People do not brag about their failures. This year as I was watching everyone talking about their achievments, I looked back and all my heart found was ache, disappointments and tears. I had nothing to share or so I thought and I wanted nothing but for the year to end. Just end. However, on second thought, I realized that memories that hurt can hurt as long as you give them permission to hurt you and you give them that permisssion when you do not come to peace with them. So, to come to good terms with the things that hurt me I had to get lessons from them. That sort of closure I believe is the most important thing through any experience. With that closure, not only did I feel more at ease with the past year but I have also felt like the things I came to realize make me long for the new year and make me beleive that someon'e life may also change if they knew about such lessons. So, for the sake of better change to all of us here is what I have learned.
People love in different ways.
I didn't lie when I told someone that I'll never love anyone the way I loved him.
Those two in the morning poems, the picture of him that flashes with my favorite love songs, how before I sleep I always, every single time, have to think of him, to pray he could meet his wishes in his lifetime. How on days I hated my words because they'll never do him justice, because everything was worth giving up for the sake of his smile and a warm embrace between his arms and I never knew how to say that. This is something I promise that I will not feel again. But it's not just that. It's that I'm a different person every time my heart beats for someone. A different piece of my heart melts, a new place in my mind is taken, an exceptional unforgettable memory is my sacred place and I do not love the same way then. Every person who could change something in me deserves a special reward of loving him like I have never loved before. So, I didn’t lie when I told someone that I'll never love anyone the way I loved him but I forgot to tell him part of the truth that the end of their love doesn't mark the end of mine. It's a universal truth, What someone's heart stopped to do towards you, your heart shall keep doing towards another and it's not betrayal or that your love wasn't strong enough, it's rather that it was too strong to not radiate even when unmet with its equal. The hidden part of the truth was YOU WILL LOVE AGAIN.
People grieve in different ways.
I still believe that loving someone was my way. You refuse to let go so much of things that hurt you that you choose to love them. You choose to love those blood drops falling from your heart because you can't imagine that this, the thing that you're clinging to, isn't for you. Grief wasn't always tears and insomniac nights. Grief sometimes looked like sunflowers and a walk downtown when it's dawn and there's no one in the streets and you sit down to watch the sunrise thinking that maybe today is your day and life will take your side. Grief sometimes looked like the rainbow of people's smile you almost acted like you forgot how the storms of their cries looked like. I learned that it's okay to not mind grief but one may start refusing to have it sometimes.
People leave in different ways.
Some leave by staying. Some leave while they're sitting with you, side by side. Some leave while their tongue is in your throat, picturing a love they do not feel to be true. Some leave while their touch could still make your body shiver. I must remind you of what people say, when you love someone you take them as a package, you love their tenderness, you accept their flaws, you forgive their shortcomings. And when you can't, you let the boredom eat you, you let the grudges build a barrier between you, you stand still before what you are no longer fond of before you could speak of what broke your heart about them. And one day you wake up and you no longer want this person. One day what could have been fixed is beyond repair and keeps progressing towards your end. I have always hated goodbyes but I have lately realized that we don't have to deal with everybody as a package. Some people maybe, the ones we really want in our lives sure, but those who do more harm to us than good, we needn't force ourselves to accept them. We have the right to take the good of them and ignore their bad parts. And yes, this is not selfish it's just the need to take care of ourselves.
People deal with what they love in different ways.
Divorce in arabic comes in a word that means release. It's to depict the bond that shall break between a married couple and it keeps coming to me, since when did the bond of love become cuffs in the hands of lovers. Since when and the most beautiful thing, the greatest painting, the best book, the favorite story that shows how sharing really should be like, how it's not just the one house or the one bed but rather the two souls that mingle, the two hearts that mark a single home, how could this turn into a cage you seek release from. Unless it wasn't really love, unless you didn't know that love is about sharing, that you can hurt people you love but you have to fix what you hurt, you have to feel sorry about the pain you cause to some, the fissure you make in things. You have to not, not ever, give up on what you love. Keep nourishing it even if on some days you will wish you could let it starve. You do not try to be unavailable, uninterested, detached from what or whom you love unless you are planning to lose them at some point or you never appreciated having them in the first place.
People succeed in different ways.
The biggest mistake I ever made, the one I learned to forgive myself for, was thinking that life created one road, one story for success and if you do not have the same story, do not bother dreaming. But the thing is it is such a boring life to want nothing but to walk in people's footsteps. To follow so many times you forget to lead at least once in your life. To know people so much and read their biographies all the time and forget to know yourself. There's on the contrary beauty in daring to dream. So, Dream a new dream, an almost impossible dream that puts your heart on fire and do not rest your head until it comes true and do not feel sorry for the panic attacks you get when you think you won't achieve it or the fast heart beats or the it's still eight in the morning but you can't stop yourself from crying state. Do not ever feel sorry for what makes your heart and brain itch because these, these are the things you will remember on your death bed. These are the things worth living for.
People change in different ways.
Some change with pain, some with happiness. Some let the change mold them into softer, more kind, empathetic hearts while some allow the change to eat the very good parts of them. Some let it eat their dreams alive until times pass and they can no longer recognize themselves. There is this quote I love from Alice's adventures in Wonderland that says," I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.' I want you to put this in mind each time you think you are too strong for change because you are not. Because change isn't a trait of weakness either but rather a trait of courage. You are changing because you are doing something. You are letting life happen to you. The part that matters, however, remains to be that you should give yourself a chance every once in a while to monitor that change of yours and correct if it ever drove you to be the wrong person.
People connect in different ways.
It happens over a cup of coffee sometimes, around a common favorite book, or because of a spontaneous joke, a prayer that wasn't secret, an admiration that was too big to seek shelter, or a look. A simple look and a kind smile. People connect sometimes without noticing, without realizing how it happened but they find themselves growing closer and it's the most comfortable feeling they ever experienced. And I hope you could feel that. I hope that all the shortcomings, the betrayal, the agony you might have felt this year but couldn't talk about while everyone else was listing the highlights of their year, I hope that none of this stops you from hoping, from being able to open your heart wide enough to connect with the nature and the world around you and the people that may actually break it. I hope your fluctuating longing for life that had been absent for the past months, I hope it can get back to you and I hope it keeps rising until it shows you that what you thought was the end wasn't and that things can always get worse but they can always get better too.
And I hope that you could trust, paint, write about a new love. I hope you could believe in destiny but more in the part that says that you can make your own destiny. I hope that love can find you wherever you are and if it couldn't then may you be its radiating source. I hope that this year someone will look at you as you talk and never wish for the time to end. And I hope you can feel safe. I hope you can reach whatever destinations you have been aiming at and I really, really hope you could feel safe.
-Mariem sherif
@mariemsherifagain
