God has it really been a year since I last wrote?

time flies when you're ...... well, not exactly having fun.

2 minute synopsis of the last year - bought a house in July, yay. a week later found bottles in the house, so not yay. stayed at our apartment for a week since we still had the lease. Sept went to VA for S's bro's baat pakki. October did a roadtrip to Denver with S's family. Nov S's dad moved in with us. October we also went to Turkey to meet my family half-way, had a week long family vacay. December we did a family vacay with Ss family to Orlando.

Throughout all of this was ofcourse the ongoing addiction, drinking every two days, fights, etc etc. 

By Jan, S had made another trip to a strip club. I will remind my non-existent audience this was his fourth trip, and I had warned him if he did so again I would leave. So I got his dad involved. and I did leave, to San Fran to bum at a friend's couch. Yay me. only took almost a decade to stand up for myself.

3 weeks later, S had checked into a rehab. round 2. he refused to see me before he left, so I flew in the next day. and then Dallas decided to fuck me over yet again, because my life wasnt enough, by having a snowstorm. in Dallas. 

and not the pretty kind with snowflakes but the kind that shuts down the roads the heat the hot water and electricity while you are stranded at home without your husband and have only his 70 year old father for support. a week later, I decided the US of A was done royally ruining my life, so I fled to Pakistan.

I stayed in Pakistan for almost 6 weeks, end of feb to mid-april. the longest stretch I have ever had with my parents in a decade. it was....eventful. reminded me of all my past traumas and why I had wanted to marry early in the first place. but also reminded me of ME. a human with her own dreams and wants and an army of love behind her should i chose to need it. during this time Ss sister came down for a week as well, for shopping. that whole story is to come later.

S left rehab after about 50 days or so.....only to go on a  solo trip and end up at a casino for 4 days or so. he also did one of his infamous, wont pick up the phone and lie to me after that he was sleeping gigs, except his brother went to his hotel room and found it empty, so that was busted. 

just writing this makes me realize what a hellhole my life has been.

anyways, despite everyones best advice i flew back to Dallas to figure out where my life stood with S and what I wanted to do. we tried a fresh start. I had my birthday 4 days after I came. 5th day, I tested positive for covid. 

then began the 15 day quarantine in my room, entirely reliant on the one person who I did not want to reliant on, medications, steroids, fever, body aches, asthma attacks etc etc. by the time I was out Ramadan was over, Eid happened (he drank the night before Eid, but that's also tradition is it not?) cursed me out as we got ready for Eid prayer, and played a saint the rest of the day.

but then what else is new?

it was then a month to Ss brother's wedding. I was told we would be hosting about 4 people at our house, and also having a dawat of about 30 ppl. the house was empty. between the turmoil of the past year we had gotten no furniture, and nothing was delivering before 3 months. I went nuts, trying to order furniture online, get second hand lamps, paintings plants etc, some semblance of normalcy into our life. we flew to VA for the wedding, and then I hosted Ss family friends while also doing a dawat for 30 ppl where I made majority of the food. Ss sister got upset with me because my dawat was better than hers and i got more compliments (no shit, this is real) and hasnt spoken to me since. this was 2 weeks ago.

during these two weeks I have found 4 cans of beer and 4 bottles of vodka with S insisting he will stop drinking. he also ended up at the same casino and didnt come home one night, withdrawing a 1000$ he maintains he didnt use for anything other than to buy cigarettes. he came home and promised he was done, and we both agreed we needed something good to look forward to. something positive.

so i agreed to start fertility treatments. got my ultrasound done, and the day i was supposed to get on clomid to start the iui process, found S had been drinking again. i showed the bottle to his dad, who yelled at him, and in turn S yelled at me and called me a C*^^*^^% in front of his dad, and told me to leave.

i was in a hotel the past two days and only just got home. for what, i dont know. to talk divorce? to talk....what? apologies? does anything even matter anymore? how do i restart my life now? is it even worth it?

my brain is numb with all these questions. the only thing that i am allowing myself to feel other than the enveloping numbness is regret. why the hell did i marry him in the first place? what the fuck was i thinking?

