# 56 || Petrichor (n.) the smell of the earth after rain.

I.

Hypocrisy has forever been one of my biggest fears. The idea that I could potentially pass judgement onto another soul for a sin that I too am guilty of committing — that terrifies me. Which is why, unless my emotions get the better of me, I contemplate just about everything, I turn every thought and notion inside out until there is no way it couldn’t possibly not make no sense (triple negative???!!!). But within those twisted thoughts, there hides the devil in the details. And now something that was completely coherent at the beginning, through over-rumination, is now complete lunacy. There is my second worst nightmare — misinterpretation and feeling wholly misunderstood. I think psychological solitude is one of the most terrible sensations I have ever experienced. When I was a very little girl, I realised I had the tendency (albeit infrequent) to become moronically obsessed with certain possessions, places and / or persons. This habit would only ever delicately reveal its madness, and being a child, people would often think it darling that I would beg to see the same film at the cinema several times, bringing a different doll with me every time. Her name would often convert to whoever my favourite heroine was at the time. Between make-believe friends and infinite stories about a petite fille with long hair, ten brothers and sisters, three cats, two dogs, a bird and a rose garden, I never had a lot of time for reality and the untimely blow that is real life and the inconvenient truths that accompany growing up and figuring out the world that we live in.

II.

I’ve now come to realise that it’s not so darling to convolute one’s dreams to the point of self-destruction. Growing up only refined my imagination to a somewhat gluttonous manner of fantasising which fed my faith that everything really would be okay in the end. Which is why I’m left so desolately confused at why lately my heart feels so heavy I can hardly retrieve the bravery I need to remember why it is we wake up every morning with the courage to love and learn and locate the light that is supposed to make everything worthwhile. Maybe this is just another one of my existential crises but I just can’t find the light. The strangest thing is that I remember where I left it but when I went back to find it, it was no longer there. When the void seems infinite and insatiable, I don’t know what else to do, or where-else to turn. There is no band-aid, there is no kiss-it-better. Because when all the tender emotions melt away, all that’s left is an indescribable hollow ache of not feeling so distressed anymore but in its place is some kind of sinister sea filled with something dark and forbidding. Every morning, I wish the monster would swallow me whole.

III.

x

# 55 || IL Y A UNE LIMITE À TON AMOUR

~~~

Dear _ _ _ _,

Retrospect won’t help you here.

Once upon a time I thought that there were so many billions of people on this earth that there was no way the emotions vibrating through my head and my heart could possibly be unique. For all the books that I’ve read and the songs I’ve listened to and the films I’ve watched that illustrate love and loss and tears and joy — they all spoke of that void ( and the infinite pursuit to fill it ) so eloquently, I really believed that I wasn’t riding alone in this carriage on board this train of thought. The limits of just about everything will never cease to impress me. I always believed anything and everything magical would trump all things scary, sad and solitary. The notion that happiness isn’t infinite, has been the most acute wake-up-this-is-reality call that I have ever experienced. In what world is there a limit to love and time and nights that made you so happy you thought you could fly? I don’t believe you can lose that kind of perspective - for every broken heart, for every winter night, for every nightmare, they would never have to re-occur for me to take the indescribable love, the summer days and the jogging gorgeous daydreams for granted. 

All the wisdom and well-wishes in the world couldn’t possibly take this ache away. If anything, the copious distraction leaves a trembling sensation of apprehension in the pit of my stomach. Diversion is unsustainable, but when even the truth can’t save you - what will? Maybe it’s the fleeting kindness of strangers, your to-do lists and all their neutral purpose, the sunshine peaking in between the clouds and thoughts from across the sea. If it’s not enough to convince you that life is worth falling in love with, perhaps it can help you keep even one thread of faith that it isn’t all as bad as it seems.

Isn’t it bizarre that at the centre of the world, emotions are more powerful than the truth, than reality, than the tangible sensation of the sun, the air and the skin of somebody brave enough to conquer your made-up-mind? Indeed there are things that you’ll never be able to let go of, and perhaps the memories of what was will always make you cry. But if what you crave doesn’t even exist anymore, then what? If you ache for a memory, then even when the nostalgia becomes too much to bear, there isn’t much else to do other than write about it and make yourself a cup of steaming hot tea. Isolate yourself, listen to some lullabies and make-believe that who you were before this happened is worth becoming once more. And like always, it’s easier said than done.

( “ i know you’re tired of loving, of loving, with nobody to love,

nobody, nobody !” )

Love,

A.

PS. There are no words of gratitude powerful enough for me to articulate my thank-you to the priceless company and the ceaseless surprise that despite not deserving the time of day, I’ve been given hours of love that I hope one day I am powerful enough to reciprocate. Merci, merci, merci.

PPS. "'The real hell of this,' he told her, 'is that you're going to get through it.'" -- G. Caldwell.       

~~~

XOXO

# 54 || serva me, servabo te

( For Taylah, Forever Ago )

Reciprocity and the golden rule is far easier said than done -  the volume of unrequited everything these days is absolutely devastating. I don’t know what comes of any desire derived and designed solely for selfish incentives. Often though, you can get so caught up in the self-satisfaction of gladdening the world that everything else falls apart. Suddenly you’re standing amid a mass of debris that was once everything you ever wanted but it was all too magnificent, you became overwhelmed and you couldn’t sustain it. Or maybe that is the way it is supposed to be, maybe that’s existence, maybe the highs must have their complement of lows but I can’t let myself believe that. No, no, non, I cannot accept that the meaning of life is to pick yourself up and dust yourself off every other day, that the wind of one door closing opens another, that letting go of something or somebody or somewhere you love beyond description could possibly be an option.

