Sometimes there is a song that shoots you right back to an exact time, and place. It brings back the memory of a feeling and sometimes you realize you haven’t felt those feelings in so long and we yearn to capture those feeling again. Yet, feelings are temporary and they come and go, ebb and flow, like the ocean water. Like life, feelings are temporary and rapidly changing.

Right now, I am thinking about grief. There was a time when my identity was grief and I held high with my chess puffed out. I was the young girl who came from a strict Afghani family and then it changed to a young girl who lost her brother at twenty years old. The emotional turmoil of my youth was not made up but very real.

Lately, the memories have been coming towards the shores of my brain. I have settled the score with a lot of my grief from back then. I have settled the score so much so that it is hard for me to remember those feelings again and believe it or not, I am trying to take myself back to those memories.

Why?

Because I am writing a book. A book so personal, so real, so authentic and in order to achieve it, I must remember the grief and how it all came forth because it was real.

I read “Into the Blue” this Summer, and as mentioned before the book really captured the human emotional so well. The main character spent years in her grief and it reminded me of my own grief and I thanked God that I worked so hard to settle score because I was tired of feeling sad. I wonder if the main character would ever feel better and if she would just get tired of choosing to sit in her sadness and instead try something different for her own survival, like me.

So what’s the problem? I haven’t been able to get myself back to those emotions. The memories are there but the emotions aren’t attached to it.

I wonder if this is because I have healed so much that I don’t posses them anymore? But, I don’t think so. I think I have found a box in my brain and I have stored it away so deep within myself. For some reason I am pictures the episode of SpongeBob where he forgot his name.

I’ve been self reflection a lot lately on my own emotions. Things bother me all the time. My parents annoy me. My friends trigger me. My coworkers upset me. However, everything is contained. I don’t allow it to take over and become my obsession and I have worked on this because there was a time where it would be all I think about.

To dive even deeper into this, I have suppressed a lot of my emotions in order to keep my peace. But have I lost the power of feeling deeply? Am I not capable anymore because I have healed so deeply?

Is it wrong that nothing surprises me anymore either? Is it wrong that I have come to own the term “Humans suck and that’s just the way it is.” Is it wrong that I bury myself in my work, my books, my writing and I have a small community around me that at time I keep at arms length? At times, I feel like I don’t have the energy to fight anymore or the capacity. I want to focus on things I can control and humans are well, selfish so maybe I am too? Humans, myself included since I am a human, are exhausting. Why has God made us this exhausting?

Or devils advocate here, am I just a cynical bitch, who has been hurt way to much in her life and has given up in humanity and spends her days guard and refuses to feel any of her true emotions for the sake of “keeping her peace,” but the truth is I am just a coward afraid of the hurt that this world offers.

My best friends have been working on making more friends. They have both done a lovely job building new friendships in areas of their interest. One of them has joined run clubs while the other has created friendships in her faith while another one has built a community around a card game. I am happy for them because I know they have worked so hard to create these friends and put themselves out there. For myself, I can’t fathom the thought of creating new friendships at all. I don’t seek it and I don’t have the energy. I have made two new close friends the last few years but the friendships happened out of nowhere and we are taking it slow, baby steps.

So…here I am rambling as usual. What concluding have I come to after all of this? I am not sure but it has been lovely to write and to self reflect. Let’s see if I can tap into that old grief in the next coming months.

Cheers,

Frshta