Tehreem Ali's Blog, page 5

3AM Thoughts (13)

Some stranger’s hands are clasped into mine. Unheard of before words are falling as little soft whispers on my eardrums like snowflakes.

Their presence feels nothing more than a thorn twisting endlessly in my side, just another brick in the wall. Yet, despite the danger you know exists there, it becomes relentless to give in to it. Either you can give in to that darkness and sit on the throne of shadows, training yourself in how to rule the dark round you, or you can fade into the light and be washed away, never to be seen or felt again.

Whichever way you choose, the ultimate is always going to be the same: the delusions and madness embed themselves silently into your soul and you never see it coming, their feathery beatings turning inside you as you sit there chewing hard on your darkened soul.

Filed under: eccedentesiast, eleutheromaniac Tagged: amateur

3AM Thoughts (12)

Doors are slamming, year old paintings with their colors peeling off fall from the walls. Their hearts are melting in my hands, the crimson aligning itself in the pattern of my hand lines. Their mind control exceeds our ability to dream and breathe freely so I wrap myself up in your bitter sweet memory and fade away. Where to, I do not know. You

were the summer tone to my life; an orange seashell I picked up from the thirsty seashore of your island of Love – it is all merely a wasteland to me now. Where did you go, when did I become less, I shall never know any of it. For wastelands are but ghosts without a tongue of their own to speak for themselves; grey ghosts of memories waiting

for any mind to suck them in so they can lay waste to it.

Filed under: Amateur, eccedentesiast, eleutheromaniac Tagged: amateur

Candle and the Shipwreck

I’m losing, A., I’m losing again. This time, I do not think I can win. I do not want to win.

Why do you not want to win anymore? A. asks me.

Who will I be winning for? I answer with another query.

For yourself, of course, who else.

But I do not want to be myself. I do not like this “self”. I mean, they all keep saying how you’re supposed to live for yourself, stay strong and everything – for yourself. But what if you are too tired to do all that? It won’t be for yourself if you do not wish to carry on like this in the first place. You are simply living a lie. Don’t you see that?

I see, clearly. Question is, do you?

Oh I do. More than anyone else ever can. And I do not like what I see. I mean, it is like I see this projection of myself outside my own being and I look at her and I think to myself…God, how ugly.

But they all find you beautiful, so should you.

They barely know or understand me. What they love is not me but the idea of me. You make it sound so easy, A. I wish it were. The hardest person to love is yourself, you know that?

I do not think it is love you need to give yourself. I think it’s saving. Only if you let someone do that, that is.

I tried, A. I tried, believe me. But the world is a show and eventually, all shows come to an end. The audience that was squealing with joy as it looked on the show eventually gets up and leaves. The air goes still and quiet where before it was filled with human noise and clatter. You really think it is worth it to let a world like that be your savior?

Maybe you do not need the world to save you from yourself per say. It can be one soul you know. Just one head and heart to see the real you, past the façade you hide behind and hold your hand.

Souls, I say laughingly to A. What do you know about them, A.? You live in a small old cottage by the forest outside the city. Your wife

died from brain tumor and fearing you will never fall in love with someone again, you stopped trying and gave up on love completely. All you have left for a companion is that fierce cat of yours; the only living thing filling the coldness in your sheets at night, when she curls up beside you in bed and lets you stroke her fur. You do not know a thing about souls.

Do you? he asks me without anger.

I saw more than I ought to since an early age. I have never known what home feels like, real home. I mean sure, I have my friends and all and I consider them my family. But you know, it isn’t the same thing. Perhaps a substitute for what I lack. Then again…home, family, friends – why do we crave all of this so much when we know so well this life is mortal? We are all born alone and die alone, no? Why then, in our hours of utter helplessness, do we wildly crave a home to find peace in; or a friend to advise us; or a lover’s touch on our skin; or our favourite things by our bedside table? I just do not get it, you know?

Perhaps that is because you do not know what having all that feels like, because you have never had any of that, have you?

