Clarity comes in waves, as does pain.
Pain fades with time, as does memories.
Memories–
“Can you forget everything that happened?”
“I can. I will. And oh dear God, I really want to.”
Tag: family
Heartbreak
Yes, people. I kid you not. That baby nephew I’ve been gushing about? That little droplet of heaven?
He hasn’t slept since yesterday. Been crying, my cousin tells me. Took a small nap and started crying again. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s heartbroken.
But OMG I WANT THAT LITTLE BUNDLE BACK DAMMIT, SCREW HIS DAD, LET HIM LIVE WITH US UNTIL I GO BACK TO MALAYSIA. I NEED SOME LOVE. My arms literally feel empty without that jumping puffball of giggles and joy.
GIMME BACK MAH NEPHEW. NAAAAAAOOOOOOOW.
The Smiling Meteor of Joy
The day this little angel landed in my life. Giggling, cooing, and simply crying when he hasn’t seen me for a while. Prefers when I rock him to sleep more than anyone else. Smiles like the springtime sun when I arrive. I know exactly how to make him laugh. I haven’t loved a baby like I’ve loved this one. I even don’t mind wiping off the vomit and the drool from my clothes after he’s done with his fun time trying to grab and eat anything he can reach for, even his own hands. I might just want to become his favourite aunt. My little Smiley Princey.
Sleeping Beauty. MashAllah. Smiley in his sleepy.
We were both running on two hours of sleep x’)
He just left. And the world is a little bit emptier. Ammu made that hat for him.
Alhamdulillah: A story of my life
Trapped. Not breathing for fear of being disliked. Fear, fear, fear. Hiding in the corner. Yeah, I remember that kid all too well. She lived in her books, dreaming beyond reality that she’ll be like those princesses and confident ladies in suits someday. Then she grew up, and dreamed that her life could at least be better than what they insist it will eventually become. Then she died from her stupid expectations. When she was reborn, she kept the dreams in her dead skin. In this new life with duller colours, she couldn’t afford them. She edited her dreams self. She got herself goals from the dreams. She didn’t become a princess, but a confident lady in a suit? Check. And she ignored the world that didn’t accept her colours, and showed them her darkness. She showed them how a hopeless child can banish the demons by inviting them in. One dose of maturity, coming up. She kicked at the door to her goals, shedding hope and remnants of her dreams, her ambition until the iron bars turned to black feathers and gave way to a land of sunshine.
But she had given up her old skin of colours. Now, even the bright world looked dark to her. Back in the darkness, she had found a spot of moonlight, but the sun has to rise someday. She was left in the light, burning when it was too harsh, dancing when it was mellow. Even then, one 
day, she felt faint. She felt the darkness coming out again. She again found herself trapped in a place she wasn’t wanted. Like nausea. She needed to find a way out. And do it now. Being in a cage in the dark isn’t as bad as being in a cage in the sun.
And then, as always, Allah didn’t let her down. Allah reminded her that she was becoming too distracted from her gratitude. She was putting too much pressure on herself, still being the demon-infested soul she was. Goals are not for now. The sunshine is back. She needs to figure out what to do. She needs to be okay, because she is always strong enough. Even as a frightened little kid with blind optimism, she was strong enough.
Today, she is trying to find the dead skin.
That’s just it. Alhamdulillah. No, life won’t get much easier. The days will still be the old grind- wake, walk half a kilometer, class, eat, walk half a kilometer again, sleep. But at least now, it won’t be so that I have to stay out of my room for some peace. It won’t be that I’ll cry from the stress work, time and then cry again because I’m being a bother to someone else. Stuck somewhere I don’t belong just like back where I was.