July 7 marks 9 years to our marriage. 9 years of utter chaos. an alcohol addiction to destroyed me probably more than it destroyed him. stuck in limbo.

i have never felt more alone or isolated. i am stuck in the guest bedroom of our house as i have been many many many times before. too many times to count. i have spent half of my last 2 years fleeing from him and the other trying desperately to believe i too can have the normal married-with-two-kids life i so crave. i guess some things are not meant to be, and i dont know how many more shocks to my system i need to have in order to finally believe that i wont get what i have been fighting for. a chance at a 'normal' life where my biggest concern is how to potty train my kid, not which casino or strip club my husband is lying drunk at.

how did my life get so fucked up anyway? i wish i knew.

i guess i know nothing of what i thought i did.

i dont need you.

i dont need you

i dont.

god.

the tumbling

i guess i should write.

my mom prays one day i will get the courage to write like i used to. i guess she means with flair and raw biting honesty.
i guess that will mean i need to remove these balls lodged inside my chest. the nearest one is just behind my lip, inside a bleeding gum. its connected to another, another, another...all the way down my spine into my intestines and up into the narrow veins in my brain.
i cannot think. i cannot feel. i can't seem to dislodge it because so much of my sanity sits poised on this carefully balanced structure and without it i feel i might shatter.

__________

the therapist calls it emdr. i feel like it is inception.
i remember specific memories and hold them in my hands until they burn and i am a slobbering mess. in my closet hiding lest he hears, while my therapist watches me on a tiny 3 inch screen unravel and dissolve and tells me he's here, he's here, focus, breathe.
i focus, i swing until my exhausted eyes numb the scalding hot memory. i break.
and repeat. and repeat. the pyramid of newspaper glass and thorny scrunched balls boxes i haven't opened in many years starts to come tumbling down.
the noise is deafening inside me, i lay crumpled on my sofa unable to move.

____________

later the next day A messages me out of the blue. i guess it must be so.
in another life i would've said he might've felt the tumbling across the country. in another life i was naive.
the tumbling has allowed enough of my voice to come through. i protest. i demand. i blubber out my anger. my hurt. i hold onto my fledgling ego and self-respect and scream in gently typed texts my confusion and pain.
'how can i make it better?'
promises to not abandon, a try and keeping the sanity, revelations of some sweetness that cause more pain than balm.
'i waited outside your door'

i still feel.....used. discarded. not good enough. never good enough. lacking. disappointing. small.
so utterly utterly small.

_______________

the tumbling has dislodged people i forgot to take to court.
i digress, i didnt forget. i just didnt feel i had the right to.
i picture them one by one and rise in inches remembering i too have right to ask.
'why did you hurt me?'
' why did you leave me?'

why have i done this to myself?

i don't know. shif called me dil phek.
i was. i am.
i don't know what i was looking for.
a channel for my intensity i couldn't handle?
tenderness i need to balm my old grown-too-fast heart?

why did i always seek men?
why is it that no matter what kind of love i provided, friendship, emotional, physical, sexual, mental, whatever it was....just never good enough.
what is it about me that caused them all to disappear?
either i chose the weakest of men, or the strongest of men chose the weakness in me.

_________________

im heartbroken.
i feel S is one of them and yet i don't want to add his name to the list.
i dont know why.
i think it is less that i want to give up on him and more i can't admit i have yet again loved the wrong one the wrong way and lost again.
i dont want another failure, the one i have given the most too.
and so i persist on loving him when he is the most unlovable. i persist on loving him when my heart is splitting apart with the angst he causes me.
i resolutely stop listening when parents tell me to leave, when my friends call it abuse, when i am cowering in the car because his drunk self is hammering on the glass snarling at me.
i try and remember the fledgling tenderness.
i use it to the glue all the newspaper and the tissue and the plastic and the thorn scrunched up bits and pieces of me and stuff it back down my throat least i fall apart again.

where would i go?
yes the freedom and the lightness of spirit, yes the reyhaai....but where?
a lifetime of abandonment and loss?
seeking and being used again and again and again?
i am so vulnerable right now any misleading intention masked in 2 honeyed words would be enough to let me melt and be abused... so where would i run?

no place is safe anymore. my room. the car. my mind. the closet. the world. other men.
what if i find myself trapped behind another white door in another city with another man on the other side?

kaisi reyhaai jab yeh andar sarah hi itna zehar se bhara hai?


