Floodgates

I want to open my mouth

and have only rainbows pour out

with that same breathless quality

with which nightmares tear the ground

Flowing from my ears at night

Wild-maned terrors, champing to bite,

Iron shod hooves tossing restlessly

while my own twisted feet make no sound

except their untangling, in bedsheets strangling

slowly, insidiously, ‘round my neck snaking

Fingers cold as death on my own shaking

straining for the nearest light, to put down

the shutters, the shudders of whatever horrors

metallic-tasting dreams and bruised lip murmurs

rustling threateningly, behind creaking floodgates

Cracked fingernails leaking ink, insistently loud

But because I will,

I open my mouth

and have only rainbows pour out

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Floodgates | Yusra

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What are you not telling anyone? .

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I feel as though I am frequently guilty of this. Of simply rolling over and falling asleep, and ignoring some nagging unwellness that has been pestering me. But it scratches at you, making you increasingly restless, till it starts spilling over into the part of your life that you only ‘portray’. When the person you are is unwell, it’s only a matter or time before it starts leaking into the person you’re supposed to be.

For the sake of metaphor and stunted humor, let me say: we’re nothing more than giant bathtubs. If you don’t deal with how much is swirling in there, pretty soon it’ll be sweeping out from under the door and reaching the guests in the living room.

But it’s not about the guests at all. People who visit you don’t live with you- you live with you. We none of us take the time to recognize our existence as a little, self-contained biome that needs a little tending to flourish- and a little pruning. If the diseased parts and chipping fingernails don’t get trimmed regularly, you’re not going to be growing.

And that’s already too many house- and body part analogies, but I’m going to leave you (and myself) with one last one: this body and mind house each other. And in levels of intensity, each one of them needs your care.

Open those floodgates now and then, okay? I promise you, there will be a rainbow over all that you’ve bottled in, flowing out. ♥️

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Look at how far you’ve come.

 

Dear A,

it’s been a while since we’ve spoken at any decent length. Sure, we’ve been having our fluff conversations and Band aid-on-stab-wound repair sessions, but the time is definitely nigh that we put some sutures there. As you love to tell your patients, better to heal the right way, the first time around. Have you been taking your advice? Not so much, not so much.

You’ve been keeping busy. One might add to that, with a little snark, you’ve been doing nothing at all. In the grand scheme of things, you’re still on your way in a journey you started eight months ago. Why have you not reached a destination? Why have you been crossing milestones on crossroads, instead of having picked one direction already? These are absolutes. These are absolute parameters of time and opportunity that you’ve lost. You need to hold yourself accountable for these lapses. Even though you know, as well as I do, that you’ve deserved this soft corner between the years. These few months of ‘the journey is the destination’ have done you so much good. It’s hard, to not begrudge yourself this space for a few well deserved breaths between pants.

It’s not a race, but you’ve had your breather. We have to run in place. Time to speed up now again, don’t you agree?

Look at how far you’ve come. So many life lessons, so many discoveries. Who would have thought that you, that ludicrously social person, would revel in this enjoyment of your own company? Who would have thought that you would endanger yourself to the extent that you did, to try to help someone who did not at all deserve it? That a month would teach you such a lesson on your father not being the only monster out there. That not everyone could be saved. And that your job never was to save anyone except yourself. Would you have imagined that you would find yourself in this situation? I couldn’t have. I’d never realized that you were capable of being this selfless- and this stupid. Your safety takes priority. No man has the right to touch you. And no amount of disease or illness, can be accepted as excuse for trespassing your boundaries. And I’m sorry that you’ve had to learn it this way, As I am grateful, that you’ve learned it at all. You need to choose your friends more wisely. You need to give yourself to people who prove themselves deserving of it. You’ve been confusing giving love with sacrificing self respect for too long. The chronic hemorrhage over the years had dulled your senses to how much you were losing. But that acute fall, that was the one you needed. Even you were not immune to recognizing the meaning of all that blood. You will not forget the bruises. That nightmarish sequence of events. That shift in tunnel vision from wanting to end it all, to end that moment. to wanting to change it all, to end that moment. It was a hard earned lesson. One that all those bruises and all these nightmares have been a price for. But I hope that you won’t forget it ever again. You’re slow to see things, but quick to learn. Don’t forget this one.

Don’t forget this one.

