if love alone could have kept me here (i would have lived forever)

Some time in December last year, I wrote letters addressed to my loved ones. Here’s one addressed to no one in particular, written today and will be read a little bit too late. The fault is entirely mine, of course.

I attempted suicide once last year. Twice in the past two months. The thing about attempted suicides is, if people can find you just in the nick of time, then yes, it’s a cry for help. If you keep waking up with a stabbing pain in your stomach and a terrible case of vertigo, alone, with no one the wiser, you try and try again until it sticks. You don’t want help. You want death. Oblivion. Nothingness. There is nothing anyone can say or do, save from locking you up in a padded room, to make you change your mind.

I told a friend of mine that I have an emptiness in me which I’ve been carrying around for a very, very long time. I told her it started after my father died, but I know that’s only a partial truth. I was always a sad child, confused, angry and bitter at the world. As much as I loved my parents, there’s a crack in my heart from the years of seeing them hurt each other. Parents are not infallible. Fathers cheat and mothers take their anger and despair on their children, whether they mean to or not. Brothers can’t do anything but let you cry on their shoulders while you wait for your parents to stop screaming at each other. Was I a happy child? I don’t know. Maybe. I was quiet. That’s what teachers tell my mother.

“She’s so quiet and studious. She seems mature for her age. She’s so smart.”

Smart children usually grow up to become average adults. Lower your expectation, please. I used to think fulfilling these expectations would make the emptiness inside me smaller, more manageable. I studied diligently. Went to MRSM, joined an usrah, became part of the mosque committee. That emptiness made me dive head first into religion, because god, I was just so hungry. I wanted that self righteousness that the very religious have when they talk about god and how some people deserve heaven and others don’t because it translated to confidence and that feeling had always, always eluded me. I surrounded myself with other teens who wanted to anchor themselves to god. We were hungry for something. The daily reminder that god was with us and the promises of flowing rivers of milk and honey, of eternal joy and contentment quietened my rumbling stomach. It never exactly fed me. I was still hungry.

The emptiness remained, and if anything, grew bigger when my father died.

The morning I got the news, I felt it. The emptiness in me grew bigger. When he died, he took parts of me with him. All my life, he was my constant. He was far from perfect, we all know that. Yet, I shared his dreams. He wanted me to be a doctor. Eagerly, I said yes. I read books about famous doctors and their contributions in the medical field. He told me to be number one, and I tried so hard. I cried over an unfinished test, that one year another girl took my spot as number one in primary school. It was as if my existence relied on his trust in me. It made sense that I lost my bearing. I built myself up with my father’s dreams as the foundation. Without him, all that’s left was a shell.

I had my first breakdown weeks after his death. I was 16. I had another one a year later. I never took up the school counselor’s offer to chat. I don’t think he would have understand and I myself don’t know how to explain why despite being told again and again that I was one of the best students in school, I couldn’t see my future beyond high school. The choices I have made since then are a series of self sabotage that I can never fully explain. I always leave a trail of destruction in my wake. It’s a miracle that no one has ever noticed. I am my biggest enemy. For every A on my college transcript there’s a D or an F for the days when I can’t bring myself to go to my classes. I don’t remember the last time I felt genuinely content with myself. There’s an impossible standard I can’t help but measure myself to. I build tall towers just to silently disassemble them before the last brick is laid. I self destruct without fanfare. No fire and explosions. Years from now, maybe someone will look around and notice that I’m not around anymore. I’d rather just disappear or to never have existed at all. I’ve always known that one day this emptiness will swallow me whole. It was only a matter of time. Maybe my biggest mistake was being too afraid to ask for help. Or too proud, I don’t know. It hardly matters now.

Thank you for reading this letter all the way through, stranger. I wish you a long and happy life.

anatomy of a girl (WIP)

Mother
Her mother is crying in the driver’s seat. She had asked for wrapping paper for her books, which her mother forgets amidst everything else and now her mother is angry at them both. My mother is so very human and I am such a child, she thinks. 
She is seven years old, and she sees how being a child renders you helpless and being an adult renders you frustrated from the inability to help. Children do not intend break their parents’ hearts, but intent and impact can be two very different things. 
She is seven years old and she sees that parents don’t always do right by their children and each other. That’s perfectly fine, she thinks. They’re only human.
And so she goes to school with her textbooks unwrapped and accepts the rattan strokes her teacher gives. Injustice is a thing she must accept in life.

Father
Trophies and medals are the things she exchanges for her father’s time and attention. She was never good at sports, and so she spends her time learning words and playing with numbers. Her results are tallied at the end of every year, neatly summarized in a school report that she gives to him. A proof of her efforts and a measure of his love.