No, A. I have not. All I end up having becomes all I lose. I crave too you know? I mean I am human after all, why wouldn’t I? It comes

inborn, that desperate longing. So I get attached, I begin to feel;

and love; and like; and sometimes expect too. But everyone leaves and everything rots away. So now, I have grown to see the world and life as nothing but a place where things and people are meant to rot. God is there, looking on at us. I understand how his process seems painful

and hard…

But?

But I have stopped caring about that now as well.

Why is that?

Because this emptiness inside me, A. It is eating up everything I am,

everything I was, everything I am meant to become. Being let down the most, having my kindness taken bitter advantage of, it is more than just disappointments and pain now. Do you understand? Sure, they all say they understand. But no one looks at you twice until they know what you are going through which only happens once they experience the same thing.

So are you saying you want to give up?

I do not even have anything left to give up on, you know? I mean, people have fears and insecurities and hope and love and all that.

They either give in to it or give it all up. Just a matter of perception, really. Me? I am simply torn; torn between this…conflict.

What are you conflicted about? A. asks me.

I am not sure, A.

Is it the conflict between your head and heart? You know, the age-old dilemma about whether to follow your head or heart.

I smile at him a little and tell him one only remains in that kind of conflict when one has someone or something to follow. I do not have anything or anyone to follow anymore neither do I crave it.

I guess you can say I am in a constant battling conflict between life and death. I mean…I am too stubborn so I find it difficult to face death just yet. On the other hand, I am also immensely tired and frustrated to carry on holding life’s hand. I want things to get

better and at the same time, I wish it all ends.

But you do realize when the bad ends, so does the good along with it.

Emptiness, A., emptiness. It removes your sense and care about good and bad, don’t you know that?

I suggest you think of yourself as a candle. That is the role of people like you in this world. You burn for others.

Yes, we burn. And we melt in the end, remember? I cannot begin to recount to you all the times I have had the desperate urge to melt

myself sooner, before my wick finishes.

You’re talking about death.

Or an escape…

Death is a coward’s way out, A. says rather sharply.

Yet it is a way out none the same. Call it what you might, I do not care. I have never feared death. There are all these people who tell me I have so much to “live for” but they don’t get it, you know. There are four stages of one’s being, A. Has that ever occurred to you?

No, it has not, frankly. What are they?

Living, existing, surviving and struggling. This is the order from superior to inferior most. Living is the rarest of tasks humans do

today. And the last one? Well, that is the most worst form; it is the lowest level, the deepest and most pathetic form of all. And that is my abode. That is where I reside since the day I came into being. So tell me, A., you really think I am a candle?

I have no doubt about that, whatever you might suggest.

But you see, when a candle is flickering, its life at its stake; when it is about to be extinguished, it never seeks out help. It never asks another to cup their hands around it and prevent it from going out, does it? It cannot, for it knows whoever makes contact with its flame shall be burned. Am I right, A.?

Yes, you are. But you’re forgetting, someone does come around and cup their hands round the candle and save its flame from dying out. I am sure you shall find that someone in your life too; who comes and cups their hands around your flame to stop it from going out. For that to happen, however, you must keep burning. At least until your wick is long enough to hold your fire.

You’re overlooking a sad yet simple fact here, A.

Which is? he asks me with a slight frown on his forehead.

When they see the candle flickering, they rush towards it, surround its flame with their hands and stand there in that position until the flare is strong once again and the candle burns as bright as ever, giving light around it. So when they see that, they think that okay, now the flame is up again, that I should let go now, it is safe to remove my hands from around the flame otherwise they shall burn. And eventually, where before they had come running towards the candle to save it, now they walk away, just like that.The candle keeps burning itself for them afterwards none the same. It does not have any other choice. Do you see my point now, A.?

Is your wick near its end by now?

No, it is not. But I want to burn it myself before it reaches its end.

I know I cannot change the course you have taken for yourself; you are stubborn that way. However, I shall be allowed to do one last thing for you. It is all one can do in such a case anyhow.

Okay, A. What do you want to do?

After you burn out, I want to – or rather, I need to – gather your wax, paint it and store it somewhere safe where it does not melt. I do not want to let the last remnants of you melt away too.

