Sorry, we're closed.

Everyone knows every now and then what it means to be alone. I've felt it in one way or another my whole life. Today however I realized that I'd never really known what being alone; utterly alone ever was. Today; as I sat crying in my room it hit me with force. The understanding of it. The full extent of it. My hands were cold and my cheeks and ears were blaring red as they always are when I'm hideously angry. It doesn't happen often, I am a pinnacle of self control. I understand what it all meant but some fuse had gone off somewhere. I wasn't afraid anymore and I didn't care and I felt the lesson engraved on my heart. The lesson was that some things are not meant to be forgiven and they shouldn't be. All that crap about how it will bring you peace to forgive someone is like I said...CRAP. There is no peace and there is no humanity in these people and everyday I feel the world around me compromising who I am. And I hate them and him; all the hims. I hate them with every fibre of my being and I'm not ashamed of it and not afraid of being answerable for it. I have nothing but hatred, bitterness and ugliness inside of me and I'm not making any excuses for it anymore. There it is. At least I'm not a manipulative, pathological liar snake. I'm ugly on the inside now aren't I? But I always give fair warning so nobody should imagine things that aren't true. And that makes me better than the rest of them even now. There is nothing inside me any longer and so be it. There was never a point and there isn't one now and there was never supposed to be. What's that long lost saying one hears every now and then? 'I came from nothing so I can always go back.'

Picture bound.

Every now and then we all have formidable obstacles that we can't see ourselves climbing out of. And sometimes, for a short period of time your mind tricks yourself into thinking it is possible. It is possible to run far away where nothing of it exists and to be never haunted by it again. But the mind is treacherous; it leads you back to the very same person, to the very same scene, to the very same call in your soul that you can never entirely block out. You, my friend will never change.You will never stop what you are doing and you will never turn back or turn away. And am I to stand by and watch, for it is not the human being I care about, it is my impossible idea of the human being. Should it falter, I would fall. Should the image distort itself, a valuable part of me would be forever lost. Perhaps, after all this time; it was only ever about me. Perhaps it is the only possible way I can keep myself safe. The only possible way to survive like a clover in a hurricane. To be so against nature, so specifically inadequate and so terribly unequipped. But whatever it was, it has escaped me, my iron clad hold. It has left me despite my inherent masochism and I could not feel better than I do now; could not feel more like myself, for the first time in many many years. It is all real once more.

Eternally asleep little movie doll.

She says I'm not living in this world. the world hardly real and yet here, in front of me all the time. I know what I am not doing, I know what has not happened, I know what happened to me that made me think I could give up the future in its favor because maybe I'm not worth it but that one specimen is. The past is behind me if I'd only believe it and maybe I would if I knew where I was going. She says that the void is so vast between the life I'd grown up almost expecting and the way it's all happening. Nothing is wrong with now and I'm not dreaming but she knows me. She knows I am. Maybe without ever having even seen the cover of my journal she knows every word I have ever written in it because I said it in my mind and she heard me because she is my mother. I can't tell the difference between when the day begins or ends or when I'm dreaming my short, dull dreams. Because you see even my dreams are not dreams anymore, they are what happens all the time, what I know will happen and everything that doesn't matter like opening a door, or closing a drawer. So normal they are, so quiet, so ordinary. And when I wake up, they might as well have not happened because I can't see the difference. I can't tell the difference. Every now and then I have a slightly new dream of someone I remember before the world happened to both of us. It wasn't the world, I just wanted to see something so badly, it became real for a lifelong minute there. So real that I devoted myself to it. It wasn't even an idea, it wasn't an opinion, it wasn't that feeling you feel when you know someone, it wasn't my creation, how could it have been. And yet there it is on eternal rewind in the back of my head and when I'm asleep it's always there because it cannot reach me during the day when my mind is otherwise painfully engaged. I remember it like a fantasy movie I saw as a kid and then dreamt about it for years and years. Sometimes you never ever even find out the name of that movie because it had an unknown cast, it's old and you just don't remember enough of anything. That movie is forever lost but it never leaves you. It plays and plays and you can't be sure it wasn't real. Who is to say that I didn't see all of that, and that it did not really happen? Who are they to know anything of what I am.Was it real, for a second there? How could I have come so far, lost so much for something that is entirely something else? She says 'let it go', 'forget'. But I have forgotten. Forgotten too much. And then you have to wake in the middle of the night to realize your old dreams are entirely lost to you and that they cannot live again just like you, cannot ever wake up again.

