Or find a love that lasts more than three months
So I went to therapy
Secretly
Because I am Lebanese
And therapy is for crazies
Desperately
Because I am Lebanese
And have to get married
Fear of abandonment
I leave you
Because in my mind, you left me every day
Conversation with my therapist:
Q: Why is it so scary to look within?
A: Because beneath the surface lie skeletons, ashes, and snakes
Q: Why is it necessary to look within?
A: Because if you don’t do it, you will become the ashes and the skeletons, and the one after you will have to look at a more horrifying sight
Someone will have to do it, and it will only get worse
Wall of anger
Patriarchy
Spiritual bypassing
Cultural appropriation
Instagram influencers
My parents
Big corporations destroying nature
People who don’t own their shit
Consumerism
Capitalism
Addictive technology
Systemic oppression
The things I wish she told me growing up
You’re beautiful when you cry
What are you feeling right now? Stay with it
(A long hug every time a bomb exploded)
You do not have to achieve anything for me to love you. I will love you even more when you fail
You are enough
Don’t rush in love, you are worthy of it, and only say yes when it feels right
I am sorry I slapped you, humiliated you, and abandoned you. I am suffering myself
You do not need to lose weight to be beautiful
“All that you have is your soul.” — Tracy Chapman
Never doubt yourself. Never let any man make you doubt yourself
This is your life and your path, and I will be there to support you when you need me
When you can’t love yourself
Sometimes you wake up and you can’t love your breath
Sometimes you go to bed and you can’t seem to rest
They tell you you’re the best and all you hear is you’re a mess
They tell you it is not your fault and all you know is you are the cause
You read about self-love on the internet and the mantras lead you to desperation
You buy the book on meditation and the breathing causes you frustration
You empty the bottles on your shelf
Then you shame yourself for shaming yourself for shaming yourself
Until you break
Your body hurts
Your brain hurts
Your heart hurts
Your chest pounds
Your legs stall
Your back pain grips you
Your gut wrenches
You cannot connect the dots
You cannot even discern squares from dots
Your reality is a nightmare
You cannot distract from the mental noise
You have no choice
But accept that today you don’t love yourself
And that’s ok
It is not hard to love yourself
It is just easier to hate yourself
Tomorrow is another day
When nothing can take away the pain
Sometimes
Nothing can take away your pain
No positive psychology TED Talks
No guided meditations on Headspace
No mountains of advice, suggestions, “I-have-been-there-befores” from people you love
No Xanax, alcohol, burgers
No social media scrolling
It feels like you are stuck for the rest of your days
And the rest of your days seem infinite
You smell the flowers for show
To show that you are in the present moment
But deep down inside you envy the flower for its short life
You cannot control the pathways in your brain
As if your brain detached from your body and turned into a dictator
But most people won’t get that
They will say you are not trying hard enough
You are causing your own misery
Your negative thinking will bring you negative things
Just change your thoughts and all will be jelly
A bunch of rubbish that causes you suffering above the pain
Let me make this easier on you
There is no escape from the pain of life
The betrayal
The death
The sickness
The heartache
I also say to you when you are in pain
I humbly, silently sit here with you
In awe of what it takes to be a human
No words, no this, no that
When your home is a faraway land
Sometimes the only way to realize you have grown up in tragedy is to move to a faraway land
Sometimes the only way to get curious about your origins is to leave the land of your origin
Sometimes the only way to forgive your parents is to get to know them from thousands of miles away
Sometimes the only way to meet yourself is to leave the place that shaped parts of you and also obscured parts of you
Sometimes the only way to see the beauty in your culture is to wash yourself with that foreign culture
Sometimes the only way to fall in love with your heritage is to realize that everywhere is a little broken in its own way
Sometimes we have to leave our country, our home, our parents, our city, our habits
Sometimes we have to hate, feel angry, reject, ignore, forget
Before we can look back at home with gratitude and watery eyes that only can see that broken is beautiful
Pain #1
My body can’t find a nest
My thoughts can’t seem to rest
You want me to describe the pain
It is one year old, it can’t speak
You want to stop the pain
It is generations old, it’s too much for me
You want to soothe the pain
It is closer to death, a place that you dread
I can’t take it away
You can’t take it away
I give up
It slips away
Leaving traces of shame and disarray
Pain #2
I greet you not knowing your name
Where do you come from? Why are you here?
How come you haven’t left, after all these years?
You said you carry gold
Waiting to deliver to a host
I see my reflection in your shiny offering
I am the host
You bow
Hand me the gold
And continue on your way
Pain #3
Understanding, analyzing, naming, categorizing, diagnosing, I have come to learn, won’t take away the pain
Pain #4
How can I be alone in feeling this, if we are all made of the same stars?
I don’t want your pills
I want your presence
But I forgot you are busy
The immigrant illusion
America
A land far away from war trauma
I thought
America
A land lying on a daily trauma
The many ways I suppress myself
I feel anxious
I eat ice cream
I feel sad
I compare
I feel angry with you
I smile at you
I feel horny
I tell myself it’s wrong
I feel jealous
I make you jealous
I feel depressed
I make myself busy
I feel fat
I read Vogue
I feel joyful
I worry it is not permanent
Faith
I can give you all the hope in the world, grandmother said to me
But without faith it’s only a mirage in a desert you’re lost in
How did we come to disintegrate?
To not know where our grandparents came from but know what Jean the yoga teacher just had for breakfast?
How did we come to disintegrate?
To not know our deepest fear but know how a celebrity took their own life?
How did we come to disintegrate?
To not listen to our body’s cries for help, but listen to disembodied white men in power?
How did we come to disintegrate?