I spoke to Abbu today, and he said I can move from my twin-sharing room to a single room, even though it’s more expensive. He said I’ve already given up a lot for him, so even though it’ll be a little harder, he’ll manage. Bhaiya came over to college yesterday to talk to me because I was crying the night before. I am so grateful. So extremely grateful. I’m not great at expressing love anymore, for my family. But they do come through. I don’t have to live with another person, trying to be someone I’m not anymore. I’m not nice anymore. Being nice, I become too nice and end up hurting myself, same as ever.
I’m moving to the hostel closer to Monash. It’s way farther from the college, but I am so relieved. Still a little scared of change, as I always am. But InshaAllah… I can risk a little more light. I always take care of myself, and I wouldn’t have been given recovery if I couldn’t.
Time and family
I can see how much pain this Malaysia thing is causing my parents, to leave me here, and this campus is one of the most secure places ever. I’m not sure I can ask them to let me alone somewhere. Not that it would be halal either… I might have to do my Honours here. The thought hurts. But, I’m not sure I have an option. Well, I guess I have to make the most of what I have, and let time lead me, and just be best in every step. At least I’ll be able to say that I lived.
After all, four years is a long time. I hope.
“Hope that you spend your days, but they all add up
And when that sun goes down, hope you raise your cup
Oh, I wish that I could witness all your joy and all your pain
But until my moment comes, I’ll say
I, I did it all
I, I did it all
I owned every second that this world could give
I saw so many places, the things that I did
With every broken bone, I swear I lived”
Quotable #6
This is for my completely useless naysayers- SCREW YOU ALL. Time for all of you shut up and just watch.
It’s my time. And I’m about to blow all of you out of the water.
“For so long
I’ve waited to hear if I was good enough
But now I don’t need it
Your time is up!
I should’ve let you know the clock always moves too slow
Tellin’ me I gotta grow up get a purpose
Time is never on my side
Time is never on my side, my side,
Well, I’ll count down until my time is mine”
— It’s My Time, Bad Seed Rising
Black is back
As I look up from the ground
I see darkness all around
And I’m lost but can be found inside my mind
Goodbye
As I look up from the ground
I see darkness all around
And I’m lost but can be found up in the sky
-HU, From The Ground
…………………….
Hello again. Welcome back. But then again, you never really left. And this time, there are no more levels between you and the abyss. Except whatever hope you still hold on to, silly. I will keep on pulling you down.
Renewal
Lots of stuff in life need to be renewed- licences, library cards, tenancies…
The most important, most essential renewal out of all of these, however, is the renewal of self. I am one of the blessed few in this world who are being given a chance to restart their lives. Redefine oneself.
One of my favourite movies, High School Musical 3 (actually all three movies), highlights how one can redefine oneself… Beat the odds, break the status quo, despite everything. I like to tell people how each significant movie or song or book makes up a part of myself. HSM makes up the part of me that makes me go out of my way to show people more than one way of doing things. It’s honestly better than any motivational video I’ve ever seen, but then again, I first watched these movies as a 9-year-old. It built into me as I grew up.
High School Musical shows how despite the norm, people can change their lives in one simple way: through choice and commitment. How to respect one’s own feelings, putting self-health before the feelings of temporary people. And in the end, the whole story comes full circle. Not selfishness, but self-preservation. Not arrogance, but self-confidence.
They say in high school, everything changes. It’s the place where the underdogs come out on top, the popular crowd eventually gets drowned out in the sound of personality and genuineness. But, in reality, it’s quite different. There isn’t a central cast in real life. In real life, the central cast is whoever is your centre. your circle of friends, your group, and your life. As Don Miguel Ruiz says in his book The Four Agreements:
“…in that picture you are the director, you are the producer, you are the main actor or actress”
So you see, despite how well anyone knows you, they’re each in their own individual movies, and the choices they make in their own lives makes theirs. This is why it’s best to be fully convicted in your own movie to make it a blockbuster. Not for someone else, but for yourself, because in the end, you’re the one who’s going to either be proud of yourself or become a washed up good-for-nothing, just like the high school expectation.
