After 8 Dreary Years...

I am going to start watching the news again :)

Mortality

No matter how much time i spend with you now, that day is still out there...

Waiting.....

To be lived.

I always knew you were mortal....

But now that i have a clock pressed against my heart.

I can't.

I can't.

You are all i have ever known.

God give me strength.

Fuck It

I'm done.
I have put on my short red dress, my high heel boots, and i'm going out.
I'm going to drink and dance my ass off.
Fuck it. Seriously.

The Drill

I read every word, many times.
I have become an expert at extracting the most amount of information possible from a few lines.
I could see him writing them, choosing one word instead of the other, using an absolutely inopportune word for rhyme.
I could tell which words were written for my benefit. And which slipped despite him betraying traits he should be hiding now.
I read every word, many times.
And then this emptiness consumed me.
Is this what i have loved for?
Is this what i was faithful to?
Is this vanity what i loved?

And i saw it like everyone could see it, apathetically, without interest, like the bad story that it is.
I saw him for the man he was today, a man who only knows how to take the easy way out.
And i felt a surge of relief, i didn't want him anymore. And i worked for hours straight, and forgot he even existed.
And then i got into my car, turned on my music, lit my cigarette, and the pang in my stomach came back.
I missed him. I missed the man he was to me every day for eleven months.

When does this cycle ever end?

Not Enough

Dear Readers of this blog, this is a depressing post, move on from it now if you are in a happy place, i am not.
I am tired of life, i am disappointed at it, i am weary.
Through out my life whenever i went through a bad patch, the death of a loved one, a devastating heart break, i never lost faith. I always knew that this was just happening to me now, that this was just a bad experience i had to go through to learn something to prepare me for the good things to come. I always held the belief that the world was a happy place, that i chose my own misery, that i chose pain over happiness. I never blamed life, i never blamed the world, i took responsibility for my bad choices, and emerged out of every experience telling myself that if i fixed myself i would learn how to choose happiness. I spent endless years fixing myself, loving myself more, treating myself better, shedding one bad habit after the next. I had motivation, i wanted to embrace the world.
Today i find myself without faith, without heart, without a desire to go on. Today i find myself disappointed with the nature of humans, and with the world we live in that is so full of tragedy.

I look beyond my own current drama, and no one i know is happy. My married friends are either bored, unstimulated, being cheated on, or contemplating cheating on their partners. My single friends are either divorced, unstimulated, badly bruised, or trying to settle for a partner to have kids. I have been hearing one sickening story after the next, that i look at my own stories, and i am not that shocked anymore.
I am beginning to think that love is a myth.
Whatever happened to the world? If it's not fear of commitment it's fear of failure, if it's not fear of failure it's fear of boredom, if it's non of the above it's too many options.
Whatever happened to the days of love? Whatever happened to through thick and thin?
Why does everyone - whether with someone or not - end up alone?
Everyone i know who is single doesn't want to be. They say they want love, yet they are not meeting "the one". The people they meet are either too conservative, too loose, too religious, too atheist, too tall, too short, too fat, too bald, too loud, too needy, too pushy, too stuck up, too moody, too restless, too weird, too boring.

Uuuufffff. What is wrong with the world?

My last boyfriend (i will not assign him a letter here) came into my life disguised as the one who will make all my mistakes go away, he was supposed to be the one to make it all better. He promised not to break promises, he promised not to leave when i depended, he promised me a rational mature relationship. To me that was promising the world. I chose to enter into what looked like a healthy chance at something happy. I took a leap of faith, left a man i loved very much who promised me eternal heartache, and decided to love this man.
I had learnt all the lessons of love, to stay independent, to go slow, to have a life, to not fall first, to voice what i want loud and clear, to speak up when i was unhappy, to not get ahead of myself, and to not love him more than myself. These lessons were engraved in my bones from all the men i'd loved before. This time i would not get screwed over, this time i would be good to me, this time i would be happy.

And the rest is history. He broke his promises, he left when i was dependant, he taught me how to go for us when he couldn't. He taught me to trust while he wouldn't. He showed me one more time how nothing is ever as good as it seems.

And here i am. I am not heartbroken, i've lost heart. I am not lonely, i am just very aware that i am alone. I am not angry or bitter, i just have no urge to look forward.
What's the point? Everything ends. Why should i invest in anything if it always goes down the drain? Why should i begin something that will almost surely end?
For the one off chance that it wont? Who has the energy to take that chance one more time?
If love is not ever enough, then what is? If people never know what they want, how can we link our fates with other people's whims?
If people have lost the urge to be happy together, why should i be the only one who hasn't?

