afraid

One of the things I've discovered about myself is that I'm afraid. So is everyone, you might say. And I'm sure you'd be right, but nonetheless, I am afraid. I often find myself thinking quite enviously about the experiences people have by themselves, by just jumping into things and letting them happen. I was never one of those people. Perhaps only when it came to saying what was on my mind, but I still do that.
I've learned how to be scared, to be more careful, to think a million times before I do anything, because I believe that trouble has a way of finding me. And I hate it, because nothing in the world makes me feel older than this. This has a sense of finality, having to think about your actions, making contingency plans and thinking in circles of what ifs. I'm terrified of personal disasters because as much as I try, I don't have a plan B. I don't even have plan A and a half. So I'm scared.
I like to watch people, think about their stories and their lives, unless they make it painfully obvious that they want others to see them. I like to watch myself too. And if you asked me to use one word to describe myself, I would use hesitant. Or unsure. Or uncertain. Maybe indecisive.
But the processes in my mind are a constant back and forth, thoughts bouncing off walls and finally combusting  after I've exhausted them beyond any possible further use.
I've heard being alone isn't that bad, but loneliness scares the absolute fuck out of me. Ask me to travel alone, and I probably won't know what to do. I think I get that from my mother, she's a very cautious woman, and they tell me girls becomes more like their mothers as they grow up.

But I also know I need to stop being so afraid, because if I don't, this will turn into immense regret. And that's even worse.

Fighting. Everyday about the most mundane of things. Blame it on each other, cyclically, tirelessly, unceasingly, over and over and over again until the air carries accusatory voices. You can taste the bitterness on the tip of your tongue, try to stop it from pouring out like stinging venom, and fail. Fail and then later regret what happened. Then sheepishly try to pretend like it never did.
I see the sorrow in her eyes and wonder when she stopped recognising me. I sense her failure every time I down another shot, when I wear whatever it is that I shouldn't be wearing. But most of all, when I see it in her despair. Because what she doesn't know can't hurt her, but what she does, that kills her.
And it's all stupid and pointless. There is no eloquent way to say this, and even if there was, nothing is as effective.
I'm scared of how pathetic this is becoming. Restrict clothing, restrict appearances, restrict what comes out of my mouth. How will you restrict my thoughts? I can see how she wishes at times that thoughts and convictions were genetically inherited. But don't you see, Mama? Don't you see that this inability to inherit genetically familial beliefs, this lack of opportunity for poison to permeate through your DNA is what made you who you are now? Would you rather cut me off for seventeen years, disown me and not even show up to my husband's funeral, waltzing into my home looking like you're about to shout "Eid Mubarak!!"? Would you be absolutely impervious to my suffering because Allah did not honor me with testicles? Would you blame me repeatedly for my suffering, because I married by choice? Because my husband drank? Because he had been married before?

Would you? I know you aren't cruel like that. I know that you are bent on none of this happening to your daughters. You've fought your whole life, and it saddens me to see your disappointment. Hardly easy to see your exasperated arguments falling apart, and it can't be for you either when you think I'm a shell that resembles you but doesn't do much else. Or when the woman you call your mother means nothing to me.

She asks me almost everyday why I can't give her the satisfaction of saying my prayers regularly, of wearing a dupatta even though it dangles around my neck like a useless noose, an unspoken plea to do it for her sake if not my own, to condemn everything I dismiss as people's own business and lives. And perhaps I'd have pretended, just so she'd have the satisfaction of happiness. Except that a year and a half on, when I come back home, I don't want to have to pretend. What's the point of that?

Week.

Dear Karachi,

I've been wondering these days what to write about. When I'm walking around Moho I have words swimming in my head, and sometimes I stop to take it all in. It's breathtaking, really. Especially the way it is right now, empty and serene.
Today I sat at the Thirsty Mind and looked out the window, and it was beautiful. I used to dream about this place. When I'm walking around I find it hard to believe that it's been two years, that I made it here and that I've come this far. I find it hard to recognize myself.
But this place doesn't move my soul to poetry. It doesn't tug at me the way you do. I feel affection, not all-consuming love. I've been told to stop romanticizing you, but how is that possible? How does one do that? You have been my muse for as long as I can recall, my oldest love affair. Even your worst failings I remember with a certain fondness I reserve for those I love entirely too much. Sometimes I dream about your salty air, the seaweed smell mixing faintly with the scent of camel dung, and then it escapes me when I open my eyes. One picture of you and something feels caught in my throat. I can't look for too long.
And now I don't want to look at pictures, because I'll see you soon, and breath your air, and when I wake up, it'll be under your skies. I might close my eyes a few times, blink to make sure it's all real. And then I'll sleep better than I have in months because you will surround me again.

Much love. 

change

Today at dinner I told my friends I don't understand atheism. I don't mind it, and I don't hold it against anyone, but I do not comprehend it. For a bit someone thought I was expressing my disdain for those who don't believe in any higher power, because in this place a lack of comprehension can be translated into intolerance. We like having our politically correct lines ready, just in case we may have to jump to the defense. So I explained, told her that's not what I was implying. Not an instance of boutique multiculturalism, merely a genuine inability to understand.
Somehow even my statements seem to come out as attacks these days, and I know I should probably learn not to cause offense. Cause offense to yourself if you must, trample all over your soul and sensibilities, but never those belonging to someone else. Those aren't yours to walk on.I try to stick fastidiously by those rules, and it's easier here where others play the same game.  Easier to listen, easier to appreciate, easier to learn. The power of dialogue and the importance of words.
But there's nothing more difficult than realizing that this place that I have treated for the past two years as a distant (but dear) love, partly out of my longing for home and partly because of the inevitably temporary nature of my time here, is slowly becoming the place I'm terrified of leaving and losing. We talk more about our bubble now that the bubble has completed half its life. Somehow, once this is gone I can see nothing but a looming disappointment in my interactions with people.
The ugly politics of privilege, the false convictions of being better, their world and then mine on peripheries, choosing love or choosing principles, the growing panic that the restlessness didn't stop when I had promised myself it would, the disgust with someone's illusions of self-importance, the shocks of reality.

"You cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all of the time.."
Sylvia Plath obviously knew a thing or two.

When I was 17 I met this woman. I decide she was one of the most amazing human beings I had ever encountered in my life, and I was right because she changed my life. When I look back at it, her time here probably changed her into the person I met. And then she changed me.
It's so strange because sometimes we forget what success means, and we start defining it in terms of how much we have. But then there are people who remind us that success is the number of people whose lives we touch and change, like magic that they had never anticipated but were grateful for nonetheless. She was the one person, apart from my mother, who taught me the meaning of strength.

We forget how many people we have to thank for the blessings we have everyday.
May each and every one of you find all the happiness in the world, because all of you certainly contributed to mine.

There's a guy sitting on a bench outside the creperie. He's been playing his guitar and singing for the past hour. I can't hear him, but he's performing with a lot of passion. I'm a little envious.

Before I graduate I'm going to ask a kind stranger to drive me around the Valley, so I can take pictures of random places. Like those houses we pass on the way to the mall. Because they look surreal, especially when the sky is purpleorangeblue, and because it's easy to forget the things you see. And before I leave, I should go for a walk and maybe even get lost. I'll eventually find my way back, everyone here always does.
With a year and a half left, maybe it won't be selfish of me to live.