Incidentally, my biggest obstacle wasn’t high school or even school. It was my self-esteem, being constantly criticised while growing up for the same ideals that made me who I am today. True, I made many mistakes along the way, but that is who I am, isn’t it? My mistakes? If I didn’t make any, I would be under the assumption that I can do no wrong. It’s true, I’ve had few real failures in this life (Alhamdulillah!), at least none that stopped me in my tracks, but that’s the thing about being resilient. You don’t let something as simple as failure make you think that you can’t be everything you ever dreamed and everything everyone convinced you that you cannot be. But the mistakes are essential. Because they make you realise where your weaknesses are. As the rule goes:
“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”
So as it happens, mistakes teach us where our weakest links are. Where we completely lose our heads, or we just can’t get past that one barrier, because the barrier is within ourselves, not an external one. We can’t fight it because it may break us. So we have to learn where our limits are, and maybe redefine ourselves to ourselves, analyse where our true ambition lies. At a point, I used to believe that I wanted to graduate from a top university, but that was just an amalgamation of all my insecurities, and my expectations. Now I realise that my true ambition in that scenario was to break the expectations of other people, and that is accomplished simply enough by going to an above-average college, where instead of living under the imposing wing of relatives, I would be able to live free on my own. Independence. It is one of the things I value most in my loved ones, and myself. Needing someone is just fine, but not if it breaks self-esteem to not have someone along with for the ride.
Walk the road alone if you must, but walk it you must.
I happen to realise my limitations. It’s my impatience with life. I would like to change that, but here’s the worst thing about change, which rounds off this post quite nicely:
People don’t let you change. They would keep your trapped in the past, in your memories and mistakes like they haven’t made any. People would like to direct your movie, by telling you that you’re a minor role, that you were not made for anything more. That you can’t break their expectations, and improve to be something entirely new. It’s true, our hearts don’t change. They shouldn’t. Because then we would lose sight of our core values. But can our minds not? Can we not engineer our minds to fit the description of who we want to be? If the school valedictorian can end up in a 9 – 5 job with low pay, if they can admit defeat and change themselves entirely, can’t a school dropout become the shock factor, given the chance?
But as usual, it all comes down to our choices. If we continue making the same mistakes, the same decisions as we did before a milestone in our lives, naturally, nothing will change. And no matter what anyone says, change CAN sometimes be good. One simple decision to change your life, to grab hold of a steering wheel of a car spinning out of control… it can save your life. It can allow you to be anything. Survival is the first step to begin living. Then come the choices. Outlandish, if they are… realise your limitations, see if you can break those limitations. If your can’t, well, find a new road. Pushing against a barrier you can’t break is just wasting time. Learn to say “No”. It’s not being mean or being disagreeable. People who don’t understand never will. And people can hold you back only so far.
In the end, it’s your life hanging in the balance, not anyone else’s. At the end, if you can’t break the mold, the reality is, you won’t be able to become who you dream. It’s a very real threat. And part of being mature is understanding where your hard limit is. Where the point of no return is.
I am blessed that I’m moving to a new country, with at least a year to myself. Free from people who know who I was, who I am, or whom I will be. It’s like being handed a blank canvas after messing up the last one beyond hope. There’s a reason New Year resolutions don’t work. Because there’s a voice in your head, and all around you, saying that you’re in the same damn place and you’re the same damn person. How can you change? How can you restart the painting?
But now I’m being given a new life. A chance to dump all of my past. A new place to redefine myself. To break my own expectations. Complete the homework I always put off before, actually work for the exams, instead of expecting my English proficiency carrying me the whole way. I will be more than average, inshaAllah. People can damage you in more than one way. When you surround yourself with people who will only boost your self-esteem, you tend to forget how flawed you actually are, how far you still have to go. How it should never be enough. Trust me, it’s better to surround yourself with critics sometimes. When people compliment you on things you know you do best, you tend to focus on what you’re comfortable with instead of improving yourself. This makes you stagnant.
