Filthville

You know when I first entered uni, for a while I thought I'd found people like myself. It was what I wanted to believe. I had hated my past and here was salvation at last apparently. I regret to inform you that I am every bit the fool I ever was. I didn't learn a thing from what happened to me before. I successfully set out to make the same stupid mistakes all over again. Maybe for a while I was forgetting who I was. For a while maybe I wanted to try forgetting because it is so difficult being me and making the kind of choices I have to make. It is only recently that I figured out that it is not the same for everyone else. Everyone does not feel pain the way I do, they don't practice devotion and loyalty like I do, they just...are not me. I feel everything much more deeply, excruciatingly. Been watching 'Hannibal' and actually wondering whether I may have an empathy disorder. Could be possible. Anything is possible I suppose. I hate being at home, I have Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays off you see. But then I'm not actually happy at uni either. The thing I seemed to be waiting for is now gone and maybe I'm to blame. The guilt is always mine. No matter what I do or don't do, the guilt is mine.
I decided something today. I decided who I'm supposed to be. It's the easiest thing in the world to give in, certainly I see everyone doing it. But I am not 'everyone' am I? I was never supposed to be. I am better because I can do the things they can't, I can make the decisions they aren't good enough to make, I can take the right path even though it is the most difficult thing I have ever imagined. I can't live in a world where I've bowed down to their filth, somehow crawled in right beside them where they lie. Probably like cockroaches. I'm not inhuman, I'm loving and loyal and kind but the people I know don't deserve it. They will try to live off of it if they can and they are slowly outrunning their purpose and soon I may have no use for them. And we all know what I do with people I no longer have use for. I've accepted that everyone I have ever loved has already betrayed me and the ones that are still lingering about will continue to do so in worse ways than before. I have accepted that I will be betrayed all over again but this time around I can decide whether it affects me or not. This time around I can remember what Bakhtawar Azam was supposed to be, what I made her to be, and I can just silently walk away. I can't help them, I can't do anything and standing by them till they finally stab me in the back as hard as they possibly can is no longer what I do. I no longer keep faith in people. I no longer stand by them, hoping they'll be human again. I no longer do all the bloody chores, hoping they'll see who I am someday and they'll care.
You know that stupid ass line, let someone go if you love em and if they come back it was meant to be or some shit like that? If you love someone you stand by them even if it ruins you. Because that is what love is. It's hell on Earth. If it's so easy for someone to just cut their losses and move on, then their love was never worth anything to begin with. Then it just wasn't good enough. Slowly but surely I'm realizing not much about me is normal, that I'm structured differently. But there's nothing to be done and I'll just have to leave it at that. Survival is all I can do right now.

The Old Place Ain't Home No More.

Old images used to haunt me but not really, not anymore. All the horrors mean nothing anymore and I no longer have the same dreams. I'm altered almost completely and without doubt and yet not at all. I can't see the dimness of the road ahead, but it doesn't matter to me. The old sadness clings, like a dying friend but now perhaps we have become each other. Parasitic in our inseparability. I remember the old place, the oranges and the grass and the little tunnels with dead leaves. I remember that as the last time I ever felt peace. I also remember I can never make that place exist again, that it's been sullied. That it's gone. But so what? I find myself saying. Whatever mattered doesn't matter anymore. Whatever I loved is and has always been a lie, whatever I dreamed of is no more than a nightmare that knows all the stupid little workings of my mind, whatever I am is unfit to survive for long. Time will keep me together but only for a while. And that while I suppose makes all the difference in the world.

The Turn Of The Crossroads.