Why? Everyone has done just that in my life, melted me. Why would you be any different, A.?

Because I do not want to let go. You do not let go of the good things. You store them, you brood over them; you keep them as a keepsake. It is not like there are too many of those left in this world today anyway…good things I mean. I tend to keep the few I find.

With that, he holds my head under the water in the tub, the bathroom light flickering just a bit, and I try my best to not struggle under his iron grip. His hand on the top of my head, he forces it further below water and keeps it there. I do not know where this strength in him is coming from. I always found him rather weak. Maybe he is

delighted to be the one to free me after all this time; maybe the thought of that is providing him with this strength.

My heart. My heart is weeping.

My brain. My brain is shooting signals to each and every muscle and cell in my body to fight; to fight back the urge to give in to the water and swallow; and inhale. This time, however, I listen and follow neither of them. I suck in a huge breathe and when the rush of cold water rushes into my nostrils, down my throat and lungs, into my ears and deeper still, I feel calm. A calmness I have never, ever felt before in my stay here in this world since the moment I came in it.

A. finally lifts his hand from my head, sure I have stopped breathing. He whips his hand on the towel by his side, gets up and turns the bathroom light off.

Before he leaves, he stands in the doorway and looking behind at where my wax is now lying in the tub, he says, I never said goodbye to you nor did you force me to. I am thankful to you for that. Because saying goodbye means letting go and letting go means forgetting. That is something I shall refuse to do. I shall never forget the candle that always burned at my bedside table, keeping my shadows away, whose light I read under, who kept me warm in the winters.

Then he looks below at his hands where there are burn marks all over from all those times he had ran towards her to cup her flame, kept it from dying. And now here he was, at last being the one to blow out that candle which he had prevented from  being extinguished from so long. He was both the savior and the destructor. And he did not know which version of himself he should thank now.

She burned thinking love was destruction. He realizes now how she was right all along for he would spend his remaining days in his destruction: regret. Regret over the fact that he waited too long, stood there cupping her flame too long when he could have let her know that she was wrong about one thing, that he had not given up on love completely just yet.

He stored her wax later on. Each time he looked at it, he wished for only one thing. He wished he had extended her wick when he had the chance to. It was the way, the other way; for there is always a way. Why he had not thought of that earlier, he did not know. Maybe, he thinks to himself now, it was simply because his love was not just blind but deaf and dumb too; keeping him from opening up about what he felt. This is his destruction. And all our destructions are ours to carry alone, whether or not we create something out of them later.

She was my island, he says to himself. I was a shipwrecked soul looking for an island. She was my island all along but I failed to see it. I was too busy figuring out how to cure her. Now the sea has swallowed her so I guess I shall just carry on floating on the desolate shores once again. For it is too late for me now. It always is with good things like that.

Filed under: Amateur, death, Life Tagged: death, life

Perks of Being A Writer

Lots of things might happen. That’s the thing about writers. They’re unpredictable. They might bring you eggs in bed for breakfast, or they might all but ignore you for days. They might bring you eggs in bed at three in the morning. Or they might wake you up for sex at three in the morning. Or make love at four in the afternoon. They might not sleep at all. Or they might sleep right through the alarm and forget to get you up for work. Or call you home from work to kill a spider. Or refuse to speak to you after finding out you’ve never seen To Kill a Mockingbird. Or spend the last of the rent money on five kinds of soap. Or sell your textbooks for cash halfway through the semester. Or leave you love notes in your pockets. Or wash your pants with Post-It notes in the pockets so your laundry comes out covered in bits of wet paper. They might cry if the Post-It notes are unread all over your pants. Its an unpredictable life.

But what happens if a writer falls in love with you?