Some people think years can only be lost with failure. It can also be lost with success. It can be lost when you’re satisfied with who you are. Happiness on this earth is temporary. You’re fooling yourself, and in fact, hurting yourself if you allow yourself to always be happy. Being less than happy is healthy. As long as you’re not depressed, or dejected, it’s healthy. I’d lost a year in improving myself because I was already ahead of most people I knew. I neglected the parts of me that were not, because no one but myself saw those parts of me.
It’s July 1st today. It’s almost the middle of the year. I move into my new home in Malaysia at exactly the middle of July, which means it’s the midway of 2016. As far as I’m concerned, that’s my new year. I’m starting over. I’m metamorphosing. I’ll finish that book I started in January 2015. It’ll help me in university, and in fact, my whole life. I’ll stop making excuses about why I feel different.
I felt different because I’ve become astoundingly skilled at lying to myself and others without realising that I am. I can confidently convince myself (and others) that I know what the actual heck I’m doing, and we all know how belief can make anything real. I know certain truths about my life, but those things are not relevant now. It won’t make a difference in my university life, it won’t make a difference until life makes it. Those are those things that really aren’t in my hands, but with Allah’s (SWT). I put those things away, because…
“At its best, life is completely unpredictable”
– Christopher Walken
And as much as my impatient, overanalysing brain would disagree… that is best for me. I don’t expect anything. Not only for protection but, aren’t surprises the sweetest things in life?
It’s not too late. In fact, it’s exactly the right moment. I have the most precious commodities that life offers. Time and anonymity. Time to grab my life by the short hairs, without expectations of failure or disappointment, and make it do what I want it to do. Why tell myself I have the strength to get anything I want if I can’t even get myself to do what I want? I’m still weak. I just have to prepare myself to be exactly who I want to be when I receive that anonymity and hope that I change for the best. Become exactly who I should be, not who I was in the times I took the worst falls. InshaAllah. This is who I am today. A nice, imperfect girl who is capable of taking wrong turns, but is good at pretending to be perfect, and capable of being not so nice. :3
Time to woman up for a better tomorrow.
PEACE!
P. s. Thanks for reading through all that if y’all did ^_^
Planned Assault and Battery
A few days ago, my brother was going through his old papers, and found this little gem:
Okay. Okay.
LIKE WHAT??? Who actually PLANS to kick their little sister? I mean seeeriously? He’s always been the play-hitting type while growing up, but REALLY. He actually wrote down in his DIARY that he was GOING TO kick me one time.
Specifically. One time.
I am done. Goodbye, cruel world! Ah, childhood memories. It’s only charming and not agonising in retrospect.
PEACE!
I Took a (S)Pill in Life.
“You don’t wanna be high like me
Never ever knowing why like me
You don’t ever wanna step off that roller coaster and be all alone.”
So. Last night the whole freaking rollercoaster hit me right in the face. I didn’t want to have to recall and recount and retell this story over and over to five to ten people and be asked “Why?”. Because I don’t know. I don’t know why. I don’t know why it hurts so damn much.
I hadn’t told any of my friends, save two, about my plans with regards to academia. When I started typing this, I was determined to tell the whole story, holding myself together. But as I type, the strength is leaving my fingers because I am- quite simply- scared. But I have to finish this, so I’ll start at the beginning.
When I completed IGCSE with 3 A*’s, 4 A’s and a Country Highest in Islamiyat, I begged my parents to join my brother in Malaysia, to study Foundation Year instead of A Level. But, no dice. I was too young.
So, I joined A Level and was met with the good, bad and the ugly. But I took it. I went through the motions, I was even happy. I made friends who, I believe, will now be my friends for life. I gained traction, I gained the approval of people. But the things I ignored were my grades, my appalling progress in studies, and my lack of enthusiasm for the real thing.
