Sweeping It Under The Rug

In these past two weeks I have come to face difficulties in the mirror image of my own self. My inability to face circumstances bit me back with a vengeance. In the past whenever I found myself facing trouble, I would always sweep it under the rug instead of facing it head on. And so, if at this moment you were to lift up the rug, you would find a living and thriving city underneath it. A city where I drew my first breath, learned to write my name in the fog that smears the car window in winters and discovered that the best kept secrets are those you shout out loudly from a cliff over a mountain valley.
One bad experience and I found myself incapable of returning to a city that has made me who I am, turning my back towards all my friends, too afraid to hear out loud the nightmare that I constantly denied to be real. I moved onto a new city and found refuge among strangers, finding comfort within the unfamiliarity of the new places and the people around me.  You might wonder what experience I went through to evoke such a reaction. All I can say is that I had, for the first time, seen the ugly side of a human being and had been hurt enough to lose the ability of trusting myself and those around me. So henceforth I stopped trusting the untrustworthy in order to avoid pain and suffering, my definition of “untrustworthy” being broad enough to encompass anyone within a ten mile radius.
For two years I kept myself bound to this self written contract aimed at avoiding hurt, until two weeks ago when in trying to keep myself away from suffering, I intentionally inflicted the very same suffering upon someone else. I tried to sever a friendship I thought detrimental, not realizing that I would burn both pairs of hands at either end of the rope if I were to set fire to it from the middle.
The days that followed I found myself utterly helpless and in the very pain that I had been trying so hard to keep away, both from the knowledge of what I had done and the lack of it to know what else to do. I could not sweep away the suffering under the rug because it was not mine alone to bare this time.
It was not easy but it hit me one day. After two years of running away, the realization finally hit me. I am not perfect.  As everyone else isn't, I am not either. Imperfection leads to failure and failure is never easy. When you fall, you hurt, especially when the fall is steep. And so hurt is as inevitable as failure. The real strength of character doesn’t lie in the act of avoiding pain and suffering but rather in the attempts of enduring them in order to come to terms with your failings.
I failed twice; two years ago when I laid my trust into the hands of someone who never deserved it and a week ago when I tried to take it away from a person who deserves it all the more. I think it’s time that I come to terms with my failures and my mistakes.  I think it’s time that I return to my city instead of running away from it, and if it comes to it face the person who broke my spirit so badly.
I think it’s about time I grew up.

“So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.”  - J.K Rowling on the " Benefits of Failure" 

The Fear Of Losing Someone

Quietus "A finishing stroke; anything that eventually ends or settles." 

You are fifteen years old. You stand in front of your mother's bed, and see her struggling for consciousness. Your little brother quietly stands there with you too.

"Do we call up Papa Pernia?” your brother whispers. 

"He's in Karachi, what can he possibly do?” you reply back.

"Mama needs the hospital. Who do we ask for help?”

You look back at your little brother, thinking how he should have been watching Saturday morning cartoons instead. 

"No one. We'll manage"

You tell your brother to get dressed. You call up a taxi and take your mother to the hospital yourself, feeling the burden of life grow heavier along the way. You rush her into the emergency.  

The doctors assure you that everything will be fine; you've been a brave girl getting your mother till here by yourself but now they'll take over from here so you don’t need to worry.

You look towards your brother and force a smile. "See? She’ ll be alright now. I told you we would manage."

He stares at you quietly for a while. "Will you be alright?" He asks.

I don’t think I ever will bro. I see our mother suffer everyday but I can’t help her. So instead I sit around all day thinking about the future. And let me tell you the more I think about it, the more I get scared because I don’t find our mother in it. I wish time would stop. I don’t like change little brother, what if it's not for the best? I’m growing quieter each day, I barely talk to people. Maybe if I stay quiet enough, I’ll turn invisible and life would stop noticing me. Maybe it would stop noticing our mother too then. If I stay quiet long enough, I think everything will be just fine.

"Pernia? Where you lost?" 

You hold your brother's small hand, pressing it gently. 

"Everything will be just fine. Don’t worry." 

"Affection Is Desirable But Money Is Indispensable"

"Shrink: Move back or away in fear or disgust"
I have always been told that I have a slight disposition towards wearing my heart on, not just one but both my sleeves. That I let emotions get the best of me sometimes. As an antidote I have been suggested a healthy dose of realism. In real life you have to make decisions, often crude and unfair, and you have to make them not from your heart but from your mind. Real life itself has obligingly stepped in here on a number of occasions to support this notion.
My cousin just recently got married to a man ten years older than her. She felt his wealth sufficient enough to compensate for the lack of  affection. The scary thing is that she is right. Circumstances have the upper hand in this life and they can be harsh enough sometimes to break the soul, and render it emotionless anyways. It's an unavoidable truth and yet I shrink away from it. I, in the words of the Oxford dictionary,  "move back or away in fear.."

Here I'll honor my vow of "being true to myself" and instead of bravely and endearingly proclaiming to change myself  for the better in order to face this world. Ill admit myself lost. Yes I'm shrinking away.

"That I could think there trembled through
  His happy good night air
  Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
  And I was unaware"

Ill take a leaf out of Thomas Hardy's book. The truth is staring at me right in the face, but I cannot face it.
I need more proof. 
  

Life Spelled Out

"Disguise: Alter in appearance or nature so as to conceal the identity of (a feeling or situation). VERB"

It’s a word we are all familiar with. One way or another we all conceal something, for better or for worse. It is certainly a word that I have an understanding with and it is funny that out of the 220,000 words in the English dictionary that I could randomly choose from with my eyes closed, I would choose this one to start my blog with. Because when I write here, I want to leave behind the disguises and concealment. I want to be true to appearance, I want to be my true self for once.
My every post will begin with a randomly chosen word from the dictionary, from which I will begin my tale or experience . I'm a strong believer in faith and an equally strong believer in the magic of words. And so I hope that combining these two will reflect my experiences in a way that the redundancy of my routine does not.
So lets see where this takes me.