Callings once born.

Ah, Eid. Never quite figured it out. Didn't have a real fascination for the money, one can only stuff themselves so much you know, and you're also a frizzy humidity-struck mess with shiny clothes you don't give a damn about. I hate most holidays...interesting. And don't even ask what I think about my birthday. It's cursed, I'm absolutely certain. 5th January, dead cold, people dying everywhere (drama intended) and a pale girl decides to be born. Pale yet pink and screaming bloody murder.

Work is getting harder and infinitely more irritating. My fingers have cramps and the veins stick out all funny. They're even slightly swollen I think. But I can't give it up now can I. Makes me important it does. Important, skilled...aloof, silly. More than anything I have a sick, incurable hatred inside me that is fuelled by dread. Wasn't made for hate, it zaps my resources. I'm in a chronic bad mood all the time and I just fight with myself to study. No getting into college without a good grade in this subject. I'm no academic genius but blasphemous as it might sound, I pride myself on it. There's no shortage of pea brain, intellect-deprived asses out there with all As in their O and A levels, in fact they seem to grow on trees, bushes more like. But I need that grade right now and I'll do whatever I must to get it.

I want a different life for myself. I want to be far away. I want enough temporary obscurity so that when I come out, I can be who I was supposed to be. When I finally win over this, I want them all to think I never knew weakness at all. Or pain. That I was immune to it, better than them, always better. As if I don't see how they look at me now, searching desperately for a weak point, their beady black eyes looking at me from top to bottom with a strange inner voice.

I have a plan. Sort of what Kira had in the end of 'we the living'. Sure, she ended up shot dead before she made it but it's still worth having isn't it. Life is so long and tedious and the world is so ugly and the people in it worthless. What else does one do with all the time?

Mental note.

Note to self: the only kind of people about which you can make the extraordinary assumption of trustworthiness are the very evil, nonchalant type of people who care so genuinely little about the world and its values that they'd never think anything is worth hiding.You know they can be trusted because they'd give you a heads up before planning to potentially screw you over. In any case you'd see it coming.They have their uses you see, their unadulterated honesty always has uses. They have nothing to hide hence even their indiscretions are hilarious and you can always have a good laugh with them about it over some tea with a sprinkling of...

Personally I'd choose someone evil but honest over the long ass line of mr and missus goodie two shoes who would like nothing better than to stick you with a fork, out of the goodness of their hearts no doubt. People who show you they don't care but are almost always there if you cry out for help, well you know where that their souls are still flying around somewhere in the realm of humanity.

Don't ever trust people who let you down by their actions but are always there to comfort you with words they've memorized and don't really mean and perhaps they're just repeating themselves for no good reason. Human beings are extraordinarily simple, we've just been looking at them all wrong. Maybe we've all spent too much time looking for something that cannot exist in them. That they can never be. That all those guts and glory films could never quite drum into their heads. Looking for someone perhaps, that isn't there.

It's a long wait. But redemption is a promise, to most of us in any case. Know your cue and take it. There's a whole world out there and it's waiting.

The humanity syndrome.

Every now and then something has the misfortune of happening that gets you questioning everything you know or everything you thought about someone or about yourself. Sometimes you find that everything has so suddenly and irrevocably changed that you have to cling to some prayer beads and pray that the chasm in your head that's split open would stop sucking everything in. It is in times like these that you have no idea what to have faith in, any more. I went to stay with my nani, and I was so ridiculously happy there, she and I are so much the same. The minute I came back however, the same black cloud descended, claiming its rightful place by me. Since then it's all crap once more. How I hate it here, what a surprising thought, in my own damn house. Maybe I hate it all the more now because it all reminds me of what has happened this year and the last. Tanya, my best friend has been a rock for me, so I can just fall on her shoulder and cry about how my life went to the dogs. I knew she'd catch me even if I can't think right any more, even if my soul is giving away, even if I have nothing but ugliness to share. But she goes away soon too, off to college. I don't mind being alone,not really but occasionally one needs people even if just to admire your new heels or the fact that you can do your make up well enough to make someone faint on the street. In some ways I'm a little happier, a little relieved than I've been in a long time but the grief inside me never goes away. What lengths I've had to fall to, to make sure I was still human and hadn't turned into something else, all so soon, all before schedule. Can you make me care now? I'm not the same girl, I feel it. Why do all these special rules apply to me, anyone else can do terrible things without this hideous guilt and grief. Why the hell am I having to be more human than I've seen humans be?

