it. Behind all that clutter of the rush of life.
Isolation. Why do you do everything you do ?
Everything you do, every move you take, every word you make, is documented.
But Allah is the most merciful.
Losing entity in the world. Losing character. Losing principles. It's not hard for that to happen, it's not hard for that to happen without you noticing it happening.
Close your cell phone. And feel the heaviness.
You need to be comfortable with the heaviness, so you can let it steer you into the lightness.
From the fear of facing truth, to the vulnerability and hope and fear of following it.

6/11/2015

ساعة صفا

الهدف آخرة. 

بس في هدف في الدنيا..أو في مكان. 

ماعرف لسا.

بس اتأكدت ان الوسيلة لأي مكان مقدّر لنا نروحه، اننا ما نقفل قلبنا، و اننا نستعين بالله يخلي قلبنا نضيف كفاية انو بصيرتنا ما تنطمس. 

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.