I am so happy that I'm afraid any moment I might pass out from it. There is a day when all men fall and falter, there is a day like that coming for me too but it is not today. Today I am standing tall and God has enabled me to do so. He has taken me from evil, from all the weaknesses that so commonly exist in human beings and he has delivered me to safety. I know I sound all preachy but now I don't care about people anymore, I am what I was supposed to be. I have passed my test. One of the toughest ones that ever face anyone. At the end of all of it I am pure. And there's no blood on my hands anymore and no guilt; imaginary or otherwise. Everything I have faced, all the troubles I have seen, the graves I have been in don't matter anymore. I survived them and no matter what tomorrow has in store for me, I will survive that too because I know that I am not weak. I know that I have character and integrity that cannot be bought, that cannot be tarnished, that no one anywhere can have even if they sell their very souls for it. Now I know that good exists as I have now come across people I cannot believe are alive. You can imagine how I must rub my eyes at such a sight. I had never seen anything but filth and selfishness and evil and now there is so much good around me. It teaches me that no matter what happens or what we see on t.v or read about in the papers, there will always be more good than evil. Good is just more easily concealed. I also know now that one must never lose hope because there is a point between when you're crushed to the ground completely broken with nowhere to go that you feel that last urge inside you rise. That last little voice that says there is still a battle to be fought if you are ready to fight and that even if it is a losing battle, it is better than dying here with the knowledge that you did nothing. We cannot keep looking back, at every point we can only hope to do the right thing, to make the choice that satisfies our conscience and our principles. Promises are cheap, humans are weak, and we never know anything till it is our time to know but remember this : getting all that you ever wanted means nothing if you didn't get it the right way. Money is nothing, power is nothing, fame is pointless, the only thing that matters is who you are and whether or not you'd betray yourself for a distant ship over the ocean that promises safe haven and glories. I think I still remember all too well this Chinese story I read as a kid in which one sister chooses to work and toil hoping that water will come out of the ground in the island that she lives in and life shall flourish again and one sister that sells herself off. You can imagine how that works out. One become a phoenix in the end and the second sister dies in the ocean condemned to scream her own bloody murder for all eternity. I don't know what the future brings but it is not my business to know, my business is only to do what's right and to trust in God completely and to work hard and try to do all the things I used to dream about as a kid. There is time yet for redemption and it is all mine at last.

The Prisoner Of Self.

For some time I had myself thinking that I'd repaid my debt. That my pain would finally be over and that I could spend the remainder of my miserable existence in some vague semblance of peace. But it was not to be. Some things one thinks are only ever found in the movies, the sort of human characteristics that arise in certain melodramatic scenes that are supposed to show you something profound or some shit like that. I thought I knew darkness, the way Bane mentioned it (as much as I hate to make a Batman reference) but I had yet to see part of the bottom of it. Because what I now feel is a petrifying darkness, a darkness that numbs all of one's senses and reduces them to nothing. I cry out for help but I feel no peace inside. I thought I'd be stronger by now, after everything that had happened, but I'm broken like a little girl who somebody slapped before taking her favorite doll away. I feel like a child. A child that sees everything but is powerless to stop the progression of it. Except what I'm seeing is myself and my life. God help me. I need strength to carry on and I don't know how to get back up. But I'm going to try because there is something inside me that never stops saying 'you are more than this' that never stops saying 'tell me it's going to take more than this to finish you'. It says 'tell me I didn't fight this long only for you to fail me now'. But where do I turn to in my moment of panic and fear?

A promising new year.

Things have been going rather wonderfully for me since the beginning of the year. I hung out with my best friend who studies abroad and who I missed horribly, I had a great birthday, I got into college, got an A in the subject I had painstakingly studied for last year, got a new laptop as a present for recent endeavors (as my parents would put it) and basically saw all my more recent fears go off into a very big puff of smoke. As I wasn't tortured I had plenty of time to wonder why I wasn't really happy. If only it was as simple and stupid as me being the most horrible ungrateful wench in existence. Except I'm not. It is only a few days ago that I realized how detached I had become from myself, that because of unsaid things I had lost a fuse somewhere that I imagine connects one to the land of bliss and stuff.

I have one of the main characters of my book all figured out and yet I feel he must not be put into words, somehow I feel that with him out there on pages for everyone to read, I might feel compromised...like someone has died. But as life would have it, I have already been compromised in my head. With such enthusiam I had gone forth to begin a new life only to realize that the past still held me in its grasp, that it still had a claim. That no matter how hard I work or what I become, I cannot change anything. That it does not in fact change anything. Like I told someone a couple of months ago; all I can see or understand is the dark. And it's only the dark stretching before me now and it cannot end. Not ever.

On an unrelated note I fear my dog of seven years may be dying. He just has that look in his eyes, it scares me a little that I can recognize it. I told Romero to not ever die and he rubbed his furry little head against my hand as I started crying. Such beautiful creatures dogs are, not like people at all. I've been told forgiving lessens the pain, that it makes you feel better but how can one even do it? Write off things like they didn't happen, like they weren't important, like you're so healed and shit. It's not real. Forgiveness, love, peace. It's because I feel their absense that the rest of the world become more and more transient day by day. A glorious road paved with misery, leading to a new hell.

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?