To be one and done.

I've totally skipped out on my first Blogger birthday! I started on 17th May last year and am exactly where I was then, outlook-on-existence wise. Quite brilliant I think. :D  Some people try to tell me what to do, try to fit me into human moulds, try to tell me to feel better the way their species commonly would. But I am not of any species. No, If being carefree and happy means giving up the way I feel, becoming just like anyone else then I'm sure that would kill me faster than anything else. I'm meant to be something else, happy in my own way and I believe there's a reason I experience things very differently from others. I don't want the sort of happiness that makes me like anyone else or a part of anything. And it's no solitary road I'm on. Someone to whom I might be indebted for the rest of my life for getting me through a difficult time knew this. She knew exactly what to say because she knew that I already had all the answers. I wasn't really looking for anything I hadn't figured out already. I needed a very good look in the mirror.It's true what they say; you're your own worst enemy.

Morph-ville.

I've been gone a while I know. Sometimes I think that the blog helps me keep track of myself. When I'm entirely gone, maybe I'll look up my old posts and remember that even though I was in pain, I knew exactly who I was and who I was not. Now I'm not so sure. Need to start applying to unis, need to find my choice of subjects blah blah blah. I've been obliged (being a mild word) to stay in Islamabad. And you've guessed it. There's nothing here. And now I'm never going to get out, nothing is ever going to happen. I will fall into the same obscurity that finds its way into everything nowadays. And I don't believe there's a person in the world who cares about what would happen to me. My mum always taught me that I was so talented, so above everyone else that the world was waiting for me. She was wrong. I feel as if they both knew exactly how it was all going to turn out. And they kept it from me. Or maybe I didn't want to believe the truth then. After all this time, after everything that's been done to me, what a stupid time to find out I'd been betrayed. They've all won, you know. I have lost to them. Me, the girl I held in such high esteem, the same girl who I thought was so strong she couldn't be moulded or broken by anyone. For the first time I find myself wishing I was like them; these people around who I looked at with conceit and scorn. Maybe if I was like them, I wouldn't feel this way. Because I feel inhuman, fixed, cold, hollow. I can't bring myself to be angry. Can't make myself get up, because I don't see the point any more. After a certain illusion ends, I'm not sure how it all goes from there. Perhaps I should relish the feeling of sudden freedom but I feel more enslaved than ever. How do I go back to who I was, and why on earth would that be such a great idea anyway? Who I thought was the light at the end of the tunnel was the very anchor leading me into darkness forever. I let that win too. I let it happen and I'd blame me if it would fix anything. But what should I fix and how? I can't bring myself to retrace my footsteps and figure out where it all went wrong. I hate it here and it's only going to get worse. If I don't make some decisions now, someone else will make them for me.

Funeral Blues.

It's the hardest thing in the world to give up on a friend. Shockingly, it's always been so easy for me before, I was never conflicted and I never backed down from what needed to be done. Except this one person is the exception. The only exception to the rule to ever exist for me. I need to see that this person is dead, and only I'm able to remember what was there before all this worthlessness and normality. There was the long lost vulnerability I had looked for in every human being I had ever met. And now it's gone. There is nothing left to cry for. I don't recognize anything here. I'm able to push it down, every now and then when I'm around people, force myself to believe that I remember nothing, that I feel nothing. They're all happy as circus midgets and I'm stuck here in mourning, in some sort of funeral that never ends. I'm the only one wearing black because nobody else knew the truth about this human being anyway. I know what they see and it is enough for them and now it's all that left for me to see too. It shucks, man. I wish I didn't remember. I shouldn't have to remember. It isn't fair. Whoever I am and whatever darkness I have in me, I don't deserve this. I don't want to see. You can't make me see.

