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[nusaibaaaa]

sweet film of deception

some days i think i can taste it. it’s so disgustingly tantalizing that i think it coats my tongue, but then i realize it’s coiled by words i never say out loud. a sweet film of deception. one sip of water and i wash it down, letting the bitter encroach its place.

i have never felt the way i do at the ripe age of twenty-one.

twenty-one destroyed me and taught me how to appear the most put-together in the room. it taught me to use authenticity and masks together as one, to the point where denial and deigning to honesty become indistinguishable. more importantly it revealed a door to myself— heavy and creaking on its hinges, as old as time. no matter the paint i use to hide it among the walls, the thorny wreaths i smother it with to keep myself from opening it, i do— and i’m left blinded by my—

i desire to be found and not found at all. my tongue is sandpaper, my mind a stream of silk. sometimes i puke the most burgundy of silks, lace and leather and the fabrics of everything i don’t allow myself to say. some days i choke on them, rendered speechless and sick to my stomach. is this twenty-one? oh so crafty and deceitful while my insides are knotted with silk? so keen on having the mouth of a snake while i taste imagined sugar? sugar i dare to dream of while i embody salt. salt on a steak, salt of the sea, including that which runs down my face— an appetite and expulsion. twenty-one, you murdered me.

[nusaibaaaa]

so i’m subwoman (like subhuman) for not caring.

and i realize that this feeling is never going to go away so long as i am in the presence of what causes it.

i feel physically sick. every word dripping from your mouth, sometimes arrogance, sometimes approval-seeking, attention-seeking like a pathetic child. depending on the dish of bad qualities you so please. you gulp it down and spit it out for wallpaper in the room before insisting it’s the best design i’ve ever seen. and people agree, except for me, who you then deem has bad taste.

your opinion matters to me so much as an ant’s footfall in a mansion.

insignificance you colour in and exaggerate and inflate with adjectives, with money and delusions. i cannot stand to be a sycophant, cheering you on, pretending all you do is at the level of God. no, you are lesser than a demon, skulking after God’s throne. a tyrant, a joke. one i will never seek the approval of, one who will never get mine in return.

there is a dinner table and a platter full of sharp cutlery, and even those you’d want to face you with their sharp ends if it means you have their attention. asking me the same questions, questions steeped in “praise me” and “flatter me, blow up my ego till it covers the horizon” and it’s all a sitcom, a bloody joke i refuse to be a part of but i unwittingly, unwilling am the character in dark clothes never laughing at the bad jokes.

all the same: expecting submission from a woman, for them to fall at your feet and stand to attention when you do so much as breathe. you can do nothing without people hearing or watching you, incapable of living without an audience the way the convalescent are without a saline bag. it disgusts me. i recoil from within, like a bomb underwater. it rattles my blood and tempts my skin to crawl, for my mouth to shoot projectiles but i settle for bullets instead. it’s all a caricature, you see. it has to be. you have to be faking. surely this is a layer of horrendous personality that you shed with age. but then again your age—

there is so much rage in this heart. i see why i was so depressed here— an epitome of all things lugubrious. i am not a safe space to you, not a safe haven you can come crawling to like they insist women should be. i will never sympathize with someone of your depravity to earn points for being “womanly,” i will not ask of you nor depend on you, i will never be what someone in my position should be to the position of what you are. these roles were decimated long ago, left in dust. now arise battlements loaded with guns or arrow hearts— a strict program, an excruciating screening process that you have failed over, and over again.

[nusaibaaaa]

I wish there was a way to shut off this hunger inside me. A hunger that makes itself better known at night, stripping me away of my sanity, my control over my emotions, my memories, my desires. I don’t know who I become. Who I am. But what’s more terrifying is that maybe she is the most unrestrained version of myself, not confined by the chains of bearings. No, she has no bearing but for a hunger that reduces her to a flower on the street, easily trampled over when the morning comes. There is so much to do when the sun’s out. So much to feel with the moon. So much catching up and carving a life for myself during the daytime but late at night comes out everything I’ve felt since I was a little girl and it is so much in quantity and intensity, so insurmountable it makes me sick.