Look at how your life is changing. Look at the sheer number of people you’re meeting who like you, who seek you out to talk to, to spend time with even when they don’t have an emotional vent to open in your direction. (Look at the number of guys who find you attractive. Who the heck saw that one coming. You’re almost starting to believe them!). This business of responding to ‘I like you, you’re amazing’ with ‘I like me too. I *am*, indeed!’ is a bit of genius, by the way. Sure, you might come across as stuck up or full of yourself, but screw that. It’s a polite way of letting someone know that their compliment is accepted, while simultaneously not giving them too many green lights. And screw that, too. You need to say that a few times. You have spent far too many years with a mutilated self image.

(By the way, good on you for turning guys down. It wasn’t your style to begin with, but I’m still so proud of you of not saying yes to people simply because they seemed interested in you. Look at how far your sense of self has come, from being that little girl who just wanted to be loved. I won’t tell you to be proud of yourself. But I do think that you should be happy with this change).

(Oh, and good on you for saying yes when you did. He’s practically teaching you how well men can treat women. You deserve this. And more. Good on you for making this chance possible for yourself).

You are not an airhead for loving art. You are not cold or calculating, for being this good at dealing with death. You are more emotionally stable than people who have only been touched by trauma as it flew them by, instead of being dragged through in in a choke-hold, kicking and screaming. You survived that. You begin every process of healing reminding yourself of how. fucking. unbelievable. much. you’ve survived. You’ve practically already received professional confirmation of how strong you are. Don’t forget this. Don’t forget this.  You are capable of giving of giving so much love that it ASTOUNDS people. You are rare in that. (You’ve learned from the best. It’s in your blood). And you deserve the same love. If not in the same quantity, then in the same effort. Don’t forget this.

At the same time, you need to move your feet faster, too. You’ve come through far too much already to not know the uniqueness of your situation and opportunity. This window is closing far. Already sticking your foot in going to cause a little pain. But do that. You know what happens when the window closes. When you miss this train. When this ship sails. When this dragon flies. Take any metaphor, take them all. You know what’s on this side, when you’re locked out. You know better than to stay. Recognize that fear in you, of being back in that cage? Remember that.

This letter was only intended as a reminder. The Universe falls in love with a stubborn heart. And you know, how stubborn yours is. It refused to die. It refused to stop loving. It refused to give up. Remind yourself, what it did all that for.

 

All my love. All my love.
You.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rebuilding.

If you truly love something, set it free. You’ll love it more, even if you find, you now love it differently.

I should be angry. Maybe. I know that I’m unhappy with how quickly you moved on. With how a few months of a different routine and a different city was enough for you to find a different woman. I’m unhappy about that, too. Maybe I could have forgiven you falling in love easier, had there been any cause whatsoever for me to forgive you. My vanity is bruised by it- I thought I’d loved you more, loved you enough for all those years to have damaged you more- but I didn’t. Or, to be precise, you didn’t. You didn’t love me enough to be damaged by a lack of me there. And a new routine and new city was enough for you to be ready, for a new woman. And not even for new love. Just a new bedmate.

So I’m angry at that. Or maybe anger is too strong a word for this vague displeasure. This bruised ego that would have been soothed by finding out that you were struggling a little too. This part of me that is insulted by how smoothly you moved on, without having felt my absence as acutely as I did yours. I think I wanted you to be a little unhappy. Just enough to afford some passing last respect to the remains of who we were. What we were. It feels too soon. Bringing your new girlfriend to your wife’s funeral, soon. Not the fact that I know of it, though, but the fact that it happened at all.

But that’s the staggering turn on the dime. However fleeting and sharp my hubris stabs, I am not unhappy. I’m happy for you, and for me. I loved you so, so inhumanly much. And seeing you now, away, makes me happier still. Because this is everything I would never have been able to give you. This is everything you were denying yourself, being with me. This is you in your element. And we spent utterly glorious years together. You gave me so much, you made me so much more than I was, and you stood by as I became even more. And you deprived yourself, and the world and circumstances deprived you of so much. And you don’t have it now- but you’re getting there. And more than anything, I am overwhelmingly happy for you, and for whoever else you decide you want on that journey next to you- however passingly.

Am I not jealous? I am. She’s had her hands on you. She’s had you in ways no one except I did. Every inch of our bodies was hallowed ground for the other, pure and saved from the sullying touch of any passing fancy. And now she has her lips where I put mine. She has your hands holding her the way you held me. And when you’re in her, her soul isn’t crying in the delirious ecstasy of a woman being loved in every plane of being. She’s taking all the parts of you that belonged to me, and not treating them with enough reverence.