_______________

what i wanted then and all i want even now.

a love that will not destroy me.
a love that will consume me and give me back more than what i give to it.
a relief wider than ocean and a tenderness like a crumpled petal
a sunshine mind that sings alongside my voice
a blue eternal sky and a togetherness that life and its gham cannot break apart
an ' i know you' that traverses down our shins with roots depp into the earth
a heart that understands when i am voiceless

i live in the unreal and i cannot cannot
pull anyone in here with me
i can't get out
i can't find anyone here

it is like inception. i am in a creation of my own mind with no relief.
i am alone and all i see and feel is fear
and the tumbling

_______________________

so much has happened.

s ended in the hospital with a black and blue eye, goose egg.
midnight calls to tell me he may not be alive. he may never walk again. he...
doesnt remember anything.
(he's ok now, i'm not)
10 days later, frantic flights halfway across the world because ammi in the hospital
N got a divorce.
the shattered sighs of my brother cutting across my heart as I pull myself together, watching him sign divorce papers for the love of his life
rushing back to a relapsing husband
chaos
world pandemic. american civil war.
return of A.
we bought a house for stability
its better. nothings better. everything is.
i dont know.

i am not myself. i dont know who i am anymore
i thought id always find myself in the madness but now, living for him and him and her and him and him and her and him and her , i
don't know where in the equation i even have space for myself
probably nowhere

i started therapy. meaningless mumble in circles
xanax hlps my heart from breaking out of my chest
the unfortunate side-effect of which is that my heart
seeks to break out of my chest even more
baaghi

i hide in the complete destruction of my eyelids
drooping heavy with sighs that are uttered from other throats
curled on a bed of embers
shreds and pieces
flesh stained sheets of flesh
im wrapped unwrapped neither here nor
there, but everywhere
i see myself, but dont
see myself at all

i am trying to find within myself spaces to breathe
little holes of comfort where it's just my mind and things that bring me peace
old songs. tv shows. good memories. happy thoughts.
spaces i am not beating myself for being a disappointment as a daughter
a failure as a wife, an overbearing overshadowing sister
an inconsistent friend, a morally void human and above all
a spiritually bankrupt Muslim
i find lately i cannot hold up a mirror to what others think of me
and what i think of me and find a parallel in those dichotomies. there is none.
i am two different people and i hate, hate, hate
the person i am, for the mistakes i have made, the lack of things i have accomplished.

what's new?


i moved to a different city. 2 days short of our first month here.
S and his brother got into a fist fight brawl yesterday. there was blood. cops came over.
we convinced them it was brotherly 'rumbunctious' love that got a tad out of hand.
no one pressed charges. no one was arrested. not sure if anyone was shaken up enough to realize that this can't happen anymore.


i write as i am feeling. completely utterly numb.
my mind has turned to mush. nothing makes sense. nothing feels good. all my days are stitched together into one long episode where everything keeps repeating in cycles but nothing changes.
self-medication is the only only thing that keeps the headaches at bay and my sanity loosely intact enough i make it from one day to the next.


my anxiety is the worst it's ever been. i am not having panic attacks anymore because i have numbed myself enough so i no longer feel anything, but internalized anxiety and stress doesn't mean its disappeared. it comes out in other ways.
mostly brain fog, all the time. not being able to think straight. not retaining any new information so no short term memories, very poor recall, and terrifying nightmares. being chased, running, stabbing someone who wont die, and almost always, something to do with flights. missing flights, or being on an airplane and getting kicked off, or never making it to the airport, or being at the airport but being lost at the terminal. not sure what that's about.
my head feels like...being at sea is the best way to describe it. as if my brain's rolling back and forth so I can't tell which way is up or down. it's worst when I wake up, so i can barely keep my eyes open. sleeping in helps, but then i've been sleeping in for hours and hours hoping the nightmare that awaits when i wake up is better than the nightmare i dreamt of with my eyes closed.


i don't know what to do. which isn't true. i do know what to do but i am terrified to do it because.
im scared of the unknown
im scared that this next step will end my life as i know it, break my bond with S somehow which is already quite broken and I unable to admit it
scared ke log kya kahenge. yes really.
scared of never being able to come back. what if it does end up in an divorce and then would i want to be a divorced 30 year old? what aer my prospects then?
scared of loneliness
scared of independance. of having to brave the world myself. not that he offers any protection but there's still some peace there in my mind.


it's insane isnt it that i would find peace in the violence and the cops and the throwing punches and keys and glasses and phones flying everywhere in the middle of the night and screams and shouting and cursing MORE than i would peace in meing alone without any violence....


it's not insane when you think that violence is all i have known. I have seen my mother be punched and slapped and so this violence doesn't surprise me. it should but it doesnt. it should shake my core but it doesnt. it should elicit some emotion from me but it doesn't.


you know what elicits emotion? when Ahlee texts me that I am not alone, to not feel alone. that i have a home to run to if i want. then i ball my eyes out.


my heart and mind and soul is otherwise shut. drowning in cotton fields keep pulling cotton balls out of my mouth and ringing ears.