Adolescent
At eleven she begins to draw bodies,  all alarmingly female. She draws silken hair, soft breasts, round hips. A study of the female form born from the need to understand herself as she begins to change. It is a partial truth, its fullness kept under lock and key for her to unpack some other day, some other week, some other year, some other time that is not now. An easy mistake to make, in a society where completeness in a pair is one half a man and one half a woman. Year and years later, she unpacks her truth, the wholeness of it setting her free.

Faith
Faith is what she turns to for the emptiness in her soul. It fills her with shame, terror and anger. It fills her with insatiable thirst. It is the first thing she discards in her journey to accept herself.


Co-dependence 
 She is hungry and angry, self loathing coloring her glasses crimson. The path to her self-destruction is paved by a boy whose own self hatred fueled her own. Their idea of love distorted from the ugliness of their own parents’ love stories. Hers, a story of emotional blackmail in the form of helpless children. His, a story of infidelity in the form of another wife. Theirs, a story of emotional abuse, allowed to happen for the slight chance of grasping a happy ending. Endure, she thinks. Forever, he thinks. They do not last.

Guilt
She thinks of the boy she let down, a fly entangled in her web of lies. She tried to settle for a friend, but no one deserves being the next best thing. She makes excuses and lets him go. Guilt is a sharp stinging thing in her chest. Months later they talk, and she tells the truth. Exhale, your guilt is appeased, she tells herself.

A Study of Feelings: Lust (A Kiss)

There is something tantalizingly beautiful

In the way you curve your smiles

In the burning fire of your eyes

In the length of our silences

As fingers touch and hearts explode

Into a shower of stars and whispered promises

As breaths mix and senses heighten

Into swirls of delirium and dizzying euphoria

There is something beautifully cruel

In the shortness of these seconds

An infinite realm of possibilities

Contained in a single kiss

The minute space between two breaths

23/8/14

There is No God Here

There is no god here, 

Between the pews of a grand cathedral

Empty save for a young girl praying fervently,

Desperate for an empty womb.

Her only mistake was believing in empty promises

There is no god here,

In this large space that sings of the Greatness of God

While the hungry starve and His servants do nothing but pray

and tell a woman her value lies in her virginity,

not in her mind or her heart.

There is no god here,

There has never been one.

Or if there is, tell me

Is he worthy of your worship?

Prompt 1: The Chosen One Doesn't Save the World, (S)he Destroys It.

Written by: Farhana Safran 

I am bored and tired, Death thinks.

The usual sing-song voice that accompanies his thoughts is quiet, today of all days. With a heavy sigh, he steps down from his old, rickety throne.

“Time to finish the game, then.”

The girl chosen to bring upon the apocalypse is in every which way, a normal teenager. A little bit sullen, maybe. But then again, aren’t all teenagers prone to a tiny bit of angst?

            She starts her official title of the Harbinger of the Apocalypse by performing miracles. Healing a child’s scrapped knee. Soothing the pain of a cancer patient before she dies. Bringing her little sister, 5 years dead, back to life. Miracles. Undiscovered scientific marvels. Who knows?

An angel, sent to aid humanity. A she-Devil, sent to entice weak men. A new breed of humans. Conspiracies after conspiracies, new theories growing more farfetched as her story spreads.

God’s Chosen, someone says.

The anti-Christ, says another.

“I am just a girl,” she insists to the media.

“False modesty will get you nowhere,” Death, as the newly awakened voice in her head reminds her while she smiles at the cameras, her eyes blind from the flashes.

Tents are erected on side walks, a few meters away from her front door. Men and women of different faiths, nationalities, languages pray in her honor. A man blows himself up while she holds his child. She emerges with the many people gathering around her, unscathed, the man (and his child) a splatter on the ground. Another miracle.

She inspires an army to fight in her name. A call for a new world order. The new Joan of Arc. Entire continents crumble beneath her. Shrines are built in her name. Ballads are sung in her honor. No, not a Joan. She serves no one. A God, her army decides. Men and women and children are slaughtered by those who wish for her favors.

“I never asked for sacrifices,” she cries.

“But we are your humble followers. We honor you in these rituals. They refused to accept your divinity.”

Death rolls his eyes at the all too familiar absurdity. Soon, the girl will realize that they no longer hear her voice. Are you still there? No singing. Alright, then.

“Am I meant to save the world?” the girl asks one day, as she sits on her shiny new throne, the world outside her castle –how very princess-like –in ruins. Death in the streets. Death in her head. Death, standing next to her, leaning onto her throne.