For me. For you, it’s enough. This is enough. This is what you want. Because you don’t belong to me. And that is why it doesn’t hurt me anymore. Because you belong to yourself now, to revere and desecrate as you please. And I belong to me now. And what did, and what we shared, belongs to both of us. In memory.

My love. My sweetest, dearest friend. I will always feel too much and write too much and cry too much, and be much too strong than I should be. But there is the great distance now that I will never love you too much again. I will always love you, and celebrate you, and revel in our having been. And you are welcome to visit our home, as I often do, in the late hours of the night, in maudlin and in memory. My arms will always hold a home for your heart. But of a different sort now. I love you. And I’m still walking.

Cilice

I wear my unhappinesses on my sleeve

Carefully rolled up and tucked away

Never farther than two fingers’ reach

I work, with my laughter elbow deep,

Cuffs stained with streaks of artifice

While I prevaricate- wherefrom do I secede?

As the painfully cultivated illusions recede-

I pluck my hems unconsciously

Too nervous to confess or deceive

So I hide it all, in plain sight

I wear my unhappiness on my sleeve

I save my lonelinesses for the night

Where I can, uninterrupted, keep sole company

Judge, witness, lawyer, mob, and jury

Pass my own sentences, give verdict

Justify and deny with equal practice

I weigh the twilight of dawn against dusk

Somewhere, in betwixt, sleep visits us

And all the hopes gentle pass into the void

-the cold warmth of pillow on pillow, on my side

Subterfuge borne of necessity

-but an expedient ploy

So I save my lonelinesses, for the night

And mornings come fraught

with anticipation, overwrought

with promises, potential, all these glorious things

hovering just out of reach,

but not out of thought

All these fallacies and fantasies

That I am capable of – but I’m not

I need my sorrow like monks their cilices

A reminder to self, even when not displayed

Even when rolled up and tucked neat away

I work with my laughter, loud and elbow deep

But never farther than two fingers’ reach

I wear my unhappinesses on my sleeve

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Cilice

©️Yusra

06.09.2018

⚫️♥️⚫️

I Can’t See.

It’s strange, to look at yourself in a mirror, and not know what you look like.

I’d like to think that I understand. Of all days, of all times, now when I know better, when I’m better. But I wonder, if there’s some things you never know about yourself. Ever. If you spend your life burning through your time, trying to get where you’ll be ready, for understanding or realization. And it never happens- does it ever happen? Do we ever simply open our eyes one day, and just know?

Will I?

I go days without looking at myself closely in the mirror. These are the same days that I sit in front of my old fashioned dresser and comb my hair for minutes together. It’s hip length, and tangles easy, so I used a fine toothed comb. Always over the left shoulder, and then half that time over the right, to get that one fluffy spot I can’t reach otherwise. It shines when I comb it. I take care of it.

I use three different lotions, for my face, body, and hands. I moisturize every morning and night, and always put lotion on my skin while watching a movie on Sundays. I try not to think of Silence of the Lambs when I do that. I always end up doing exactly that. The same, repetitive, calming motions every night. I stand in front of the mirror and moisturize my face, before I leave my ponytail loose, strip in front of the mirror, and get into bed.

I have three mirrors in my room.

And I have no fucking idea, what I look like.

I want to know. I fucking want, to fucking know, what I fucking look like. I’ve spent the first half of my life convinced that I was ugly, because that’s what I was taught, so earnestly, so utterly without a lack of certainty that I was ugly, ugly, ugly, that I’d never be loved. My version of rebellion was shouting at myself inside my head that I wasn’t. I wasn’t ugly, even if I wasn’t beautiful, and I was good enough. I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t ugly. I told myself enough times to make up for every time that I was told the other.

And then I outgrew both. Those sets of understandings, of different halves of my lives. Because people came into my life who convinced me that I was both. That I was one, because I was the other. I was beautiful, because I was ugly. I was a good girl, I’m a good girl, because I can’t afford not to be. _She’s not pretty but she’s so nice!_ _I fell for you because you were sweeter than the other girls I knew. I thought that’d be enough. I’m sorry, I thought it’d be._ _My friend thinks I can do better. So I told him how intelligent you are_. _I Love you. I just can’t be with you. It’s just how things are._

And I don’t fucking blame you, any of you. Who didn’t see me any more clearly than I ever did. I don’t blame you because I don’t care anymore. You didn’t. You cared about your conveniences and your images and not about what it’d leave me with, when you trampled through my self image with your big muddy feet and out the same way. I didn’t know where I was going before, but I’m still more lost now.

