Month: April 2015

The Monsters Behind Masks

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If you’re reading this, it means I’ve used every last ounce of the courage I possess to press Publish..

Maybe it’s because I’m finally old enough to see it. Maybe it’s because, for the first time, I’m retracing my entire life. Recollecting the moments that forever changed who I am.

I saw a movie yesterday. The girl looked at the guy and said, “I was 7 when someone asked me if I wanted to be with my mom or my dad.” It shouldn’t have mattered to me. I shouldn’t have cried. But I couldn’t help myself. Because I was 8.

When I tell someone how insecure I’ve become as a person because of the way I was shoved in the middle of a struggle to save a marriage, they think I’m being too sensitive. I almost tell them they’re seeing it wrong. They’re looking at the 22-year-old analyzing that moment. But I wasn’t 22 when it happened ! I was a child ! But I never say it. I smile small and turn away so they can’t see I’m hiding tears.

There are moments in a relationship when I look at the guy and wonder what would happen if he could see inside my head. If he could see the way I see life. If he could read my thoughts. Would he run? Would he choose to never come back? Would he think I’m crazy?

There are moments when I wish someone could understand it. There are moments when I don’t understand why anyone should.

They say it’s amazing when you finally figure yourself out. When you learn what makes you, you. But what happens when the person you are is someone that’s holding on to all her darkest fears? With bruises turned permanent scars? With the need to be loved but never having the ability to believe it?

What happens when every little thing about you comes from a place you never want to go back to? When you realize your entire life changed because of the one moment you had no control over? When there is a constant battle between the guilt for allowing yourself to be drawn into a mess while arguing that you didn’t know what else to do?!

Do you stand up for the child you were or hate yourself for not knowing better?

As I think through all the relationships I’ve had, I’m beginning to decode patterns and it’s like a nightmare playing on repeat as I realize I’ve done the same thing over and over again, wrecking every chance I had at a happy ending. Every time I was so close to it, I let it stop me. I let myself be pulled back. The fear that I don’t understand. The fear that stopped me from ever moving forward, turning this tunnel into a never ending hole of doom.

I wonder what would happen if I could look at them and tell them how it feels like a lost childhood. How in the process of letting them have what they have right now, I drowned. How they’ve made me terrified of commitment. How I run when I feel too much while still craving it because I believe in leaving before I’m left. And how I’ll never stop believing that people leave.

And how, in that moment, when everything I wanted was right there, I couldn’t nod my head yes. I couldn’t walk into the light. I paused. I struggled. I lost.

But maybe that’s just the way life is, isn’t it? Each with a struggle of their own. Not many win. Most of us lose our battles. We give in to whatever it is that consumes us. We let it win. We learn to live with that loss. We learn to put on a mask and hide behind the person the world would like to see. The one that’ll blend in. The one that won’t draw questions.

Someone asked me recently if there was a reason behind the playfulness he sees in me. He felt like the light reaching out. An opportunity to walk out of the dark. All I had to do was trust him with the truth. And I wanted to tell him. This is my mask. This is the way I relive my childhood while still running away from it. This is the person I became when I sat on a couch at my aunt’s house, grinning broadly while crying inside. This is me blending in.

So I smiled at him and said, “No. I’m just a little immature. Nothing else.”

NEED came a while ago..

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It’s a dream. A dream many would find so simple. But in his world, it’s a big one. His mom picked up a third job to help him. His dad works all day, everyday, to try and give him what he wants. He puts in so much effort. He wants to make his parents proud. He wants to give them a better life, a better world. He repeats his mantra to himself every morning, I’m going to turn this around for them. I can! Or rather,

He could have.

Today, the world teaches you to think “positively” and turn yourself away from the face of negativity. We’ve become so focused on this that our positive thinking is now just ignorance towards the things that matter. And I don’t know how to make sense to a bunch of people that break the internet over something as irrelevant as a photograph of a dress with #TheDress. But I’m going to try. And I’m never going to stop trying.

Because “I donate a lot of money for charity” isn’t good enough anymore. Because his parents were looking forward to the day they could go to his university and watch him graduate. Because his parents went to his university to identify his dead body among 140 others.

Because I’m terrified that the level of ignorance is directly proportionate to the increase of dead innocents. Because we as a society are empowering people to get away with this by not shedding enough light on something as important as human life.

Because I’m not a blue and black dress. And this post is never going to be as relevant as optical illusion. We cannot break the internet. Not the problem. Not the dead university students. Not the thousands dying everyday for no fault of theirs. Not the selfish that cause this level of destruction of human kind.

People often talk about the tyrant that killed so many innocent people through a harmful gas. Little do we realize, for the one monster that died, there are a hundred more today. Every one of them claiming to have a reason – the religion, the race, the spirituality, the tradition, the culture. So what about the human being?!

Paparazzi gets paid thousands of dollars for a picture of a new celebrity couple. Did you know there are pictures of the dead students from Kenya? Every one of them more disturbing than the one before. But it’s not gossip. it doesn’t get the world going. it’s not as pretty a sight as two celebrities who constantly wish for privacy. How can someone not see why the entire concept of this is so unbelievably wrong?!

But what if it changed? Just for a day. 24 hours. If every celebrity in this world chose to talk about nothing but war zones and gunfires and dead innocents. If for one day, the paparazzi published nothing but news. If for one day, every government head in this world used every ounce of their power to track down the monsters that create such tragedies. If for one day, someone drops the gun and refuses to fight the war. If for one day, the loving parents could have their son back..

We’ve waited months, years, decades. We’ve hoped for world peace. We’ve prayed for world peace. We’ve created campaigns. We went on strikes. Until we put our hands in the air and gave up. We turned our faces away because we told ourselves, “What I’m doing is not going to save the world.”

We focused on better things like the weather and the Box Office. We cried when Paul Walker died because he played a bigger role in our lives than some kid holed up in a university room that called her parents to tell them she hears gunshots and doesn’t believe she’s going to make it out of there alive.

She was right.

And we’ve waited this out for a long time now. We’ve told ourselves that when they want our help they’ll call us.

But we’ve turned away for so long that we didn’t notice when the want came. When the want transformed into something more desperate. When the evil destroyed families. We were drowning in new age music, we didn’t hear the loud scream of the mother who saw her baby die before her very eyes. We were buying that new pair of expensive denims, we didn’t see the thirteen-year-old get raped. We were reading our favorite gossip spread, we didn’t notice the girls that got kidnapped for wanting to learn how to read.

We were so busy living our lives, we didn’t turn to them when their want came. We were so caught up with our problems, we didn’t pay attention when the want was replaced with need – the need for help, the need for support, the need for protection, the need for someone to look at them and see what they’re going through.

The need that is now turning into death counts.

And you’re still waiting… for what?!