To not know what is entering our bodies, but know who is entering our colleague’s body?
How did we come to not make our own decisions? Not think critically? Not ask why? Not look at our biases? Not examine our souls?
Sometimes I daydream
Sometimes I daydream about who I would be without the trauma
Would I be pregnant with my second child?
Would I be sticking to a routine?
Would I be trusting what people say?
Sometimes I daydream what my fantasies would be without the trauma
Would I be making beauty with my hands?
Would I be exploding the love in me to passersby?
Sometimes I daydream what my night dreams would be without my trauma
Would I dream about fantastical journeys into the sea?
Would I dream about the planets and spaces in between?
Sometimes I daydream
Trauma robbed me of my potential
May all my pain turn into healing so the women who come after me don’t have to carry it
and can live their potential
Him not seeing me is an ongoing grief reflected back in the oblivious faces of men who for reasons of their own could not see me
Paris, 2017
I was walking down a Parisian street with anxiety pounding in my chest. Suddenly without any warning, a torrent of tears erupted. I sat down on the front porch of a hotel and wept. Time disappeared. A flashback of my teenage self came to me. She was in such despair that she swallowed pills, hoping someone would see her. Her father found her, she was taken to the hospital, and they did not speak to her for months. Her desperate plea for help was met with complete abandonment. She never got the chance to mourn.
I looked up and there was a new moon hanging in the vast, soft, Parisian sky, telling her everything was going to be all right. I hugged myself, and told her the same. For in that moment, she was alive.
I felt a relief. I felt light. I felt free.
It took twenty years to mourn the pain. It took two minutes to be free again.
stoned to death
I bloomed from the dead
Sitting with the child of the moon
I saw how much I have been avoiding her stare
Her restless stories of being alone
I find them old and gross
The hole in her chest
I turn away
She’s a big mess
Her tears that fall for reasons she cannot accurately recall
When my mask falls, when the leaves fall
The sadness in her eyes
I turn away
She’s a burden at best
Sitting with her
I am itching to leave
Back out there, a world full of thieves
In her cell, she waits for me as her only friend
With the same patience and faith
I am her person
I am her only person
I am her world
I am her
She is me
Sitting with her I choose not to leave
And the hole in her chest heals
I hold her close
Her warm tears melt my walls
She looks up and sees there is no roof to her jail
She can finally soar away
A conversation with the moon
I feel scared about getting older
It’s ok. In my eyes, your youth is timeless
I feel that I missed the boat
It’s ok. My boat will dock forever waiting for you
I feel that I am not enough
It’s ok. You mean the world and the seven seas to me
I feel that I can’t do it
It’s ok. There is nothing you need to do for me
I feel that I am too much
It’s ok. You are just enough for me
I feel that I am too little
It’s ok. You are just the right size for me
I feel afraid that you might leave
It’s ok. I will be there and won’t leave
I feel that I want to leave you
It’s ok. Leave, and I will be patiently anticipating your return
I feel that I love you too much
It’s ok. Our love is beyond too much or too little
I feel that I should have loved you sooner
It’s ok. For you have loved me without knowing it since the beginning of time
Womb
For every second you felt unloved
You have been carried by the moon
It is never too soon
To return to its warm womb
Parents
You cannot save your parents by making yourself more
miserable so they could feel better
You will save your parents by learning to love the parts of themselves they disowned and put on you
And maybe they get a glimpse of the light of the moon
And learn to love themselves, too
But if they don’t, it’s not your fault, you have already done a lot
you will keep hurting and
re-hurting yourself
until you realize you are
hurting a child
Moon cycle
Every 29.5 days
You started anew
Teaching me how to love again
Unconditional love
Seeing me in despair
The moon skipped its phases and went from new to full
Healing is a long process
My ship sails rough seas
Sinks
But I survive and build another ship
My ship sails rough seas
Sinks
But I survive and build another ship
My ship sails calmer seas
Still sinks
But I survive and build another ship
My ship sails calmer seas
Still sinks
But I survive and build no ship
I go to the sea on my own and swim
I do not sink
Grief #1
Let grief destroy your walls
Like a river raging through a broken dam
Don’t listen to them
When they warn you
To rebuild those walls
Don’t listen to them when they urge you
To avoid the river
Instead bathe in new waters
Born again from courage, resilience, and faith
Grief #2
Behind the grief, the forgiveness
Behind the forgiveness, the love
Behind the love, more love
Grief #3
Mourn the many selves you have not become
Mourn so you can make space for the self you have always been
The body #1
I finally stared at my body
I found wound after wound
I cried and I cried sadness from years of neglect and abuse
I asked my body for forgiveness
My body responded
It never blamed
The body #2
These emotions are not going anywhere
Ask your body
The unconscious
When it finally hits you
You picked someone like your dad
To heal what still bleeds
When it finally hits you
You are acting like your mom
To release her guilt
Craters
The closer I got to the moon
I saw its many scars
And I knew it would understand me
go into your pain and
you can go anywhere
Intergenerational trauma
You came into an ignorant world
Bursting with wisdom
Ready to heal
there is no sight more
beautiful than a woman
rising from the rubble of shame
to be washed by the
delicate hands of her sisters
The only child
“Your brother was shot and he died on the scene, you must go to the hospital to verify his identity.”
I am not sure who said these words, I can’t recall the tone of voice.
I rushed to the hospital repeating to myself: “It’s a mistake.”
The nurse greeted me with a gaze full of compassion for the inevitable I am refusing to acknowledge. I felt the tears pouring as if the light in her eyes shined on the heartbreak frozen in my chest, melting its walls away.
Child of the Moon Page 2