this too shall pass. hopefully. soon. i hope i stay alive long enough to see the end of it.


e

after his 8 day sober spell when he did relapse, i should say it came as a surprise but really didn't. of course the usual happened, heartache, anguish, pain like i had neevr felt before.
my heart feels like it's been ripped open again. i want to tear the world apart.
my rage knows no bounds.
how much longer? what more? how much more.
ya Allah is there no end to the tests you put us through?

i refused to leave my room for 3 days. sleeping working and crying. he came and lied down on me today, his head shaking uncontrollably. tremors. withdrawl symptom after aclean break and relapse.
his head shook for hours.
when i refused to sleep with him in our room he became violent again, as he does when he doesn't get his way drunk or in withdrawal. he banged on the door so hard i thought someone in the building would call the cops. he called me all the worst names in the book and finally, i grabbed my coat and left at 130am. drove teh car infront of his face while he waso n the phone screaming.

but chicken that i am, 7 years of doing this later, it's still not enough for me to finally have the balls to leave. 30 minutes later i was home, and he was in his bed and i in mine. 2 roomates barely acquainted who speak the 10 days a month he is intermitently sober, but otherwise live this false parade of appearances waiting to see who dies first.

my life is in shambles. i have no where to run. no place i feel safe. terrified to be without a roof over my head i call home. no family within 1000 miles. alone.

and a God who isn't done with me yet. i have cried and pleaded and begged and prayed and there still seems to be no end. no end to this misery.

dont know what to do. curse the day i thought i would marry him and reform him. curse myself for being an idiot. the biggest idiot i know.

this 30th bday, i'd like to give myself

freedom. from life.
no more heartaches
no more heartbreaks
no more regrets
no more every day tears, no more
everyday comforting others and drowning on the inside
pretending
trying
trying
trying
fighting
pushing
pulling
giving
exhausted laboring on
no
more
enough.

bus.

i miss you A.
screaming this into this void because, well, where else?

wonder if you will hear me.
wonder how i will get through this year without you. stakes are higher. things are worse.
and i miss, i NEED, above all, my friend in you.

all the men in the world, they've sucked the lifesoul out of me.
drained me out in red rivulets, spreadeagled i give birth to my pain
and my anguish; my emotional burden of
carrying unfinished boys on my shoulders and giving shelter
to their excuses, their lies, broken half-finished promises,
disappearances becauses they can't shoulder too many
burdens of their own.
i may be a cowering shipwreck but
there's old treasures buried in me still,
glinting in sunbeams when i smile,
fake or otherwise; i can bring
nations down to their feet when as a mother, as a lover
then can i not
bring you down to your
knees?

or
make you rise
from your own ashes?
do not question my strength
i may be perfectly still but i'm only
quietly gathering strength to

ignite.

collateral damage/ or reasons why I'm upset

At 3 am I am putting back the lamp that toppled over. The glass on the floor that didn't shatter. Wiping the water from the iPad. The suitcase he flung out the room has been put back. The pack of printing paper flung across the room is resting on the laundry bin again, now upright. I've picked up my clothes and the blanket he threw in the ground, and washed the mascara and eyeliner staining my cheeks. My wrist is a little swollen again just like a few days ago where you grabbed it to get my phone out of my hand. My gold chain is broken because it got caught in the tussle, that will take longer to fix.
Don't worry about my heart. It's been broken so far past repair it doesn't even need to be considered anymore.

..........

You get more and more violent.
Today all this because I hid your keys so you wouldn't drive drunk.
We grappled over my phone and then I had to push you out of my way so I can flee the apartment.
A few days ago you punched my cereal box down for...I don't even remember now.
A few days before you grabbed both wrists so hard they were sore for days, because I said to you I wish your mom taught you some manners when you had cursed me out again.

This is all after that time you had dragged me by the feet out of the car a few months ago and begged for forgiveness afterwards because you couldn't believe you had lost control.
..........

I don't even flinch anymore when you call me fucking idiot or fuck you or bitch or chutiya.
I've become so desensitized to it after 6 years of such drunken love talk.

..........

Tomorrow we wear our smiles and go about our day again.
Be a good daughter a good sister before die trying to be a good wife.

Seems we never learn our lesson.
I promised I wouldn't let any man lay a finger on me after what happened to my mom but here we are.

Keep swimming,

E

When I asked him where he was at 4 am on a Sunday night /Monday morning because he wasn't home, he said in talking to my cousin and fuck off.

#whentheytellmeididnttryhardenough

Broken.