I come out of this one not devastated, not heartbroken, not betrayed, I come out older, and disillusioned; the world is not a happy place.

I come out of this one faithless. When all i used to have was faith.

Two

I shall split you into two:

The man i so wanted you to be
And the man you turned out to be

Yes, that is what i will do. To preserve my sanity, to forgive my disloyalty to my instincts, to get through these horrid times. I shall split you into two.

I knew, of course i knew, i doubted every word, i filled every gap in your stories with fractions of my imagination. I knew, i always knew something was wrong.

I shall split you into two:
The man i looked up to, the man that wished me good mornings and good nights, the man that called me love, the man that kissed my shoulder, the man who bought me books, the man who made me laugh.
The man that got me.
The man that held me long and never tired of holding me.
The man who promised me protection from the world.

To find my peace i will separate the man who was my best friend from this other man. And then i will tell myself that my best friend went to a place far far away, where there are no phones and no planes, no good mornings or good nights.

I shall split you into two; the best friend that had to go away, and this other man...

I will not ask why you did this anymore.
I will not try to understand, what i cannot understand.
I will not repeat every word you said to me this week.
I will not remember the other things.
I will not remember them.

I will not wonder just how much longer you were going to lie.
I will not wonder how much more you did not tell me.
I will not wonder what in your life pushed you to be this way.
I will not wonder how that same man had no heart.

I will not wonder about your heart. Or lack thereof.

I shall split you into two, the man that loved me, and the man that is capable of this.

I will bid the man that loved me farewell, he is no longer here, i don't know why he had to leave but i will accept that he had to. The best ones always leave early.

And i will forget the man who was able to do this.
To hold and to lie.
To kiss and to lie.
To love and to lie.
To talk and to lie.
To breath and to lie.
To touch my scars and to lie.

To find his way into my life, manipulate, and lie.

I will not wonder where you got the heart.

I will move on and forget that such things really happen, or that they happened to me.
I will take what i want from this and move on.

You will not have devastated me. You will not have drove me crazy. You will not have had me believe that all the world is one big lie.

I am better than that. Yes i am.

When i doubted i was not crazy.
When my nights were sleepless, i was right.
When you told me i was wrong, i was not.
When i was unhappy, i had reason.

The only thing i know that matters to you is to lose.

You lose.

In this little game that we played where i am one and you are two, you lose.

You lose me, you lose you.

As for me, i will separate the man i so wished you were, from the man you are today.

I will split you into two, and let you both go.

I am better for it. Yes i am.

.......

My earliest memory of smoking at my window was four years ago, ever since then it has been linked to my world falling apart.
that was the first time i understood that in life anything goes.

I just put out my nth cigarette today, i threw it out my window and the familiar feeling came back. It's so cynical to be more at home with disaster than with happiness.

I am a great girl.
I battle myself and better it. I accept every challenge that comes my way.
I have always fought for what i believed in, even when i believed in the most horrid of things.
Even at the worst version of myself i didn't give up.
I don't know impossible. I was born a fighter.
I try not to judge, i value trying to be humane.
I am fair.

I deserve to be happy, i deserve the simplest joys of life.

And yet somehow i end up at my window, smoking it off; the sensation that the world is crashing all around me. Numb, passive, tired, with energy enough only to light another cigarette, and try to accept that what will be will be.

My head wont leave my head alone.

It's so exhausting being so aware of everything i think and feel. It is so hard being so objective that i can understand insanity. It is so claustrophobic being so emotional yet so mentally aware.

My head wont leave my head alone.

My body aches everywhere, i carry a stone in my stomach, it is a curse being so physically reactive to my mental state.

There is absolutely nothing i can do.

I have done everything right and ended up in the thick of it anyway; I can't move, i can't go, i can't stay, i can't think.

Thrown off my bed into the deep of the ocean.

My head wont leave my head alone.