I feel like a beggar. And I feel like the universe is laughing at me, seeing me beg for something I’ll never get. If I can’t have it, why give me a receptacle for it so decorated? So golden, so rich and intense I hide it under cheap language and venomous distrust, cynical notions. When this receptacle is anything but cynical. It is waiting. It is heavy in the pit of my stomach and produces an unflagging hunger that’s never known white flags but persistent optimism. Hope. Dreams. I don’t want this dream. I’d much rather be shot in my sleep and wake up with certainty that it’s not going to happen rather than dangle in suspense but I wouldn’t, would I? I just realized. The cage is gilded and I’m in it and I tossed the key. But whoever made it knows. Whoever made it put me in it. Maybe I also put myself here. A gold cage is still a cage. I know that. All I’m hungry for is a flame that’s so hot it’ll melt it away into a pool of gold. A flame so cool it’ll let me shape it into whatever jewelry I want. I hate it. I love it. I’m inside a golden cage and no one knows. My entire being is encased and encapsulated in this hunger that food cannot satisfy.

[nusaibaaaa]

i don’t like where my mind goes at night.

my head takes a step back while my heart magnifies. it dares, so audaciously, to conjure these dreams, these fictional realities that seem so far away from my grasp. i don’t like it. i don’t like the person it turns me into because there’s no one to contain her. i melt, like a liquid, like silver in a flame— with no mold to encase me. so out of touch with who i am in reality.

it makes me realize the core of who i am hasn’t changed, has it? all that darkness and i still bleed red. all that coldness and i hate myself when i’m not as cold as i want to be, when emotions claw at me unwelcome. God, it eviscerates me, and there i go, putting on the best show of my life like i’m not torn apart. even to myself. i am both performer and the audience. but it’s those nights when the two meld together and create this new, nebulous shadow that’s out of my reach that i despise it all. i don’t want to lose control over myself like that. except i do. i want it gone. i want a mold, a case, a chest where i lie like limp treasure, no matter how rusty.

[nusaibaaaa]

i watched that movie you recommended and suddenly i’m haunted by you. i keep fighting it, pushing it down, not letting myself properly grieve, but today, sudden tears fell from my eyes and it reminded me of why i don’t let people get that close to me. it’s true that the cleaver was in my hand. i was the one who parted ways, after resentment outweighed affection, after the possibility of becoming expendable overshadowed the high of being like a drug as you described. i think you are both the best and worst thing i’ve ever done.

the way i run away from the ability to feel is frightening, because i know whatever i feel, i feel deeply, and i’m not willing to be sucked into a whirlpool of regret and nostalgia… no, i’d rather move on, or pretend that you weren’t a major part of my life, one that created seismic changes in how i view and understand myself. i’d rather think ahead and busy or distract myself with anything and everything except remember you. but when the clock strikes after the evening, and the night envelopes me in quiet, it’s hard not to fill the silence with memories. i think i’m really tired and i have a hard time accepting that. i have a hard time accepting that i’m hurt. yes, i might rewatch that movie because it’s one of my favorites. maybe my most favourite. but how do i scrub it clean of you? time, work your magic. time, heal me. time, don’t let me feel anything.

[nusaibaaaa]

i feel sick to my stomach.

the pattern always repeats itself. i am outside of the glass looking in and everyone is so grateful i can see them clearly while i’m nothing but a blur to them, a hazy apparition. i feel sick to my stomach knowing my heart wants something but the world is making sure i don’t get it. as if there was an elaborate plan somewhere to make as much of a fool out of me as possible, and the sky and trees and wind are in on it while i’m not. a floor plan kept hidden from me, so i keep stepping on the broken tiles and falling into all kind of messes and quagmires. i feel sick to my stomach knowing the thickness of the glass they use to measure my strength— they can always fall apart around me because i’ll catch them. because i’m infallible, i’m all the bravado i make myself out to be and i have infinite hands enough for everyone in need to grab. i’m sick. i’m sick to my stomach knowing my life is a spiral staircase descending into these repetitions that isolate me while making me the fortress everyone seeks shelter in.