Eeda

Where are the men

Where are the men?

The ones who won't hold my wrists tightly in theirs
And ignore my silently agape mouth while
Trying to find their way to my young breast

The ones who won't ask for my mind and my soul and my body
At their disposal, convincing me of soul mates and connections
And then remember, after having me, promises, parents, others
And forsake me in the cold

The ones who won't gather my wrists, despite knowing of my nightmares about them,
And hold me against my will to silence my anger
Punching the wall being my ear and later say
Why are you angry?
I never hurt you. I never raised a hand at you.

The ones who won't make my mother cry
Disrespect her, subjugate her, remind her of her inferiority
And yet tell me, their daughter, I should not take shit from no man.

Where are the men
The ones who won't take anything from me
Where are the men
The ones who won't suck the life and soul out of me
Where are the men
The ones who won't leave me barren and dry
Where are the men
Who are tender, who love, who give, who cause no pain

Perhaps this is why they call this limbo I'm in
The in between places...No man's land
Where lost souls go to roam

Where are the men?!
There is none.
In no man's land.

I used to wonder what it would feel to be in the headspace of someone who committed suicide. But I know now. If it wasn't for religion making it prohibited I might have done it myself.
The resources people give you are terrible. You call help lines and counselors and they ask for your personal safety. If you tell them yes you get a cop and really with current climate, are they any sympathetic to a female of color?! Or you get an ambulance to take you to the most depressing place in the world...a hospital.
If you say no you'll get a generic counselor saying Im sorry that must be hard, how did that make you feel? Over and over again over thirty and if you're lucky, sixty minutes, with a follow up email suggesting you reach out and call an appointment with a counselor or psychiatrist and a promise to follow up.
You're asking a person whose hysterically crying and telling you they have no desire to even get out of bed and eat to scan a list of counselors and try making an appointment?
Have YOU tried making an appointment?
Over two hours of calling later one lady picks up who said S would never be able to leave his problem and his mom died due to her own fault.
Great counseling.
If by chance you are lucky someone returns your call, 9/10 times they won't accept insurance.
Wait they accept insurance? They can only see you in the middle of the workday five weeks from now.

Forget the medical system. When things got really rough for me I reached out to who I thought were my good friends who promptly started ignoring me. Most people will keep you at arms length and why shouldn't they?! Compassion is time consuming and time is money. And people are too strapped with mortgages and car loans and credit car debt to care for you.
Those that don't have that don't have compassion..
Either way. In short. You're fucked.
Even your best of friends will check in occasionally until life consumes them. Life consumes everyone. So what if it consumes you too?
No one truly cares at least on an ongoing basis until you're truly gone and then the I didn't see it Coming and not her starts.

Really?
Didn't see it coming?!

I've been fighting with myself and reaching out to numerous people openly saying I'm in a bad place I need help and. You get a short time band-aid and that's it.
I've been masking and masking and masking for so long I've truly become dysfunctional. A walking zombie going through the motions of my day waiting for it to be over, 1 more day closer to death or relief.

Kia dua karun?! Ay Allah swt enough? Tried that. This is more than I can bear. I'm broken and I have nothing left to give. I'm losing my mind. Relief? Tried that.

There's nothing but darkness and I'm lost in it. I get maybe a day or two of light and then it'd back in this hole where I literally can't manage to stand up. I.
Did I ever mean anything to anyone enough that my life was worth saving?
For how long would it destroy parents and siblings, my loss? Is that a lesser time than what I currently have the energy and courage to endure?
At times the answer is yes. Those are the times when you pull the trigger or tighten the noose.

Spinning in ashes.

E

feel like writing but not sure of what.

maybe I need to focus on the article I read yesterday about self-forgiveness. Find all the excuses for the mistakes I made, write them out, air them out, face them square, stop grovelling with myself for their acceptance, let my rationality stare them down until they hide in the shadows, and then maybe then... i can embrace the quivering little girl for making the huge mistakes she made.
maybe that's the first step out of this sticky spider web.

i can't help this girl crying in the mud right now because i too, am judging her, am mad at her, disappointed with her choices... i can't self-love if i'm so busy being so very very angry with my self.

self-love when it comes to crepes, sleep, netflix, reading books, swinging on a swing, retail therapy, beach, water, air, sun, is all just bandaids. self-love is when you help the struggling you stand up on her feet, wipe the tears and the grime, and nudge her back towards to her path.

stumbling but at least moving. harkat mein barkat.

this for the newnew. this for the 444. this for. holdingonandlettinggo.

eeda