This is a little more predictable. You will find your hemp necklace with the glass mushroom pendant around the neck of someone at a bus stop in a short story. Your favorite shoes will mysteriously disappear, and show up in a poem. The watch you always wear, the watch you own but never wear, the fact that you’ve never worn a watch: they suddenly belong to characters you’ve never known. And yet they’re you. They’re not you; they’re someone else entirely, but they toss their hair like you. They use the same colloquialisms as you. They scratch their nose when they lie like you. Sometimes they will be narrators; sometimes protagonists, sometimes villains. Sometimes they will be nobodies, an unimportant, static prop. This might amuse you at first. Or confuse you. You might be bewildered when books turn into mirrors. You might try to see yourself how your beloved writer sees you when you read a poem about someone who has your middle name or prose about someone who has never seen To Kill a Mockingbird. These poems and novels and short stories, they will scatter into the wind. You will wonder if you’re wandering through the pages of some story you’ve never even read. There’s no way to know. And no way to erase it. Even if you leave, a part of you will always be left behind.

-Mik Everett

Perks of Being A Writer
Filed under: Life, writers Tagged: life, writer

An Invisible Phoenix

So I stand here with my memories peeling at the corners of my consciousness. The brittle love inside me spits and chokes on itself, desperate to breathe itself out.

You have a heart too young and a hope too naive.

Why can’t you take a grip of Reality and fade into the background?

“How shall I live then if I fade into the background?”

You call this living? You don’t know where you are headed. Spending your days at the expense of what you are supposed to do and not what you want to do – you call this living?

“We do what we can to help others.”

Have you ever tried fixing yourself?

“My broken parts and poisoned veins heal themselves up with the warmth of another’s smile, the sound of another’s tear falling…by the beating of a heart after it emerges out of aching.”

But you have lost yourself.

“My world ended a long time ago, yes. Yet I know I have the tools in me to rebuild myself a new one. Just need to find the key to that toolbox lying dormant within me.”

They’ll throw you in a landfill and step all over you. Weakness is a disguise, don’t you see that by now?

“When I loved, it washed me like thunder; when I ignited they put me out before I had the chance to melt my dead and cold insides; when I looked into their fiery eyes I was swallowed by Darkness from all sides. None of that, however, contradicts my belief in myself.”

How long shall you burn yourself up like this for others?

“As long as my Light wills me to, but even after I fade away into sweet smoke, the halo of that smoke shall guide others to a better place. You never forget who you are. Just because I am searching, doesn’t mean I’m lost. We are all searching. Sometimes, we are closer to each other’s halo than we officially realize. We burn in solitude yet hearts standing so close but not touching. And in that silence we are lighting each others’ way without knowing it. We long. Why would I be any different?

If you’re the howl of the wolf that claws at my wounds in the night then I eat away that grey pain and become the Phoenix, rising every night from my ashes. You don’t see me as I stumble and find my balance beneath the weight of my newly forming bones and feathers. Each night, I bleed and burn – just to be born again, to light my halo on a star close by me that I can’t otherwise see. What you kill isn’t my dreams and aspirations but my doubts.”

Filed under: Amateur, Dreams, Human Nature, human spirit, Life, Optimism, soul Tagged: determination, perseverance

3AM Thoughts (3)

“Where were you?”

“Taking a stroll in the graveyard.”

“Didn’t you have hearts to wrap up and send to the land of Destruction, Cupid?”

“I deliver, always. And on time. But I have to bury my own heart sometimes too you know.”

“Why do you bury it?”

“If I don’t, they’ll all come to take revenge and pierce arrows in it same as I do with theirs. Over and over again. Colossal damage.”

“Where do you bury it then?”

“In his graveyard, in her park, in their night terrors, in our flesh, everywhere.”

“What were you doing in his graveyard, Cupid?”

“Looking for his heart.”

“Did you find it then?”

“He never buried it. He stitches it up instead every time after I send an arrow in it.”

Filed under: Amateur, Love

3AM Thoughts (2)

Are you a hot weather or a cold weather type of person? he asked me softly.

“Neither,” I answered.

He saw the golden, warm rays of the sun singing in her hair that were spilling on her shoulders like a brown stream of water. The glow in her eyes resonated a thousand unshed tears, pinpricks of battles she embraces and wins each day, the world going ignorantly about her in its deathly stupor.

He saw the moon’s innocent light cast off her skin like a pale sheet of glass, seeping into her scars and making them shimmer. But he did not shy away from them; he found beauty in her hidden treasures.