Drunken Blogging

Well of course there have been worse weeks, but this one was quite bad. If there's one thing that gets the better of me it's someone telling me i am wrong when i am right. I'm a child that way. So my chest pains are back, and i had to sit through two doctors telling me that i am imagining the pain and there is nothing wrong with me. It's partly my fault.. I wake up, go to work, hold my meetings, go about my day, walk in to the doctors cabinet, wait, get admitted, tell him my symptoms with a clear straight face, i am factual, i don't whine or scream or hold my chest in agony. So when the x-rays and such come out normal how is he to know that every time i breathe i feel like a piece of glass is cutting through my chest? How is he to know that i need to pause and break between sentences to get my bearings and stop panting? How is he to know that i need to sit down after the effort exerted brushing my hair? If i just say i am in pain and act and talk completely fine, really, how is he to believe me when i say the echo's are wrong?
Then i went to the best doctor in Cairo, and he sat me down, and listened to me, actually listened to me, and after an hour told me that even though everything looks fine, my pains were back because i was sick again. And that was all i needed, someone to tell me i had a right to feel sick, and to give me something for the pain to go away, and things were beginning to look up.
Then a man waved a gun in my face. My first encounter with a gun in real life, in my office. And i saw just how crazy people can get, how logic is not mandatory, how some people really have no sense of right or wrong, how corroded and vain some minds are, how power drunk they get. A gun in my office, the second he took it out of the grip i lost all sense of anything else, i didn't hear the swear words being shouted over my head, i don't know who came out of the office or went in, all i saw was the gun, my eyes completely fixated on it's every movement willing it back into it's grip. Then i spent four hours in the police station, three of which i spent giggling with my friend in a completely out of context way, maybe that was the shock of it.
And then that blew over, and the panic subsided, and i went back to work where everyone had started joking about the gun in the factory incident, and then a girl i had coached and helped get promoted came in and gave me a present, a little silver pendant with my name written in arabic and a flower on top. She hugged me for my belated birthday and made my day sweet again. She had made it herself, she made my heart melt.
It's a good job where you can contain a gun situation and get such a nice present all in one day...
But then the shock wouldn't wear off, so i had to get a drink, and the drink turned into a few too many, and before we knew it the bottle of wine was gone and here we are...
Blogging in drunkenness about the off throwing week.

The City Virus

Almost every time i leave work i get the same thought; what now?

Funny thing is; when i lived in France i hardly ever got this feeling. I lived alone amidst the Europeans and spent the better part of my time alone entertaining myself, walks, drives, shopping, restaurants, etc etc etc... I did most things alone.

There is something eerily restless about having 70 million people around and having no urge to initiate activity.. like having 76 channels and finding nothing to watch...

I'm not even restless, i am just absolutely unstimulated by anything other work and home, there is nothing else i want to do...

What exactly is this phenomena?

Advice Needed

If i go to one more coffee shop and discuss the same topics one more time i will buy a rope, tie it into a noose and make use of it.

Enlightened bloggers, good people, please tell me where to go and what to do in Cairo, I am up for any enriching or entertaining experience.

Snap!

Something happened in the wee hours of the night, or this morning, not sure. A click, a sliding of gears into a fitting position, something snapped, and i can't put my fingers on it. At some point this weekend i understood that being in Egypt is a burden all on its own, a constant effort, forever a work in progress. I heard this snapping, and this time with curiosity i went to the source of it, i watched the gears churning till they reached their moment of rest, i watched as time took its toll, and realized that i had reached the place i am best at; passivity. What is so very good about this place is that it reeks of objectivity and is ideal for decision making, there are no forces swaying you anywhere and any choice you make from here is wholly and completely yours.

Can i refuse to be anyone but me, and refuse to be the me that i have always been?
Can i choose and pick and fix?
Can i channel water and seal off reservoirs of energy that leak into oblivion?
Can i mobilize my space so that no time is wasted away from those i love?

Today i can, tomorrow i will, because i have reached the mother of all objectivity; passivity.

Emotional Outburst

I must have felt every feeling there is to feel in this past week. The vessel that is my mind, body, heart and soul has reached the limits of its capacity, and its capacity is quite high. My mind struggles to remain focused, my body is tired from not collapsing, my heart is aching with sadness and yearning, my soul has long since left me and resided where it feels it has found a home.
I am someone who listens to the soul, through everything i try to shush the rest of me and let the soul lead and guide. It is not easy. It really and truly is not easy at all.
The mind is twisted, and presents one million and one scenarios, some are terrifying, some are sweet, and some are so unreal.
The heart is soft, too soft, too full of many forms of love and too protective of the weak yet too magnetized by the soul.
The body has a mind of its own, it goes places against the better judgment of the forces it should adhere to.

The soul is tired, it just wants the rest of me to allow it to go home.

And yet another... unbearable urge

My phone needs to be confiscated... A brand new N70? Anyone?

