My dream job

Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Raheem

Assalam alaikum wr wb,

I've been behaving in the most appalling way with my parents. Last night, I wasted an evening doing things for and communicating with people that really don't care, don't know and can't help even if they did. I haven't written from my heart in weeks. So, when my mommy came home early from work to be with me, I was more restless and frustrated than a celibate Paris Hilton. I didn't want to go for a walk and shop for clothes. We sat in front of the TV and there was nothing on. I said, "TV is stupid" and I turned it off. My mom said I should watch Supernatural until dinner was ready. I said I didn't want to watch Supernatural. And I didn't because Jensen Ackles breaks my heart. Is that silly? I don’t care. But I guess I kind of do because I mentioned it. I'm contradicting myself, but so be it. I contain multitudes, in the words of Walt Whitman said.

Then I said that I would exercise. Then I said I didn't want to exercise because it was boring. I think I half-screamed in frustration. That sudden savagery frightened me.

I feel like tearing myself apart and reassembling myself into something that I can understand, that other people are not frightened to touch. What's happening to me?

This morning, just the sight of my mother coming home from her morning shopping trip made me want to yell with frustration. They let me sleep, instead of taking me with them – more as a kindness to themselves than to me, I guess.

And then my mother told me that because someone was going to my home country, they wanted to buy my grandma a sweater. They'd just come from the supermarket, but it just hadn't crossed their mind while they were in the supermarket. So now, after lunch, they wanted to go, in what I perceived to be a waste of everyone's time because of bad planning. My mom asked if I wanted to go with her. I can't remember a time when I have been angrier. "Don't piss me off on a weekend, Ma. Both of you just came from the supermarket and you didn't buy it. I'm always dragged here or there on parental maintenance – taking you walking, having to put up with Dad's coddling."

My brother went to see U2 – 3D last night. It's not fecking fair. I feel like a prisoner in my own house. I go from work to office and back. And I sit in front of my computer again, trying to make people thousands of miles away care about me. But they usually turn their attention away from me just before I can heal, and keep it to themselves and their own ordinary lovely lives just long enough for me to wonder what the hell is wrong with me. But what does it matter, even if they do? I can't love myself. Terrible am I, child, even if you don't mind.

So what does all of this have to do with my dream job? Because of my crap job with its crap managers, anxiety is the only feeling I've felt in a long time. So I figure that if I can get a kinder job, maybe I can be kinder to myself. I know that's not entirely true. But I need to believe that change is possible and that it will come.

This is what I wrote in my journal some days ago:

"What would an ideal job be for me? I can work as long or as short hours as I like. I can dress according to the people or situation I'm in. I get to meet interesting people on a daily basis and most of all, I create. I can stand on my head, sit on the carpet, cross my legs, stretch my arms, belly-dance. There should be no restrictions on my movement and hence on my creativity. I can take a day off to pick away at a personal project, should I choose, whether it has to do with family, a creative or a domestic project. Should I choose to take my mother museum-hopping, I can do so. I would like a job in which I could collaborate as much as possible, like we do in hitRECord. We help each other tell stories. Synergy just doesn't happen in corporate environments – at least not in the one I'm in. Yes. Ultimately, I want to tell a story and tell it good so people can enjoy it."

But most of all – and this is something I know a job cannot create – I want to be happy around other people. In my head, I see them yelling to me from across the street, inviting me over to their house for Passover, wanting me to meet their families. I see myself living with people not bound to me by blood, but who love me like blood anyway.

My relatives' behaviour – particularly my eldest brother and my aunts – have led me to believe that blood may not be all its cracked up to be.

I see someone (not my mother) crying at my wedding, threatening my husband with grievous bodily harm if he hurts me and both of us weeping in each other's arms as I leave her at the airport. I see a friend trustworthy enough to be my maid of honour.

I want to feel worth my skin, of the grace God has given me. I want to be of some use to someone. A lot of use – indispensable – to others.

Why do I feel so tragic all the time? It's really tiring.

Wassalam and Fee Amanillah,
Zed.

#1

Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Raheem

Assalam alaikum wr wb,

Most of my posts are going in a general direction. But sometimes, I just want to have a chat and there's no one around to chat with, so I might just blather. Or rant. Depending on how lucky you are.

So this is the first of my blatherings.

