So I think I'm beginning to get to the bottom of this Alhamdulillah....

Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Raheem

Assalam alaikum wr wb!

This morning – big surprise - I woke up in a foul mood and a pre-packaged splitting headache. I had spent some of the night tossing and turning and didn't have a very restful sleep at all. The only thought in my head, try as I might to suppress it, was, "I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job." Then of course, since people's jobs are a large part of their lives, it became, "I hate my life. I hate my life. I hate my life."

I got to work. I can't remember why I called my mother, but I did. As the list of strangers to call this morning became longer and longer, I think I just wanted a familiar voice on the phone.

Well, she basically sounded off at me for some reason I couldn't express in a nutshell. I don't think she could either. Anyway, it isn't important. What is important are the questions she asked.

What am I frightened of? I am frightened of people.

Why am I frightened of people? Because I watched my parents get hurt, used and abused over and over again. People, even – ESPECIALLY – those closest to me, have hurt and disappointed me in the past in ways and for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom. And no doubt, they will attempt to do so in the future.

What can I do to stop being frightened of them? Let that pain – both past and future – go. People can be anuses. People can also be angels. Every single person I meet has the potential to be both and I can't control which way they decide to swing.

What else am I frightened of? That overwhelming success I had at the beginning of the year without even trying that hard. I faced a wilderness of choices that all felt right and all felt wrong. It was sheer torture.

"Our greatest fear is not that we are weak, but that we are powerful beyond all measure." Damn right. I fear that I will find myself swimming with sharks if I venture out into the open sea. I fear I will not consider myself worthy, I will allow myself to be chewed up and spat out and then I will sink to the bottom of the ocean of mediocrity.

What else confuses me? God's love.

God loves me, it would seem. He loves me a great deal. But I can't for the life of me think why. God has blessed me with much material strength Alhamdulillah. But emotionally and sometimes spiritually, I am worn and thin.

I am frightened of being unworthy of God's love. I am frightened of straying off the right path as so many have here in this country. I'm frightened of becoming like Rochelle, one of the ugliest souls I've ever met.

But this sudden clarity comes here in this space of warmth and comfort – my pyjamas, my room, my house. Will I feel this way out in the field or will the fear return?

What is fear really? I'm no scientist, but it feels like fear is trying to keep me alive and keep me safe. So this self-protection mechanism is faulty. Real faulty. I suppose I have to reprogram myself.

Cheers, me dears.

Wassalam and Fee Amanillah,
Zed.

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.

Mama, it's not your fault

Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Raheem and assalam alaikum wr wb,

I created this blog many moons ago because my friends said they enjoyed reading my Facebook notes. However, I preferred to shelter my thoughts by sharing them with the people I loved. So I kept my ruminations on Facebook.

But now, as my anxiety disorder threatens to boil over, I'm turning to people for help, even my boss R. who, up to this point, I have considered a demon from hell and a mortal enemy (Yeah, I have a tendency to be dramatic.)

She suggested blogging, saying that writing is always the best therapy for writers.

She might be right. Here I am then. It is worth a shot.

Anxiety used to be a friend – a little pussycat called Stress. It assured me that I was alive, that I was functioning. Once in a while, I would put it away, give it to my parents to look after and party like it's 1999 with my close buddies and my family. Over the years, it has grown to the size of a dragon. I imagine myself face to face with it, hot coals in its eyes, the steam rising from its nostrils suffocating me, its forked tail drawing me gently inwards, ever closer to its demonic jaws. But still it is a familiar friend. I might reach out to touch its scaly hide, made tough by years of shielding me from the outside world. It might be purr like the pussycat I once knew and together we will cry with our shared pain, big dragon healing tears.

But I have been told I have to banish my friend because it is stifling me, sapping the love and joy out of my life, murdering my creativity.

I went to my first counseling session yesterday. I did a very long personality assessment, not unlike those darn Tickle personality tests – though those help not a jot, of course. Some questions inspired a WTF response in me, like, "Sex just doesn't interest me." (It was a True or False questionnaire) Umm…no. Hell to the yeah, sex interests me. Especially with Jensen Ackles.

Others were like, "I feel sexier than most other people." Seriously? Seriously?? Is that a disorder? Narcissism, maybe?

Upon analysing my responses, I had learnt to respond to being spurned socially by self criticizing, by self-circumscribing. My social anxiety led me to feel inadequate as compared to my peers and I compensated by throwing myself into my books, since this solitary pursuit was comforting to me as well as assured approval.

I remember Dr. G telling me that my mother, for whom a structured life came very easily, might be the one whose approval I've been pining for all these years. Me, I'm not that into structure. This, I've always known - I've just suppressed to make her happy. I wanted to be a film-maker. She and I had unbearable screaming matches, because she could not bear the thought of me being a penniless and unsuccessful film-maker. So I turned to journalism instead, in an attempt to find an acceptable creative outlet somewhere. When I've tried to circumscribe my creativity by keeping it within the lines of "Plot, Characterisation, blah, blah", it has withered and died. Writing has caused me anxiety when it used to give me great joy.

I know my mother was just trying to protect me. I am the youngest, the only girl in the family and the one who was her baby for the longest. As all mothers do, she tried to mould me in her image. However, unfortunately for both of us, my nature corresponds more with my loosey-goosey clown-like daddy, whom I adore. During these troubling times, I've found a great deal of comfort with him. In his smile, so much like mine. In his incessant ability to crack jokes. In all of this love that I can feel, even when he looks at me. With my mother, I cannot escape the feeling that she is disappointed in me for my failed relationship, for my "illness", for my "weakness. She has more or less said it once or twice. Saying that I was "weak" for relying on my dad for comfort. Saying that I was worrying my parents sick. Of course, she kissed me and held my hand for the longest time before she told me these things, but my heart doesn't seem to have registered the impact of those actions.

I really can't remember everything my counselor told me yesterday. Which is bad, because I remember feeling a wave of relief when he told me that my cure was in my control. Unlearning these psychological responses sounds a lot more satisfying to me than incessantly popping pills.

All I know is that I've been suffering – tremendously. Life has become too much for me. I feel like the outside world is a wave crashing into me and my body is revolting, threatening to implode.

He told me not to think of myself as a sick person anymore. I just have a few kinks I need to iron out, that's all. As a result, I've amended the following poem that I wrote a few days ago:

My only prayer

I want to be young again
To look at a colour and feel its warmth stir some childhood memory from sleep.
I want to laugh and feel it vibrating in my rib-cage, my heart shaking too with mirth
Instead of shrinking away, whispering, "Liar."

I want the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days to mean something.
Something good.
I want to look back and see more than the funeral pyre.
The ashes of my past life.
When I have achieved this, I want a man.
I would say, "not just any man".
But no man is "just any".
I don't like skinny men or sloppy men.
Or smelly men.
Though I love scruff-muffins.
I like men who are lean, muscly, but not
Walking testosterone.
But none of that really matters
I want someone who'll sing along to Michael Jackson
With the top down on his new convertible.
I want someone that knows what my favourite colour is
What I need in my wardrobe
What size shoe I wear
How and where I would like to sell my words
I want a shining future.
A future of damp sheets, laughter and lazy Sunday mornings
Living room brawls and tears and Little Women
Dirty dancing and dirty jokes and dirty happy children.
Children
Flesh of my flesh
How I have yearned for you since my clock started ticking.
Why, Lord?
Please hear my prayer.
Please.
I have no other desire.
No other desire
No other desire.

Wassalam and Fee Amanillah,

Zed.