[nusaibaaaa]

from a young age, i have always been the one who was never expected to break down. to be the one faltering, the one with cracks in her armour. i was always the pillar, the fortress. i couldn’t be the one to bend or break. the second i did, there would be almost a pin-drop silence, an awkwardness, as if I disrupted the natural order of the universe. the one who always protects suddenly needs protecting, and that is too much to bear. the face that’s always afloat is best to leave alone when drowning— like a tower finally collapsing, and it’s best to leave the rubble behind. finally? was there a finally always attached to me? Is everyone i help stand eager to see me fall and not help in return? it’s exhausting. the time i was soft and meek, sensitive, i was trampled over like nothing. and now that i have some steel to my heart, people don’t care to see if it’s still beating. i don’t want to be the pillar all the time. i don’t want to be the rock, the guiding hand, the defender, protector, reassurer. my whole life has been an episode where i’m a stack that’s cleaved from a headland, surrounded by temperamental waves, hurling and thrashing around me, all the while my still waters run deep. is it inconceivable to think i want the freedom to be a wave, too? to kick, thrash, scream and spin like the madwoman that is the sea, inconsolable to everyone except he who is the headland of calm? i can’t take this anymore. there is something really damaged inside of me.

[nusaibaaaa]

i have become unafraid of everyone and everything. no one scares me. it might sound like it’s coming from a place of privilege, where i’ve been untouched by danger but that’s not entirely true. those dangers are nothing compared to to what sharpened me to fear nothing, because the worst has already happen more times than i can count. my heart has been ripped out of my chest and thrown across acres of betrayal and heartbreak like a frisbee. countless times, like a sport, to the point where i became a spectator of my own undoing on the bleachers. the “arrogance” i bloom with is well-earned confidence, because who can even hurt me? you cannot pick up a weapon i have not seen. you cannot cut me open and butcher me in ways new to me. my favourite colour’s burgundy; reminiscent of violence, of elegance. everything that’s been done to me, i wear like jewelry.

[nusaibaaaa]

“The enormity of my desire disgusts me.”

I imagine this quote tattooed in cursive handwriting across my back in an ink so deceptive it matches the exact shade of my skin. Embedded into my spine, jutting out in the form of ribs and femurs before creating the whole of who I am, a line of shame, desire, disgust made into bone. So much feeling ingrained into one person the way I stuffed my jacket into my bag earlier today, getting angry at how it wouldn’t fit. That’s how I am— coiled like a serpent, thrashing, slinking and striking at anything that moves. “Fragile not like a flower but like a bomb.” They don’t know this, but I’ve been set on fire ever since I was seventeen and still can’t put it out. So it comes out in plumes of intensity, of needing to take the lead, of all this energy beaming out of me and an unexplained eagerness and does no one see I’m a mess, all this distress. They say it’s the stars that burn but when was I ever a star? My life has barely begun. The cursive tattoo is swivelling and swerving with all its perfect little rotundities and flicks of a trained wrist. My mind is spinning, as if the tattoo’s curves became a Ferris wheel on which I’m a permanent passenger. I want to get down. I’m tired of a ride with no destination in sight. The journey is repetitive and nauseating.

[nusaibaaaa]

It’s supposed to hurt like a b—

i spent so long in a cage i forgot i’m supposed to be hurting. i’m supposed to let other people affect me. i forgot that being 21 means trying to put yourself out there in the world for whoever may stop and see you. my heart is supposed to get broken, i am supposed to be losing my mind, i’m supposed to be a hormonal and emotional and existential mess. IM 21! IM NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE IT ALL FIGURED OUT. IM NOT SUPPOSED TO BE INVINCIBLE. i’m understanding, i’m absorbing but God it hurts so bad i’m starting to realize why youth is accompanied with pain, the same way we cry when we are born. being young means beauty. being young means pain. being young means doing things you’re not supposed to and making mistakes and learning from them, it’s supposed to be the time you break so you could really build something. i forgot all about that. I grew up so fast it feels strange remembering i’m supposed to feel how young people feel.

i’m supposed to fall in and out of spaces and people and relationships, supposed to take the punches and flowers and words of encouragement and malice. my life is not an assorted dish— it’s a bowl of food from every continent of people, of rice that taught me to and tastes like, “that’s what you should do” and a bit of nasty stew saying, “that’s what you don’t. now you know.” i’m only 21. I keep telling myself i’m supposed to screw up. 21. 21. 21. 12. the 12 year old girl is still alive and now she’s 21 and has a bowl of thousands of assortments that make no sense but they kind of do and i’m losing my mind because i’m only 21. may everyone that made me grow up too early never have access to the youth that’s still alive in me, that cries like she’s just born, as if every suffering reincarnates me to someone else.