Eventutally things came to a head when my English teacher informed me that the syllabus had changed and that I had to sit for 8 of the units of subject at the same time. Anyone who has faced A Levels in the last decade knows what kind of an inhuman level of pressure that is. My teacher finally advised me that I should try for Foundation Studies abroad. I was 18 by then, and I finally had the guts to ask my parents again for permission to go abroad. Thankfully, and by some great miracle, my parents agreed to let me try. I know it hurt my mother a great deal, but she thought my dreams before hers. I am more than grateful for it. Truly a blessing from Allah. This was back in January 2016. My friends will note my odd behaviour since then.
Then came the topsy turvy… I can’t go into detail in this part, as this involves family issues. But, the events at first was such that I was accepted (within a week of of applying) to ANU College, for Foundation Studies leading to Bachelor of Arts/Master of International Affairs at Australian National University. Currently it is #19 in the world according to the QS World Rankings and #1 in Australia. The best school for Politics, literally across the lake from the center of Australian Government, the Capital Hill. The course was to start in July.
My life would’ve been made. Everything was dreamed up, reality-checked down, planned, picked apart, and every little digit in dollars addressed. But then came certain obstacles in the form of selfishness and pain. And sometimes, you need to realise there are choices you have to make in life. There are the tough choices, where you hurt like someone is ripping bits and pieces out of your insides whenever it conveniences them. Then there are the easy ones, where you rip out bits and pieces out of someone else without ever thinking twice. And I had to make a choice.
I decided that I could have pushed on, despite everything, give into the urge to not take a knee. Then I realised that despite all those things you see on TV or read in books, there isn’t ever a guarantee in life. And you have to make the tough choices without the assurance that you’ll meet your true love in Season 4 or get your soul saved from Valhalla in Book 3, which will fix everything. You have to make the tough choices because of two little inconvenient things [some of] us humans possess: 1) A conscience; 2) A heart.
So I will be cancelling my enrolment at ANU College and Australian National University. I’m applying to Sunway College in Malaysia to take the Monash University Foundation Year. I’m not going into detail of exactly what happened at that time because that is private. But trust me, those who love me best have both told me off for giving in, and then understanding why I did it. Sometimes I tell myself a little quote I learned to retain from a childhood film, and I think I saved it for a rainy year month day like this.
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear; The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all.”
~Meg Cabot
Yes, I fear this choice. I fear it a lot. Every time I think of it, my fingers begin to shake. I can feel my heart thudding, I feel like there’s a pit in my stomach. I bet in the world of medicine, it’s got some sort of classification in the panic or PTSD category. I was already diagnosed with major depression, what’s one more?
That’s what the title and lyrics at the beginning of this post mean. I may have taken a big hit, but I don’t want to have made the other choice because then I would have to live with the fact that I did something, or risked setting some things in motion that could lead to a deed that Allah has abhorred, forbidden and hates. Can’t have that, man. I can’t step off the rollercoaster and be all alone. I can’t do that.
I’m not necessarily happy about my choice, but we often aren’t. What I am content with is that this was, ultimately, my choice. Insha Allah, someday, I’ll get to fulfil my dream, but even that has no guarantee. I understand that, and I can live with that. If there is a life after death, I made the choice that will rack up some points there. Alhamdulillah. And if there isn’t, then what’s the point of doing anything anyways? Doing something or not doing it won’t make a difference. I could die tomorrow tripping on the frickin’ welcome mat.
I am writing this for my friends (crazythatIevenhavethose). And I’m sorry that I couldn’t recount the whole thing for you guys properly, but I don’t have to strength to recount it to someone again, and more importantly, I shouldn’t. If I ever get over this, someday, maybe years later, I’ll let you know. Maybe Allah is going to help someone through my pain. In the meantime, I hope you read this and understand. I’ll give this to you guys to read when I’m ready.
Lots of love,
Nafisa.
30-4-2016
It. Starts. Now. 