You hold the sun and the moon within you, he told her. You capsize the hot summer and the cold winter on your fingertips.

No, she told him, I don’t.

Then what are you?

I’m loud, and I’m clear. And I’m wildly fierce. I refuse to back down or stop howling under their black, raging winds. I’m a storm, you see.

He looked into her eyes then, and noticed there what he had missed before. It wasn’t agony they reflected; it was her silvery resilience, her shimmering perseverance.

“I am a storm and I rejoice in my thunders and my rains and all my misty lightnings.”

Filed under: Amateur, human spirit, Life, soul Tagged: life, perseverance

3AM Thoughts (1)

It’s weird how the best things and people and places in life turn into the best memories later. But it is these memories that hurt the most. I mean, it’s sorta twisted, don’t you think? How all that is beautiful can be so destructive to the human spirit at the same time. That golden haired girl you are infatuated with who comes to the grocery store near where you live and who you like to stare at from afar because you’re too shy to walk upto her and say hello; or that boy walking down the street who winks at you with his leaf green eyes and reminds you of melting ice creams and seashores and grass; or that song stuck inside your head so long it drowns out every other emotion; or that razor blade you slash across your skin each time you feel like you’re losing it, the control that comes with that physical pain being the sole thing you have power over in your life; or that movie you watched last summer with a best friend – when the summer heat made the cheese from the popcorn drip a little on your bare tan legs from your fingers after you licked them and you laughed out loud – the friend who now lives in China doing a part-time job and barely gets time to call you yet she does, late at night, and you tell her about the new neighbour next door and she tells you about her lovelife and so forth….

I sit here thinking and I am reminiscing about all those that were, all those that walked away, about the gifts she gave me, about the heartache he inflicted upon me. And it is all just inside my head. It is all just a mesh of memories chasing me forever and always. We are nothing but memories.

And then he comes into the room and closes the door ever so slightly yet the sound of it, along with the sound of his love drifting further from me each day, is more than enough – a loud echo in my bleeding mind to revert me back from my reverie as I plunge the needle in my arm, slowly losing myself as the orange liquid drains in my veins and numbs me. I shall have to increase my dose tomorrow, and more so the day after and again after that. It never stops. What, he asks me. The flashbacks and the memories, I tell him. And then we both lie still in the dark, our heartbeats but a grey drumbeat as he drifts on a cloud, being whisked away from me.

Filed under: Amateur, Life, Love

Daydreamer and Nightthinker

“Why don’t you just give up?” You’re miserable as it is. Why not put an end to this continous battling with me and grinding your teeth against the pain?” I ask.

“I could, sure. Question is whether i will or not.” I try to reason with myself.

“Your suffering is yours to bear alone. But if you give in now, you shall not be that alone. Your demons will be there to hug you to death.” The other me continues.

“And yet, I know the moment I step through that door, the devil will not be ugly or scarred – he’ll be beautiful as ever, the feral desire beckoning me towards it, unhindered. How shall I stop then?” I ask myself, though I know I won’t get any answer.

“You’re living a lie. You think you’re leaning on walls that will hold. They’re thorns, continuously embedding in your side. That’s why you can’t reach the flowers.” The other me rages on. It’s a corrupted breathe beside my own. Doubt is the monster I battle with everyday, feel its sharp claws nagging at bare edges of my innocent conscious. Sometimes, I almost fall in its trap but something more powerful – more powerful than any devastating desire born in the soul of men – pulls me back up, Belief.

“I will not try to fight this pain or longing anymore. I’ve been too naive all along that I forgot to question why it’s here in the first place.”

“It’s deadly and addicting you know, this loneliness you crave. Give in to it and let go of those thorns.” the other me persuades me, its voice thumping loudly in the grey walkways of my mind.

“I’m tired, yes. Sick of this fighting. At times I feel like a void ghost of who I can be. This will not stop but neither will I.”

“There’s no use drowning your demons,love. They’ll only swim up to the surface again.”

“Let them. They may try to cut me with diamonds of Lust yet my sword of Belief will slice through their listless darkness.” I throw back.

“But you’re not the sun, you know.”