[nusaibaaaa]

i think i am very hard on myself because it’s a mistranslated act of love.

it’s the language i learnt from childhood. my parents always pushed me to do better, be better, and i know it stems from love but the rose it originally blooms from is overridden with thorns once these encouragements became demands. suddenly their love becomes a powerhouse, a factory constantly pushing for higher efficiency, and it became easy to forget it was love running through the wires that kept the place alive to begin with.

i never felt it.

i would never defend such methods of pushing one to do better. but here i am, following them. a slave to the very thing i resented. i set these goals out of love, but it feels like a serious project. i’m tired. why the rose at all? why the factory ever? i want to be encased by safety instead of free in a cage— but see, i feel caged by love, too. i don’t know. one minute i’m a porcelain doll and the next i have the elusion of a ghost.

[nusaibaaaa]

one New Year’s resolution dies to January.

i told myself i’d face my emotions this year. that i’d feel them instead of running away, instead of bolting the door behind them until they overwhelm its hinges, flood the room i call routine and drown me. but i’m not. i’m not sure what made me this way. my emotions are separate from me, another person that looks exactly like me just with endless tears or anger colouring her skin. she terrifies me. her capacity to feel terrifies me. the dive her heart takes in a barrel of pain petrifies me, so deep it’s like i’ve spent my whole life underground. does anyone have a cleaver? hand it over at once. there’s someone I need to separate from.

[traumasurvivors]

I used to think healing meant becoming unbothered.

Now I think it means noticing when I’m bothered and treating myself with less cruelty about it.

[nusaibaaaa]

sometimes i wonder if they can see it. behind the facade of bursting energy, the smiles and curious eyes. the tiredness. the exhaustion. the idealization of giving up. how close i stand at the precipice of destruction, letting my foot dangle, teasing the rest of my weight with the lack thereof of the abyss in surrender. i wonder if they can see this life is killing me— i die a thousand deaths and am reborn when i stand in the sunshine. but once i’m gone, that rebirth will be short-lived, too. like the rest of them, and it’ll be only me at the wake. i’m a funeral and resurrection wrapped in one, two sides constantly fighting, making up who i am, the colour of my eyes, the flash in my grin, the smooth, flowing river that is my words without the world knowing they were nothing but brittle and broken. now, my words may not be broken, but i am.

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

this post will find you when it needs to find you.

just some facts: you are loved. you are not alone. you are valuable. you are worthy of good things. you are deserving of self love and forgiveness. i’m glad you’re still here.

[nusaibaaaa]

coffee-coloured eyes from my childhood.

would i have lost you too?

would you still have chased me, called me moti when i lost weight, squished my cheeks if i lost to you in chess? would we have laughed under the table like we did back then, me going hysterical as you stoked the fire of hilarity?

would you have stayed?

i can’t forget you. time seems to have buried us under the rubble but i crawl out of it and constantly search for you. a hand, a trace.

you have to be here somewhere.

every little detail washes over me like a dream i woke up from, like it was just yesterday. vestiges of it clinging to me like dust. you running, catching me. always wearing longer-than-conventional black socks. sitting beside me on the bench when we got in trouble. your voice, the premature maturity it held. your eyes, like the darkest shade of honeycomb befriended darkness, boring into mine. They won’t look away, my heart’s pounding and my face is in your hands—

tell me why i stop and look twice at any person who looks like you.

tell me why i’m still bound by nostalgia for what could’ve been.

tell me why you still have a hold on me twelve years later.

[nusaibaaaa]

we aren’t supposed to be self sufficient.

no, i’m not supposed to pick myself off the floor when i feel parts of me seep through the cracks of it, forever lost, as if merging with the ground. with loss, anguish, surrender. i’m not supposed to be able to talk myself through it like a second person, cannot be both hurt and healer, the dark and light. is it so sinful to want a lighter for this match? a cure for the disease? can i not want medicine as the sick without pretending to be both patient and apothecary? what if i am just that, a single, separate patient? a dependent? pathetic, symbiotic and needy. human?

how degrading it feels to be human.