Fabrication through the centuries.

We've all grown up hearing crap like how if it's worth it, it will never be easy. I want to tell you that that's bullshit. Bullshit fabricated by idealists who spent their lives in pursuit of the very things responsible for their ruin. We all want it to be worth something in the end don't we? That here, at the end of all things it meant something. We're looking for meaning in those very things that took meaning from us, that took peace from us, that took purpose and moulded themselves to look like purpose. To be construed as purpose...by us. Take it from me, if it's worth it, it will be natural, pure, it won't hurt because it won't know pain. It'll help put you together rather than be the very frequency, inside which you can only be blown to bits, only be destroyed and nothing else. I've been taught weird things. Loyalty, how to stick by the side of people you care about even if they've hurt you and mutilated you. I fought it all my life, and here I am at the end, nothing but a filthy product of the same damn submissive thinking that I despise above all else. If it was worth it, it would have put my life right, it wouldn't have thrown me further off base. I wouldn't have been this...this girl whose feelings I'm ashamed of. She's beneath me and I can't live with it. It is all my own doing and I'm deprived of what it would take to fix it. And still, the guilt never goes away. I feel it keenly, much more than anyone possibly can. There are ways to go, but I'm stuck here, in a deep sleep and I can't wake up. I can never wake up. And if I don't, it's the end.

All the things the world ain't ending for.

I'm thinking at the moment about all the things I feel will haunt me forever. Maybe I can't be put back together again. I rejoice in the fact that soon school will be over and I can make a fresh start. Not be burdened with the weight of the past years. I've been terribly unhappy and nobody has been able to make it better. Maybe a new place with new people might actually suit me more than where I have spent my entire life. Soon this nightmare will be over, and I'll try to forget I ever existed there. That any of those people existed that disappoint me, that I look down upon. Maybe just maybe, it will finally be over. And I go on with my painful existence anew. Perhaps happiness is out of my reach but whatever I have gone through, it wasn't the end of the world. The scars can stay there, I don't care. At a certain point we all realize we are all we've got. Even if I am here, in the dark, in eternal solitude, I'll get over it. I'll get over the ache inside, I'll get over the fatigue, I'll get over the fact that I've been mangled beyond recognition. I'll forget about it all. I'm not a lot of things but there is one thing I'll always be. Resilient as hell. I'll survive it all, no matter how I do it, or how long it takes me to get me right, I'll fix it. I fixed me before when I had no one and I can do it again. No matter what I'll ever think or say, Bakhtawar Azam needs no one. She never has and she never will. Creatures like me do not dwell on the affection of anything, we do not need people to hold our hand through the impenetrable darkness. I needed it last year, I was broken last year, like a hole punched through a granite wall but I built it up again. This time nothing and no one will ever get through. This time I will protect myself. This time I will keep my promises.

Nightmarish bondage.

Will it end? I feel the fear strongly now. I barely have it at bay, as it sneers at me in the darkness. It knows that soon it will have its fair share of me and I can't stop it. I can't stop the nightmare. Always the same undertones in all of them and they always find me. How could I be condemned like this...doesn't seem real. Will it never end? It tears me apart from the inside, razor sharp cuts all the way through. Everything else that I have ever faced was external, I can fight the world, I can destroy what threatens me in the outside. My game. My arena. But not inside. I can't fight this, can't fight myself on it. Can't make myself yield, can't turn myself in. It's only me I can never destroy in the outside world. And I'm afraid. Just let this one nightmare be over, and let the next begin.

Game over.

You have to remember what you are. Can't you see the world wanted to play with you? It wanted the most valuable heart in the universe to be out in the open, there for inspection in front of squirmy common folk. The mind of centuries devoted to a mindless cause, a prisoner, when it is that same mind that created prisoners and knew nothing but freedom and nothing about weakness. It is a strange game the world plays, makes you so devoted in its rut that you can't see clear no more. Utter bondage. Pathetic. And it ends today.