“What is there to save?”

Humans are always prone to hoping. It irks him.

I have created you in my image. He scoffs at the thought, although there might be truth in them.

“I don’t know.”

The answer startles him. He regards her with curiosity. Have they broken her? So soon?

“Shall we burn it all to the ground?”

“Okay.”

 “A phoenix may rise from the ashes. We may salvage what’s left, if you’d like?”

“No, we’ll start again. From the beginning.”

He marvels at the determined set to her jaw as she contemplates razing entire cities to the ground and erasing the entire history of mankind. How very familiar.

He closes his eyes. At the back of his head, a woman begins to sing again.

The end is nigh, is nigh, is nigh, she sings sweetly.

“Oh, there you are,” he murmurs quietly.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Oh, nothing, I was just talking to myself.”

The girl gives him a look, sighs, and straightens her spine. She looks forward.

 In the end, Death takes us all.

The singing stops with a tone of finality.

Death opens his eyes. He straightens, ready to see the girl plunge the world into chaos. He looks to her, this girl shouldering what was originally his to bear.

“How about ruling over a family of apes next time, huh?” the girl quips. He lets out an unsurprised laugh.

“We shall see.”

He looks at the back of her head and smiles sadly. History is circular. Did she not learn this in school? But then, what better way to learn if not from experience?

A family of apes, then.

Be, and it shall be.

The world begins anew. A new throne, a new god, with a new voice inside her head.

“Let the game begin.”

His knowing laugh echoes in her mind.

A Quiet Confession.

 Mark this post as presenting a shift in my personal views. It had a long time coming. 5 years, 2 months and 5 days in the making, if I have to be more precise.

 The morning I got the news that my dad had passed away, I felt it. The emptiness in my guts.When he died, he took parts of me with him. All my life, he was my constant. He was far from perfect, we all know that. Yet, I shared his dreams. He wanted me to be a doctor. Eagerly, I said yes. I read books about famous doctors and their contributions in the medical field. He told me to be number one, and I tried so hard. I cried over an unfinished test, that one year another girl took my spot as number one in primary school. It was as if my existence relied on his trust in me. It made sense that I lost my bearing. I built myself up with my dad's dreams as the foundation. Without him, all that's left was a shell.

I am many things in relation to others. A daughter. A sister. A student. A friend. A rival. But what am I to myself? What am I if not a collection of memories, of human experiences shared with others? I know what the religious would say. I am but a servant of God. In the end, I am ash and dust and a solitary soul forever residing in heaven or hell.

"From Him you came, and to Him you will return."

I will share with you what I think about that statement.

 The more people you lose, the more you start thinking about life as borrowed time. I lost my dad at sixteen. My grandma at eighteen. My granddad at twenty one. Of all the things we are promised to experience, death is the most inevitable. They say atheists and agnostics fear death. That's why they seek immortality. In books and films, godless heathens search for ways to live forever. In real life, religious fanatics murder to gain a ticket to heaven. If we dig into the very crux of that matter, I would say the religious are the ones who fear death the most.

Why?

Because it is the unknown. We fear the oblivion, as John Green, through the voice of his fictional teen character, Augustus Waters, said. (pretentiously, if I might add.)

You spend years and years convincing yourself that there is life after death. The Day of Judgement. Heaven. Hell. Purgatory. You refuse to accept that borrowed time is what it is. Borrowed, with a termination date. The limit does, in fact, exist. The best we could do, even with the most educated men and women in the field of medicine, is to prolong the inevitable.

 Over the years, men and women contemplated the idea of what lies beyond death. Religions were built upon this premise of life being temporary. The afterlife is forever. Countless belief systems long gone, and others still prevailing in the modern world. Personal gods, Institutional religions. Roads that run parallel and may cross each other, sometimes colliding, often with disastrous consequences.

 I do not need to think of myself as a servant of god to know that I am insignificant to the world, that without me, god would still be a powerful being. I respectfully disagree. The strength of gods lie in the strength of their believers. My god is as dead as my belief in him. There, I said it. My ultimate truth. I am no longer a believer of god. I have not been one for years, now. Those who truly know me might have seen it coming. Those who don't will condemn me to hell. Frankly, even those who know me will think of it, but they are respectful enough not to voice it out loud. Call me an apostate. I will not deny it.

 On a much grander scale, I am but a speck in this universe that has existed billions of years before dinosaurs even roamed the earth. That is humbling enough to me.

 I have cast off so many parts of myself that I thought would forever define me as a person. In casting away my tight fitting armour, I allowed myself room to grow. To question. To make decisions that are not bound by what others want from me. (You may call it selfishness, but what is wrong with wanting? Ambition stems from wanting. The future is for those with ambition.)