“And yet I’m a fallen star.”

“Fallen stars don’t make galaxies.”

“I have a glow none the same, always did. Just didn’t know how to bathe in it – until now. Some are born with a hard path, others are doomed. Me? I have none so I shall make one for myself and shine my way.”

“You know they’ll burn you, your fears and insecurities.” I feel the other me grasping for any remaining shred of darkness to cloak me under. It’s failing.

“They will try. But they don’t know I’m not the carpet ride but the howling wind making it fly.”

“What about when society chains you, darling? For you know that’s inevitable a challenge for us all.” I ask myself with more frustration than adoration.

“I will not resist but embrace the thorns, eat away the pain and dance beside ghosts of memories; for a caged animal only tries harder to escape.” I feel the hand of Belief empowering me within, a raw, hungry energy coming along with it. I like it, the way it offers my helplessness control. It’s a yearning to discover, be free.

“And when society does smother me, ” I continue saying to myself, “I shall simply swallow the anger and pain down so hard, it shall burn those hands from my neck, choking me.”

“What of your wild fantasies and dreams?” I ask myself rather mockingly.

“They’ll be my sole companions on the path I’ll walk alone. In the meantime, I’ll make clouds my wild ride and run in the forests of mystery. For the heavens bear testament I’m a fallen angel who can only fly when she believes in her wings to carry her rather than lets them weigh her down.”

“But you’re weak.” I feel the monster, Doubt, speaking in a dying voice where once before it was screaming.

“I choose weakness to be a disgiuse, anger and pain my greatest weapons, molded in the everlasting fires of Belief. I drink their embers everyday.”

The demons give up stomping in my hollow chest, taking leave for the day. They will return, I know. But I’ll be better prepared. Their black diamonds of Lust against my sword.

And in this moment, I don’t just feel infinite; every speck of Love is loud in me. I shut my lids and in the corner of my mind, I see this person standing across, watching Life pass by from the side walks. But this time, she is bathed in a glow only she can see. Others call her delusional. I call her faithful.

Filed under: Amateur, Dreams, Human Nature, human spirit, Life, Optimism, soul

Fear, Doubt and Love

They sat on the side banks of a river called Time; the stones of their promises lying in the bottom. One had buried everything too deep while the other had lost everything in a haze. They sucked the life out of each other. Their skins emitted a halo all bright and dark and warm that it only grew strong when they beat with the same rhythm of Life. One pricked the needles, the other held a cup beneath to collect the shadowy blood.

They were forced into a hell fire, drowned in a death pool, burned at the stake of misconception, left alone in the frost of deception. If you stood too close to them long enough, you would certainly hear the thrum of heat surrounding their body – the heat of Survival. Clothes and such were not needed to protect them from the lashing temperatures of their environment for their bodies were now as hard as clay.

As it got dark, even the silence round them screamed from their hardened resolve – the very same immovable resolve that made them stick to one another. Patience was a candle that always burned yet never melted in the hallway of their minds, for they made its wax out of lost thoughts, thoughts that were never found to be broken in the first place. You look up and you see the stars; they look up only to find another challenge awaiting them, setting their horses astride. Their desires are louder than a banshee’s scream so they are above fulfillment. Looking into their eyes, you will recognize a mirror image of yourself – the real you that you try to mask away behind all that glistens, whether it is gold or not. A chameleon named Love had once paid them a visit. They were able to notice all its changing colors as it sat beside them. Yet those colors somehow failed to evaporate the darkness that lingered about them like a second skin.

They are not eternal; that is asking too less of the transient reality they were forged from. They break and yet they are born anew. For somethings are far more resilient to be kept chained under immortality and other such labels. So they sit there silently as their insides burn all of your outsides and their names shall forever be engraved on each breathe of Life you exist in, for one goes by the name of Fear and the other by the name of Doubt. And where is that stranger, the chameleon, you ask. It sits between them, sometimes a light feather blown by the slightest of winds and sometimes an apparition too blurred to be noticed.

Filed under: doubt, fear, Life, Love, soul, time Tagged: doubt, fear, life, love, time