- I miss my daddy driving with me to work in the mornings. He's so funny and cute and the more I talk to him, the more I realise what an extraordinary life he's had. Like Jamie Callum says, "When I look back on my ordinary life, there's so much magic though I missed it at the time." But I can't sort of sit him down and say, "Tell me the story of your life." It doesn't happen that way. Conversations are how it happens. Lots and lots of them.

But I cut him loose because it was time. It's time for me to find a way to be at least semi-without him. I will not be COMPLETELY without him. That's just not the way Asian families work and that's not the way I want to be anyway. But I do need to be something outside of here, outside of him and us and Mom and my brothers, at least some of the time. Because sometimes I feel stifled. Sometimes I need space and Asian families are not good at space.

- I posted this on HitRECord today:

"Bismillah.

The last time I left my office for work, I almost had a major panic attack. I staved it off and managed to carry on. The results, in terms of output, were not great. But I'm proud of myself. I really am. I managed to calm down without the drugs.

Without the drugs. Without the drugs. Without the drugs. That's so huge for me. Using the methods that I was taught in therapy, I managed to calm down. I learned something and I put it to good use. I'm really proud of myself Alhamdulillah.

Let my boss yell at me. I can't tell her I'm battling social anxiety. I won't tell her. It's none of her business. It doesn't matter what she thinks anyway.

Can you tell that I'm both scared of getting yelled at and proud of my strength at the same time? I feel like Jack in Fight Club smiling with a split lip and a mouth full of blood."

- I've been wondering about pain and why people give each other pain. I guess it's about power. I've been thinking about my abusive ex and now - just now, in fact…the tears are still fresh on my cheeks – I was thinking of my brother and all the awful things he said about Islam some years back. He was picking a fight. He was pushing a button. He was trying to hurt me, trying to make me cry. That's all it was. I didn't know anything. Why would he ask me if he really wanted to know the answers? I didn't know the answers and he didn't want to know them anyway. He just wanted power.

I'm proud to say that most of my life, I have never felt that corrupting power and I don't ever want to feel it. Alhamdulillah. God protect me. Aoudhubillah.

I guess human-on-human crime on all scales has always been about power and politics. No? Yes? I'll find out Insha Allah. As the prophet (SAWS) said, "Gain knowledge from the cradle to the grave."

Wassalam and Fee Amanillah,
Zed.

Personal Space

Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Raheem.
Assalam alaikum!!

So I live in an overpopulated area of a criminally wealthy city. No, literally – it's a crime.

Last Friday, I was driving home in the early afternoon with my parents and the teeming crowds were a sight to see. We thought someone had passed away or something had happened for there to be so many people on the streets.

It was a Friday and I reckon most of these dudes didn't really have anywhere to go or any money to spend once they got there. So they just – hang around. In the least cool, least mundane, least relaxing way. There were so many of them it seemed like they were just standing in their own square foot of air and that was enough for them.

In an effort to save some money to remit home, men are stuffed 18 to a room in these badly maintained old buildings. I've seen dogs and chickens treated with more humanity.

It got me thinking about personal space. I'm privileged enough to live with my family and have my own room (only in this fricking city would that be considered a privilege. In other cities, you can at least close the door.) When I was in Melbourne, we did this exercise in our performance class. We intruded into each other's space. For some reason, I decided to go for the most tender part of my partner's body and that was her Adam's apple. My partner (can't remember her name) pushed at my shoulder, almost pushing me away. I can't blame her. To this day, I'm embarrassed. I apologised after it was done, but I don't think it was enough.

Other people simply got up in each other's grill. Which basically meant inching closer and closer until they got uncomfortable. Which, for these two guys in my line of sight, was about an inch away from each other. Pretty darn close.

And to think that these men spend their free time that far away from each other.

I got to thinking about the times I've felt that feeling, of being closed, trapped and having no space to stretch. Physically, Alhamdulillah, I've not felt that very often. Emotionally though, all the time. People have circumscribed my right to express myself, my right to think, my right to feel, my right to write and be whatever I want to be. I have circumscribed myself, put myself in my own little cage – unconsciously, of course.

In the end, I think personal space (the physical type) leads to mental and emotional space as well. If you can stretch your legs and pace in your room, you can pace in your head as well. You can sort out your thoughts. You can stop your temper from flowing over, you can cry your eyes out if you want to (I know I have) – you can perform all the sorts of emotional maintenance you would want to after a long hard day.

What does personal space mean to you guys?

Wassalam and Fee Amanillah,
Zed.