Meow.

I'm going to be uploading that little music video I made, here soon. I don't think it's the most technologically brilliant work, but it has a lot of heart. I'm really happy I made it with my best friend Tanya even though I don't expect people to understand all the little metaphors in the video, in fact they'll just look at the apparent simplicity of it. But yeah I don't care. I think it's spirited and beautiful and it's my first try anyway, so it belongs to me.

Art thou a monster?

It is too much to ask. I thought it made me a monster to seek self-preservation. Maybe it did. But I had to save myself didn't I? Can't I make myself understand that I have to do it again? Whoever I ask gives me a long list of what is to be done, I agree with them...Oh how much I agree but they aren't here. They aren't in the dark like me where all the fuses have blown and where there is just me and what of me I have seen in others. Maybe it is myself I can't leave behind, can't move on from. I tried, I have to make myself realize, believe, that I tried, again and again and again. But it is too much to ask from me and I deserve better than to have to see a mockery of my ideals. Does it matter that what is happening and has happened wasn't engineered to ruin me? What matters is what happened to me because those things existed, what I suffered because of it and I can't kill myself off with guilt or say I'm to blame because everything played out in its natural order. It was fate.

I'm not trying to be proud and frankly I have nothing left inside me to be proud about. Inside me the lights are off, all happiness, all joy has the effect that a needle piercing dead skin would have. Sure, what I deal with is a certain level of innocence, but do I not have the right to seek freedom from it? I mean whatever I do it's just me that's getting hurt. I mean people will get over it but I may not if I don't leave now. Is it not right to want to be free, to save myself if that is all it's really about, when my inducement is not the unhappiness of someone else that may result from this?

No one can give me the answer, no one can help me, I see that now. It's like being stuck in a bush of thorns, no matter which way I move they cut me and it bleeds and I can never get out. It ain't their fault, they are carrying out their purpose like they were meant to, without malice or understanding, you can't hate someone like that. It isn't hate or anger that I feel. I'm just different you know, I can't flip a switch, I can't change, I can't make any of this better and you have to know I did everything I could. I did my job. And if there was any other way, I would have taken it in a jiffy, no matter what it would have meant for me.

I'm out of options, I don't want to be this way but I see now that there are just some things I am, that are the best and the worst of me. I shouldn't have to change. There is a better half that I shouldn't have to lose. The only real thing I have is that core, it is me in all my entirety and it ain't all ugly, it ain't all bad. If I talk to anyone I trust about any of this I know what they will say and it will be the right thing to say but can't you see I don't function that way, that I cannot make that apply to me, that I can't take that advice and just walk on smiling. I am my own vault. Bound by my own chains. Tears are running down my cheeks and I am choking on it, choking on my pride. I blame no one, I condemn no one but that doesn't change what I have to do. I wish there was another way, I wish I wasn't condemned like this. I'm not running this time you know, it isn't running. I stayed as long as I could and faced the music, I did what was expected of me to do and I did it well. A spotless record in my conscience. I had myself convinced that I wasn't the painful irony of self-deprecation and the diseased shell of the girl I was meant to be.

I can't forgive myself but at least I'll be alive. Well as close to it as I can be. The pride and arrogance is an act you know, I am nothing but a bundle of naivety and stupidity inside if you were interested to know how I ended up in this hell hole to begin with. Well I'm all talked out. How droll.

Goodbye.

Today I had to practice crying in utter agony for the music video I plan to make. I tried and tried, dug up every painful detail I could muster but I couldn't even feel remorse, I couldn't do it. I don't know what's happening to me. Yesterday I slept for 12 hours, it's the tiredness inside I can't get rid of. I'm disappointed by people all the time, like they've been ruined for me and I hate myself for it. Change is near and maybe it is time to move on.

You bore me.