Giving Something Back

I use my blog to dump. As most people would agree, it's always easy to write negative things, we write when we're sad, hurt, worried, bored, disturbed, anxious, etc, etc... My favourite blogs are the ones that remain real and not depressing, i can't claim that i can even aspire to have a not depressing blog because i use my blog to dump. If you met me you'd see i am usually smiling and laughing and getting on with things, i owe much of this to writing, as i detox here and then go meet the outside world with a light heart.
The point is, that today, i want to give something back to the blog sphere (where does that word come from btw? and while we're on it, isn't it weird that blogger dictionary doesn't identify the word blog?) where was i? yes, giving something back to this crazy cyber space....
Two months ago i was in intensive care, doing a job i loathed that offered me absolutely nothing but money, my boyfriend was leaving the country shortly and i had no idea what i wanted to do with my life or where i wanted to do it. I had nothing to look forward to, i remember sitting on my couch searching for something to look forward to, to make me smile, i always do that in moments of despair..... i couldn't think of anything, and that scared me. For months and months all you read here was jumbled up incoherent thoughts of a lost girl in distress.
I resigned today. I had decided to end this era, and i took the first step today, well, actually two weeks ago when i accepted a job offer in Cairo.
I've been smiling since, i quit the horrible job, i have two months off in between jobs where i hope to travel to an exotic place where i will sit in the sun all day and read and play. My recurring crazy heart condition has quieted down and i feel healthy, and after that i am looking forward to going home to friends and family and the first job i have ever been excited about.
This post is to give something positive back to the blogging world, thank you blog.

On TV Series Enthralment

Yesterday i stayed up till 3:15 am watching "Six feet under". A friend gave them to me when i was in the hospital 8 weeks ago, he gave me the complete five seasons god bless him! I am currently towards the end of season 5 and i am addicted, i don't know what I'll do when they end... They have seen me through hospital, sick leave and the days after T sailed away. I have a print on my couch from where my body curls up amidst the cushions, pillows, quilt and remotes.
So back to last night (or this morning), if anyone has seen this season, there is a particularly heart wrenching death/funeral mid season, i was so engrossed that i cried more that the whole family of the deceased did combined. Imagine this; me in pajamas, my afore mentioned couch, a box of tissue and the sobbing over a fictional character that i couldn't believe had left us.
TV series are a devious addictive form of entertainment. How smart; i completely escape my own reality, bawl over strangers and get all my negativity off my chest. What a great friend in a time when one needs comforting company.
I can't wait to go back home and finish the series.
Suggestions for the next one? anyone?

The End of an Era

"But who will light that candle, if no one stays?" i ask
"no one" you say
"no one?"
"yes, no one, have you not bought candles and only lit them once before?"
"no, i wait"
"what for?"
"to keep lighting candles till they can't anymore..."
"till they're wax?"
"hmmm.... yes... i guess... till they're wax "
"why would you want to do that?"
"candles should always be lit"
"but that isn't a beautiful candle anymore..."
"what are you suggesting?"
"I'm not suggesting anything, i just don't get it"
"get what?"
"why you would get your light from sticky wax instead of lighting new candles"
"but then light that one only once as well?"
"well... not necessarily once, you know what i mean, so long as its pretty... in the name of what do you stick to wax?"

in the name of what indeed....

Greed

I'm sorry, i want it all. I am currently blogging from Milan airport, i have just payed 9.9 EUR to have Internet access to entertain myself and distract myself from how much of a foul mood i am in. I can't remember the last time i was this down. Objectively speaking, i have reason to be down, I've spent most of the past two months between hospitals and doctors discussing my heart, and not from an emotional aspect. My friend, companion, lover and co-bearer of the shit that is the cote d'azure has fled me and gone to follow the sun and the prospects the world has to offer him - and it will offer him - after taking care of me every day for two months. I am left with a job i loathe and one friend that doesn't make me want to punch her in the face.
Realistically speaking now, i have no friggin reason to be down. I lived through this bloody heart thing, i have gotten out of a dead end not so satisfying relationship even if it wasn't by choice and i can afford luxuries that the average third world country citizen doesn't know exists. I am being a brat, and frankly speaking at this very moment; i don't care.
You see i am not worked up about any of these things, i am not sad because i had health issues, i was worried and fed up but not sad. I am not heartbroken that T has left, to be heartbroken one must believe that one has lost, i have not lost, i have been made rid of against my ill judgement, and i know it all too well. I am not miserable right now because i hate my job, as i have not been anywhere near it in two months since i got sick.
I am so very annoyed and miserable because i want it all and i don't know how to go about getting it right now.
I want a job that gives me self worth, and that can be anything from window washing to a high powered executive desk job. I want a man who makes me fall head over heels and does the same and is everything i need him to be so i can actually want to be with him forever. I want to live somewhere where i have warm people in my life, friends and family, where people smile at each other and lend a helping hand. And lastly i want to be left to be, i don't want to be judged, and i don't want to be scrutinized and subjected to eye rolling, cursing or harassment at any point in my day let alone all day, i don't want to lie, or maneuver around society, or sneak around and hide. I want to live a happy peaceful life without fear or shame.
You are probably thinking, dream on, or who doesn't? But you know what, i am unhappy, and i know if i don't get what i want i will remain unhappy because i am stubborn and because i know that nothing is beyond reach if you want it badly enough to get up and get it. I am mostly unhappy because i know so much what i want, i just don't know how to direct myself now to get it, i feel like i am 17 all over again, and more probably than not in all the choices and decisions i will make in the next few months i will make a wrong one as i am merely human after all and it will throw me off where i want to go. I hear you saying make the most of what you have, i have, and it wasn't enough, call me greedy and ungrateful, but i just simply need more.