 I've lost and gained so many things, it feels like I am no longer the person that I was before.

At sixteen, I wanted to please, to make amends.

At seventeen I cried over all the wrong decisions.

At eighteen, I tried to make peace with the things I cannot change. I wore cynicism like an armour.

At nineteen, I reached out and found friendship I would not trade for the world. I saw how we are all cut from the same cloth, but colored differently.

At twenty, I cast off my faith and began building it anew, from the ground up. I was a Muslim, I was an Agnostic. I was (and still am) an Atheist.

Now, at twenty-one, I have decided. To hell (or not) with it, I am what I am, and whatever I choose to be. I am human, first and foremost.

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
Seize the moment, trust tomorrow even as little as you may.

I am always changing, and that's how I will always be.
None of us are promised tomorrow, only the possibility of it. The point is to go forward without having the lingering regrets eat you alive.

The Devil's Color is White

     Originally written on February 15th 2013


     There was once a town, where everything was white. The houses, the schools, the grass, the flowers, the clothes, everything. White was pure, clean, pristine. White was beautiful. White was Right. No one questioned this rule, as children grew up seeing white on their parents and the parents grew old seeing white on their parents. It was engraved, it was accepted and it was expected.

     And yet, the day came when a foreigner arrived. He was a traveller, looking for a place to settle down. He came in a red car, wearing a blue shirt and brown pants. He slung a bright orange backpack on his back and his slippers were neon green. 

   “Ugly!”

   “Hideous!”

   “Disgusting!”

     The locals voiced their confusion and disgust. They were shocked, horrified and afraid. This man was nothing they had ever seen before, different.

     The traveller, unaware of how his vibrant colours were somehow defiling the beauty of white, walked into a nearby inn. He stood at the counter, a sharp contrast to the pure white surrounding and asked for a room. The innkeeper wrinkled her nose in disgust and showed him the way out.

   “No coloured man will defile the whites of my inn. There is no place for tainted people here!”

     He walked out, confused and deeply saddened. Was it so bad that he was different? Was his colours Wrong? Was it a sin to be different? Maybe he needed some white clothes, a white pair of slippers, a white backpack. He needed to blend in, to belong. To be one of them.

    Suddenly, a spark ignited. Maybe there were others like him? Or maybe someone who didn’t mind his colourful ensemble? Those who would accept him for what he was, an individual.

     So, he wandered the streets, knocking on white doors, asking for a family to accept him, in exchange for some different colours that he considered beautiful. His optimism backfired. The nicer ones politely declined while some shut their doors to his face. And the ones so unwaveringly devoted to their pure and beautiful white threw white paint, water and even acid on his face and clothes, screaming words filled with hatred and malice. He would run from them, his spark of hope slowly dying each time it happened.

      One day, as he was sitting under a tree, nursing his fingers, bleeding from scorching acid thrown at him a few seconds ago, a little boy came to the traveller, carrying a white puppy with him.

   “Would you like to touch it, Mister?” the boy asked, flashing an innocent smile. The traveller smiled as brightly as he could, and stretched his bleeding fingers towards the beautiful, white pup. A drop of crimson blood fell on its ears and staining its fur. The boy gasped, not from horror, but from surprise, as the red on his puppy was something he had never seen before. It enthralled him. The traveller smiled sadly. At least a child could find wonder in his foreignness, he thought. Will acceptance come soon after? He played with the boy and his puppy, his spark of hope growing into a small fire. When he finally closed his eyes to sleep that day, the fire was burning slowly, but firmly. Orange flames dancing in his mind’s eye.

     When he opened his eyes later, the sight that greeted him was one of pure terror and heartbreak. A mangled lump of white smeared with red lay in front of him, remnants of what became of the little puppy. The white puppy he tainted red. Before his mind could even respond to the terror in front of him, he felt a sharp thud at the back of his head and hot liquid ran down his head and into his eyes giving him the visions of a bleeding red. As his knees, palms and finally his cheeks touched the ground, he heard them.

   “We knocked out the coloured man! He’s unconscious!”

   “Carry him to the town hall! We’ll burn him there for everyone to see. That’ll teach him for tainting my son and the dog with his ugly colour!”

     Ugly. Tainted. That was what he was to them. And as his consciousness began to drift away, he wondered about the pure, pristine and ever so beautiful white and how the white that everyone else idolized was the one he would forever deem the Devil’s colour.  