I'm having those moments again, when I think I'm surrounded by frickin idiots. You can't even condemn them for their stupidity because sometime somewhere you have loved them for just what they were. It is of course like all else, something I should never have done. To have been sentenced to mindless misery by lesser beings...hah. There's got to be something cosmically wrong with that kind of bullshit. I entered the new year with nothing. Whatever I had left I lost last year as the blowing away of houses in a hideous storm. I rejoice in my heartless indifference, that I try to maintain with meticulous scrutiny of myself. Nowadays I'm trying to make a music video for a school competition. Leave it to me to consider everyone else participating to be low-end crap compared to my genius, the only problem being some technical difficulties since I've never even bothered to use a video camera before. Then there's my literature explorative study and possibly some freelance writing project soon. Busy wisy. Possibly good for me, I'm not at my best when I'm given too much time to think. You know how an ordinary empty brain would be a 'devil's workshop', well consider mine to be a huge ass multinational owning abut a billion workshops. I need to be in a state of mind-numbing stress and hyper ventilation as often as possible to keep my head intact. There goes my dream of a long, peaceful life in which I'm only disturbed for award shows. Personally I don't think I'd last long that way. But then again I'm not supposed to last anyway. Fun thought.

Overshadowed by shadow.

'There is an unspeakable evil in the world, you know it, and it's no use dwelling on the details of it. You must work a little harder. Just a little harder. Don't let it win.' - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. 

There are things people would have been, there are things people would have said, would have done

had they existed as me in my existence. But no, not me. Nothing plays it's part here, no influence, nothing. I am dead, as dead as death which hangs as a shadow over others but which nothing can affect. 

My mind is heavy with a mindless burden and I keep no pretences of salvation anymore. You wanted me finished, you have it. But you won nothing, nobody wins with me. I call the shots, it's me. Always just me. 

The mirrored confusion.

At the risk of sounding like a complete narcissist I've become far too interested in my own appearance. Straightened hair everyday, eye makeup, and such. I was thinking yesterday about how that is all it ever really took to get people's glances at me. First I sort of liked it but then something struck me and dread filled up inside. Screw my mind and any talent, forget what I say, forget what ideas I have about the world, forget any accidental uniqueness but yeah 'hot' will suffice in their stead. I'm afraid I've begun living for the world, adopting their miserable ways of life, inside I burn because I was never meant for 'normal' 'customary' and 'this is how it's supposed to be.' I'm afraid I'm speeding down a road leading to conformity and looking in the mirror in the morning ain't feeling too bad. Gone are the times when I thought my brilliance was enough to excuse my hay-like hair, my fading complexion, my clear, clean eyes with nothing on them. Just more proof I've camouflaged into a world not built for people like me. I might look like a pretty orange peel on the outside but inside it's all rotty. I've been robbed of whatever the hell was used in place of a heart. Like the tiny, glowing sparks after a fire, remorse resides in the emptiness. It is calculated and understood and I've become far too good at hiding it, even from myself. The remains of my makeshift heart view the misery as something the old Bakhtawar knew jack about, the new one puts on a new pair of peep-toe heels and that pretty much takes care of it. I find myself wishing 2011 had never happened, but it did. And it ended too. Dark times lie ahead and sun-reflective cheek highlighter might just come in handy. Everything has an end, and there ain't no harm looking awesome when that happens.

The concept of time in soul years.

Sometimes we want something so badly we can't see it's not meant for us. That's one of the unconscious themes of my entire blog. That life is in constant motion, that there's no telling what great miracle or tragedy is just around the corner sneaky like a Clark Gable smile. That what you feel this one moment is inevitably lost when something more suiting walks by. All you have to do is turn and the entire dynamics have already changed, already been compromised, already been lost. Everything has a ready expiry date, which might not be death if you were thinking of getting comfortable. How true is the kansas song 'dust in the wind', we spend our whole lives clinging to all the wrong things, when you don't have to hold on, when you don't have to give life itself so much power over you. Maybe I say these things to make myself feel better, to remind myself of what I should feel rather than what I do. Maybe the other theme is the idea of eternity and that I will never change and that change is a relative concept. Why love others when you can live like an indifferent, loathing shrew? But hate stems from self-loathing and you can't spend something as transitory as existing with hate and indifference in your heart. My mother always says the only thing worse than intentional cruelty is indifference. And I can't become a shrew to protect myself, I'll just have to take my chances. We all need to be vulnerable every once in a while or else we'll miss out on people that we weren't looking for, except that we needed them more than we realized.