Starbucks

I want a blueberry muffin and a caramel frappuccino. I woke up this morning and that is the only thing i feel like having. I had a fever last night, that made T's leaving that much more difficult. I don't know about the rest of the world but when i have a fever my threshold for pain becomes that of a 4 year old sissy, and i had a fever that kept me cold till 3:30am, and then had me sweating profusely all night, from my current experiences i would guess that to be around a 38 deg. So back to this morning, i woke up to a text at 6 am from T saying he was already on his way, he had obviously opened my message in a bottle that said i missed him already, as he said he missed me alot too, and was about to open his first present. I teared, pulled the pillow over my face and slept till 9 am. I woke up then with no real fever i think, and didn't remember yesterday till after ten minutes maybe, uurrggghhh.
All i want today is a blueberry muffin and a caramel frappuccino and i will watch six feet under all day, but we don't have starbucks in the south of France, the only chain we have is Mcdonalds, i would curse for the millionth time at this, but really, i can't be bothered today.

The "I love you" Syndrome

My family has never been an emotionally expressive one. It has never been a cold family, don't get me wrong, we have always been laughing, we always used humour to express our affection for each other and i always thought that was grand. I never doubted our love for each other, it was even more valuable for not being mentioned, it was so wonderfully beyond need for expression, it was perfect.
About a decade ago my sister lost all notions of a sense of humour and slumped into a depression that she is not yet out of, though at least now she tries, and my mother has never ever been a mushy woman, i honestly don't recall hearing the words "i love you" from either of them up till two years ago, ma out of being her, and my sister out of being angry at the world.
All that changed when i moved to France, my mother turned to goo, all of a sudden "I love you" became the natural ending of every sms, and every sentence when i was home. I got an email yesterday from my sister with her passport details, signing off with "i love you", and a scan of the passport today, also ending with "I love you".
WTF?!
I am not a cold person, i assure you i am not, and if you browse through this blog on any two random posts you will find me emotional and way too intense, i am always hugging my friends and telling them all the time how much i love them and they do the same, HOWEVER, i don't think that it's fair to change the family's way of relaying love after 24 years.
How am i supposed to react to this? I don't know why, but i can't really deal with it, i find myself replying to the I love you's mechanically, and hardly ever initiating them. I love my family dearly, but this just isn't the way i'm used to expressing it, i'm sorry if i'm a bitch, but this avalanche of over used "i love you's" just annoys me.

Saturday De-Junking

I woke up early this morning with the instant realization that today was mine. My apartment was a mess, my car needed to be picked up from the garage, my laptop needed to be personalized, my dishes needed to be saved from walking down the steps all by themselves, my hair needed to be dyed to cover the fiasco that is the golden summer streaks in November, my nails needed to be filed, i had a million things to do that would inevitably contribute to getting my life together. Yes, i know its sounds silly, but a clean house, a fixed car and freshly dyed hair can equal a fresh start, yes, believe me, it can.
I have accomplished all of the above, except the dye which is in my hair as i blog, the nails, and attacking the new laptop, it's only 6:30 pm, not bad, not bad at all.
While organizing my wardrobe i decided to put aside all the clothes i do not wear to give away, all you have to do in antibes is put a bag on the street and someone will find it in two minutes flat. Then i decided to throw in all the make up i do not use, and all the perfumes i do not use (ok, perfume), and all the kitchen utensils i do not use. I have decided that i want no more clutter, in my wardrobe, in my apartment, in my head, i want no more clutter in my life.

The dye is dripping down my neck and even though it is semi-permanent i still don't want auburn skin, so i will have to end this post. To everyone out there with a bit of a jumbled head, i invite you to de-junk your personal space, it will make you feel less crowded and its a bit of charity on the side.

Have a great day.