So you wake up everyday, drag yourself out of bed and try to draw a smile on your face as you start another day in this life you can’t wait to leave.
Not a bad life at all but rather a very privileged one. A life of opportunities, good looks, health, career, some fame, friends, ample money, children and a great deal of not so long relationships.
A life where you beat the odds, the challenges, the tough times, the loneliness, the anxiety and the depression.
A life you managed to build and own from scratch with a few people giving a hand here and there. You have the faith, the believe, the trust and can read the signs.
A life os achievements and inspiring effects as they call it. A life many dream of and look up to. Even I, years ago dreamt and worked hard for this life. My life as I know it today.
Have I really had it all or have I had none?!
Approaching my 40ies as a single mom in Egypt, pulling my hair out in one job after the next trying to make a living and surviving one attempt of relationship after the next trying to build a family the questions nag me:
– where am I in all this?
– what’s in it for me?
– who is here for me consistently because they chose to?
– what have I done so big and so great that I will always be remembered?
– why do they see me phenomenal and I see me less than average?
– how come they are already fighting my success when all I see are approaches to do something?
– why did I not leave this place and explore the world?
– why have I not learnt that one thing I had passion for as a child?
– why did I not survive a marriage and raise 6 children?
– where is the big house with white curtains filled with baby giggles?
– where is the art I created?
– what people have I helped make better lives?
– where are my years?
– how come I am mourning the days and hours wasted?
– why am I so keen and eager to live a whole new full life like I have never lived before?
– have I lived to fulfil others visions and worked hard to never let them down and proving to be so able and reliable to only realise I was actually letting myself down every step of the way?????
-how could I do this to myself? Why do others matter more? Why do I not come first? Why did I not save myself?
I wake up crying… not wanting to move, do, hear to say… I don’t even want to be hugged!
They ask me what’s your problem? What’s wrong?
D E P R E S S E D I answer them. S U I C I D A L, T I R E D and H O P E L E S S
And they find it hard to believe… They deny my feeling and genuine vulnerability so they don’t become burdened to deal with it.
It is often the response of a male ‘Don’t say this. You are strong.’ As if while my strength bugs this person, they have grown so countable on it and the comfort is brings them to not have to play a role or fulfil a need. They would rather watch me burn as I juggle to fill in the gaps and tear myself apart and stretch too thin attempting to fulfil his prophecy of my ‘strong’. Be competitive, competent and strong. Focus on only what they want me to do and how they want me to live.
They urge me to deny my vulnerability because from it I regain my grace and power.
Every time I let myself be and crashed…I came back fuller and completed. I become less strong and with that my alluring strength transpires
HOW COME?!!! OFF COURSE YOU ARE NOT DEPRESSED. YOU JUST POSTED AMAZING PICTURES ON SOCAIL MEDIA WHILE YOU ARE OUT AND TRAVELLING WITH FRIENDS IN POPULAR PLACES!!
YOU ARE STRONG. Snap out of it. Shower and Pray. Go Out and Dance.
And I SCREAM .. NOOO I am not strong. E N O U G H.
Do not deprive me of my birth given right to feel what I want to to and say what I need to say and be the hell whatever and whoever I chose to be even if it means I am a weak broken depressed 38years old Egyptian Moslem lonely single woman with no interest in life as she knows it.
If being strong will grant me all this load and bare me such life then I QUIT!
It is quite paradoxical being a ‘woman’. At first they don’t want you. Then they use you well. They build businesses around you and make sure you never have the muscles to pull off your own. They twist and turn to get you to buy infamously expensive things you don’t need and make sure you remain worker double as much to barely make as much as they do, so you end up digging a guy to pay on your behalf. It scares them that you want nothing, ask for no help, hardly impressed, self sufficient and pay for your own luxuries. You twist and you are non-twistable!
They keep you at home to bare children or blame you for not being able to have any. You are the seed of all the sins of humanity as we know it embodies in boobs and bottoms that are never big or tight enough for their taste and certainly forever brainless. You are fertile, sexy, young, old, cougar, PMSing, PPDing, menopausing, demanding, barren, dramatic, sensitive, independent, stubborn, wild, tough, soft, fake, virgin, slut, mother, divorced, fat, thin, airhead, geek, crazy,… OR STRONG!! So for God sake just save us the efforts and be STRONG; so we can lay it and name it all on you without having to even blink a thought. They yearn, therefore, may be as a woman I one day feel ‘accomplished’ and we are spared!
ACCOMPLISHED??! ME??!!! WOMAN??!!! The source of all? The reason of reason? The womb? The heart? The GIVER! I need to work harder to prove competent of a MAN?! A man I give birth to? A man I feed in my embracing womb? A man I comfort and feed? A man I nurture and put before me? A man I support and hold in my mind and heart? A man I teach him about manhood?
Dear Man, Tempting… 🙂 but no thank you. I don’t want it this life nor the strength that come with it. I have had my share and paid my dues. And I start begging GOD to pretty please let it END HERE and NOW.
I do not have the strength, the sense, the vision, the breath, the eyes, the heart or the mind for this. This illusion of a life. Torn between people who shall forget about me as soon as someone else fulfils my duties towards them. This Cold War zone I locked myself in trying to rise as a strong woman who is able to deliver with nobodies help. Because I lost count of how many times I was let down.
I live the days supporting myself and others until none of this is my reality. Until these days come to an end. The days where making fun of others if entertainment. The days where fighting your brother over a girl is righteous. The days where pressuring others for your enjoyment is success. The days where men kill women and slaughter their offspring. The days where infidelity is bragged about and bare skin is fashionable. The day where you are either loaded with money or know someone who is. The days where your worth is evaluated by worthless measurers. The days where you are as good as your ass kissing. The days where things and people are only getting worse as they look better!! The days that consume me and do not define me. The days that are empty of empathy, love, trust, care or intuition. The days I long for a helping hand or backing voice. A warm wordless safe embrace.A flow of compassionate energy. A place where you will not be mocked for your hypersensitivity and acts of kindness. A place where there is room to breaths. A place where you hustle and don’t aimlessly run. A place danger is known and peace is an option. A place on earth were humanity is still possible.
I am DEPRESSED AND SUICIDAL because I have achieved my dreams and come to the peak of my life to learn that with all it good sides and rewards it is not really for me. A life others pictured, spoke of and nested. A vision I obviously borrowed from pieces traded to me by family, friends and film makers; who think I should not learn to picture for myself as I see fit. I am after all a ‘girl’ ‘woman’ … unfit to fit or acknowledge what is fit. Dragged in this never-ending loop of theory and proof… I grow less and less interested in what those pictures and visions have to offer. This unfit so called ‘life’.
I, WOMAN, herewith chose to no longer be: – the woman of a man’s dream- the subject of someone’s dispute – the daughter of my mother- the good girl in the family- the fair boss- the supportive friend- the inspiring power figure- the understanding being- the motivating colleague- the sexy mama- the old soul – the young spirit- the unique mind- the selfish human- the forever flowing energy of a giving in vain soul – a spirit in a human form seeking humanity in an inhuman persistent dimension so limiting with its labelling, framing and belittling I will no longer be held accountable for what I do not chose. And I shall not chose what I do not with all my might desire. I will not be urged to be, act, show, behave or reflect what I am not!
I herewith, body, mind and soul give in to my spirit to cary me far far away to the source and the place I belong. I let be my true self each and everything it forever talked me into and I didn’t listen. May my true self shine, aspire and become what it is and all it may be without me standing in its way thinking wise or protective. There is no wiser than the intuition of an awakened mind. There is no able force bigger than a connected soul. There is no light brighter than a spirit in the now.
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