   

Waiting for the End

Originally written on February 2nd 2013


     It was certainly exciting, I couldn’t deny it. My heart raced as my eyes followed the steady pace of my blue pen on the crisp white of the exam paper. It was nearing the end, and every one of us, the Form Five students were eagerly anticipating it.

The nerve wrecking minutes before freedom.

All around me, pens danced on papers, each stroke much more urgent than the one before. It was the last battle. One that would bring an end to three weeks of war. A war we spent two years preparing for. As my pen made the last inky dot, ending my personal battle, I felt it again, the anticipation, eagerness, the thumping of an excited heart threatening to break out of my chest.

Four minutes left.

Papers were being shoved aside to the furthest possible corner of the small fold-able desks, their writers ready to hand them over. The clunky trots of the female invigilator on her heels we dubbed the Kung Fu shoes reminded me of the passing seconds that felt agonizingly slow. My mind was adrift. Dwelling on the school days that was only a few minutes from ending.

Another two minutes.

The hall was a restless mix of rustling papers, shoes shuffling against dusty floor, nervous giggles and bored sighs. Invigilators began their hushed discussion. Students began their noisy packing. It was the tap of pens against pencils, the thud of erasers falling onto floors and into pencil cases and the zips and clicks of closing pencil cases.

Forty-five seconds.

Invigilators began trotting across the hall, the Kung Fu shoes lady’s being the most audible footsteps. Giggles escaped the girls, euphoria was in the air. The sudden screeching of the microphone took our breaths away. And we held the ones forming.

Ten.

“Attention candidates,” the Head Invigilator began. ”Please put down your pens and paper.”

Five.

“The invigilators will be collecting your papers.”

Four.

A pin could have dropped and everyone would hear it.

Three.

“The time allocated for Biology Paper 3…”

Two.

“…is over.”

One.

The hall erupted in a sea of cheers and laughter, sighs of relief and exhaustion. I laughed and smiled and before I knew it, there were tears. Of relief, exhaustion and sadness. Our battles, our biggest war, our school lives was over. Wiping my eyes, I picked up my pencil case and took a slow step towards the exit, where many others were already running to.

Alicia and the Possibility of Wonderland

     Originally written in March 2012   


     As Alicia was walking home from school that day, she began thinking of interesting things that could, but did not happen to her that day. The list was endless, ranging from getting an A for the ridiculously mind boggling Chemistry test to the most impossible things like having her crush return her feelings or having an awesome fairy tale adventure.

  Right on cue, a fluffy white rabbit with a green watch strapped onto its hind leg ran past the bewildered Alicia. That, definitely stopped Alicia in her tracks. Her eyes followed the fluffy ball of white until it disappeared behind a cluster of bushes. Contemplating on the chances of an Alice in Wonderland adventure, she took a step towards the bushes which now looked oddly suspicious. Was there a chance of a dark rabbit hole? A passage to Wonderland?

    Suddenly, a young girl-probably in her mid-teen- yanked Alicia’s sleeves. The girl was wearing a dress that looked like it came from the Victorian era. Her hair was a wave of blonde curls cascading down her back. With a blue ribbon holding back her bangs from obscuring her small face, she seemed to be Alice herself. No questions asked, she began a long, winding explanation involving a runaway pet rabbit and her brother’s green watch. Long story short, her class was doing a play on Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and she lost her pet rabbit along with the green watch she ‘borrowed’ from her brother. Alicia continued nodding and shaking her head despite her losing interest. Well, there goes my adventure in Wonderland, she thought. Hoping for the rabbit to finally show itself, she looked at the bushes again. 

      And as if the rabbit’s thought were synchronized with hers, it dashed pass them, leaving a trail of green plastic pieces which Alicia suspected were the sad remains of the brother’s watch. Before a witty remark could be made, little  Alice was on the ball of fluff’s heel, screaming strings of profanities which Alicia felt was a little too advanced for a thirteen year old. Unless she knew the Internet.

  Alicia stood there, next to a clump of bushes that might have been concealing the gateway to Wonderland but actually did not. With a sigh, Alicia turned around and continued her walk home, thinking of Alice and her runaway rabbit which she hoped hadn’t fallen down any holes to Wonderland. That was definitely an interesting encounter. Now, she needed a nap, preferably under a tree after reading a book and an afternoon tea in their backyard. Hopefully her sister would remember to wake her up.

A Study of Feelings: Loneliness

You can be sitting on your own

book in loving hands 

while lips form words

that echo softly in the quiet mind.

Alone, not lonely.

You can be suffocating in

the burning passion of human sounds

as bodies clash in fervent worship

of the screaming chaos of a dance floor.

Lonely, not alone.

Loneliness,

is not always

the product of

being alone.