Though at some point, maybe you do need to get off that merry-go-round of tears, trouble and trials that you stand no chance at winning because safety and security will always worth settling for. It makes sense because the only sort of love I know, is the kind that rips your heart apart at the seams before standing back and daring you to stitch all the pieces together and make you As Good As New! Or better, even. Maybe mediocrity must be my new normal, before all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t possibly put me back together again.

Dear Yellow-Brick-Road, why would you ever intertwine my path with some things so incredible, but so momentary? Incredible might be an understatement, or it might be the wrong word completely. Because this sensation inside my soul is both inexpressive and intangible - I feel so shamefully naive to think that I might have been worthy of a fragment of fairytale. Even now, I still haven’t figured it out — but maybe it is better to have never loved at all, than to have loved and lost. Tous les jours je me réveille dans un cauchemar. And it’s not a mindset, it’s more real than I ever thought possible.

In a moment, something stole the magic and put it somewhere secret. 

 In a moment, I am everything I swore I would never ever be. 

  In a moment, down went Alice after it . . .

    never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

PS. I'll tell you a secret. It might not keep you sane but it will keep you alive. You're better than this. You're better than expectations and entitlements and disappointment and despair. It's okay to want it all to go away as long as you don't. x

# 53 || PUTFLOWERSINMYMOUTH

Metaphorical loss is a hard thing to write about, because at some point rationality makes even less sense than irrationality and the sane part of your mind can’t figure out why the ache has settled somewhere so deep in your heart you can’t even find it, much less save it. How do you make it stop? Why did everything start sinking in the first place? I can realise, acknowledge and interpret most things, but it doesn’t mean I’ll ever understand it. Much less come to terms with anything. There are too many steps to acquiescence, I don’t know if I have the motive to figure out how and when and why, or the most important —- where now? Love, in its purest and most platonic form, might be the essence of this damned sensation. Who do I seek to blame or beg : to insist that I am too small, too afraid and too delicate to try to figure this one out?   

There must be some way to invert it all, replace reality with a dream and maintain that these daily motions don’t matter and the real world begins when you lay your head down to sleep. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to take, If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. His Love to guard me through the night, and wake me in the morning’s light. It’s all topsy-turvy now, and I can’t seem to find my collection of clichés to reassure me that this is all happening because it’s supposed to. When I was a little girl, my mama told me that if you make a wish and it doesn’t come true, then it’s either because that wish might have hurt you or because something even more magical is on its way. Je te crois Maman, I believe you but only because I see it all around me but that magic keeps a safe distance from my soul. Winter seems to have stolen the light, I can’t find it, it’s hiding, where are you? 

 

Ready or not, here I come.

PS. ( God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. )

PPS. And the spirit and tenacity in locating the effort to do so.
PPPS. And the desire to pick myself up, again and again and again.

PPPPS."You think relationships are difficult? Try friendships. Try courting someone in order to convince them to join you in some nameless, shapeless Platonic complication — forever. Convince an adult stranger that you are worth a healthy slice of their limited time and energy without the prize of sex or romance." — Laura Jayne Martin

# 52 || " all secrets sleep in winter clothes "

Nostalgia, for me, lies in a hereafter that might never come out to play. Do you ever ache for the things we thought we would have time to do and the places we thought we would be able to see? But then the present moment slips between our fingers and suddenly the opportunity is forever lost. In fewer seconds than I have fingers on one hand : there stands a past, a present, and a future. The truth is inconvenient, temperaments transform and emotions you once thought were eternal suddenly don’t even exist and you can’t remember how you thought they ever did. I’m not the only one who is transient, we all have potential to be something we weren’t ever, somebody beyond our wildest dreams —— for better, and for worse.

I remember instances that never actually occurred, they were the daydreams I indulged when my eyes are gazing out somewhere far far away, and my head is even further off, somewhere among the stars. There we were ( toi et moi ), in my daydreams, where we all have wings and I can feel your hand in mine. There are meadows that stretch for days and it’s only nighttime when the clouds miss the stars and the sun howls for the moon. I remember sand between my toes and the wind tangled in my hair along with the sentimental secrets I didn’t think I had to say because I thought we had forever. 

( i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again )

Nothing lasts forever —— for better, and for worse.     

The past is irrelevant if the present can conquer what has happened, and what is yet to come will trump the present. It's never ever too late for redemption and recovery. From the bottom of my heart I believe that time is all we have on our side. I believe that fear and patience and space and settling for something short of what you deserve is incredibly unnecessary when you never ever know what kinds of things will come out to play tomorrow. Love now, love now! Before it's too late.

Lately for me it seems so imperative that I fashion the environment I reside in to reflect everything I’m thinking, it’s necessary that the happiness is present regardless of the set of circumstances. Expect nothing from your circle of comrades, and that includes your lovers, for the transience is beyond our control sometimes. Let solitude become the constant and company become a complement. 

There are nights where it feels like there is a full moon but there isn’t. I’m learning now that winter nights can be just as romantic as laying in a bed with sandy sheets, beach hair and saltwater dreams. Mulled-wine induced blurry conversations with profound fragments that will never ever leave you — — trust is a two way street, don’t ever bargain with secrets and stories that sting to say … I think people become a little selfish when the sun takes a little longer to wake up in the morning.

( image taken by emma matsuda )

I don’t think I have ever been so simultaneously disappointed yet enlightened and inspired by human behaviour as I have this past autumn. But it’s winter now and every day is still so full of surprises. Dear Society, you’re a crazy breed. Love, Afifa x