I have no reason to be, now more than ever. I’m the closest to my ideal size I’ve ever been, have a good job, and a life ahead of me, with the chance to finally close a chapter of horrors I’d given up on leaving behind. But I’ve been so engrossed with eyeing what I want to escape, and that that walked away from me, that I never stopped to realize I had no idea who I was walking with. The face in the mirror that I wash with water, cleanse with Neutrogena, and pat dry, not rub, is a stranger, a stranger I can’t objectively decide is beautiful or ugly or completely nondescript, nothing at all. You’re too familiar for me to judge you one way or the other. You’re too alien to me for me to accept you, one way or the other. Who even are you? And when people call you beautiful, or ugly, or simply let their glances slide off your face… which one of them is lying? Do you even know?

Can you even know?

Why did you spend so much time working on your scars? You spent so much time on your arms to make up for cutting them open, hugging the scars close to compensate for making them, and then learning to love them, and all the time, you forgot to pay attention to your eyes, or your nose, or your lips, or anything people look at you, when they look at you. If they look at you.

Who the fuck are you?

Who are you?

Fucked up Lives | Virgin Minds

Ah, well, you know what I mean. 

Blind Woman

Blind woman,

What do you see? 

Did you choose your paths

Arbitrarily?

Was there method to madness, 

did he

Put the blindfold on

Or did you, because 

You didn’t like mirrors

Eyeballs macerated and torn 

All semblance of foresight ripped, gone

Senses leavened, realizations withdrawn

Did you make this, blind woman?

Is this of your hand?

Did you choose not to see 

Where you stand?

Gouged sockets aren’t pretty but 

Your delusions are uglier 

More bitter 

And no, you bleeding fool, 

Reality isn’t fair either 

Ravines and crevices and cracks

Do not a face adorn 

Go away, blind woman

Go, and put some make up on. 

©CM

02.03.2017

I found the image on tumblr. Really, what lies we tell… 

Gleam

  

Shelter

  

There is no home for us until we first find one within ourselves. 
I hope you are all on your way home. ❤ 
Love, 

Cookie ❤ 

Ps. If you haven’t found me on Instagram yet (because I’m lazy and irregular in posting), follow me at @calliopes_lyre! 🙂 

The Nature Of Religious Interaction

 

The Nature of Religious Interaction

I was watching a TV show a few hours ago on BBC, about a ‘training’ camp in North India. The age group of the students there ranged from ten to twenty, mostly teens. The programme was a series of interviews with the candidates, a look at their families, at their upbringing and education, and what their training meant to them. The girl being mainly showcased was talking about how it is necessary to know how to defend yourself. And to be ready to attack, in case the community needs to arm itself against other communites (muslims, basically). Also how she would not hesitate the build or detonate a bomb, should the need arise.

I can’t understand where we’ve gone wrong.

So you have Hindutva camps that teach their followers to target practice at skullcap wearing dummies and role play riot enactments. You have Islamic terrorists doing the same thing, making an international mess of our name. And you have a healthy number of Christian Bible thumpers when you shift to the Western half of the world.

Is this a mental disease? Because the inability to tolerate anyone who does not share your ideology, your idol, certainly can’t be healthy. And if someone is going to tell me that one particular side is ‘right’ and ‘entitled’, then you and I are going to seriously disagree. I mean, what the hell. I once had a patient who refused to let any of the female doctors treat her because ‘muslim women belong in the house, not running around the city with men’. I have Muslim acquaintances who find it extremely uncomfortable that I have Hindu friends, or male friends. I have Hindu friends whose families have pretty much banned them from calling their muslim or Christian friends over so as to not ‘pollute’ the house- oh yes, this too. And I was once good friends with a British guy whose mother forced him to stop talking to me because I’m muslim.

I mean, what the heck, come on.

The good side to this convoluted tangle of religious interactions is that to some extent, to a certain extent, the younger lot are more progressive these days. But then right in the mirror are these parades of children holding guns and shouting slogans about issues that people way older than them are yet to understand. And societal pressure is not something to be underestimated either. People who want to be on good terms with you can still be held back from doing so by the people around them.

Honestly, I’m just hoping I never have to deal with these sort of personal philosphies any more than I already have. Life is tough enough without being hated for which direction you bow to. And I know that’s an escapist sort of mentality, definitely not the answer to this mess.

But then, what is the answer?