The only way is way away

I had a dream that I was better at Arabic than I actually am. That I could speak it the way I would speak French before living in France, being able to pull the words from somewhere in my head. Of course I can’t pull them from anywhere and I don’t have an estimate on how long it would take me to learn it, considering I don’t visit my family in Morocco all that often, or even at all. I thought perhaps I wanted to learn languages to be closer to my ‘history’, but it seems as though I enjoy more the secrecy of being able to speak something that others can’t understand. It’s somewhere to hide words and feelings in plain sight. I would sometimes sit and spit Arabic vocabulary at him, hoping he would find any of it interesting. I told the children who I teach English what my favourite Arabic words were. They wanted me to write down some words for them, and so I did. The next week that I came to teach them, I noticed their father was using my scrap paper with Arabic notes as a bookmark. I’d written things like : Hotel فندق, dog كلب, hospital مستشفى. I don’t think they ever throw away anything that I write, which to me is so comforting, but at the same time strangely bittersweet. I suppose I never get to see these morsels of myself that other people are collecting or are witness to. Except for the deliberate poems and notes I had written to him that he had stuck to his wall. But those were just that, deliberate. I’d like to be remembered for something that I’ve forgotten.

I will wait a month, and probably longer, to get my bike fixed. I am afraid of cycling through the centre of the city. To be safe, a cyclist must be seen, but I despise being seen. I count Blue’s stitches again. One, two, three, four, five, six ! Not including the ladder of stitches up his side. I thought about what I would have done if he didn’t wake up from anaesthesia. I wondered if I would need another dog immediately, if I even know how to live without one at this point. Then I thought about the last time I took psychedelics. How I couldn't stop telling myself I was the divine feminine, mother earth, and laughing at myself for it at the same time. Oh, and who could forget the ruminations of “I don’t believe in Jesus, I can’t believe in Jesus, Leyla please you don’t believe in Jesus, do not start believing in Jesus !”. Alas, the psychedelics did not sway my faith, but it was strange to have been invited to a church service the next day. I had forgotten it was Christmas eve. I should have benefitted from a less religiously charged week to pull myself away from reality. But I had forgotten, I was crying over something, I think I was crying over him. I wanted things to feel different without hurting myself. Then my room was one big wave, my duvet one big palm that held me tight, and when I played, my piano sounded like a love I've never had.

I lied, I won’t wait a month, I went already. The man fixing my bike apologised profusely for having to take it away to the garage to be returned in two days. I told him over and over that it didn’t matter and smiled my biggest “really it’s fine” smile. I assured him by saying I lived in front of my university and that my bike is only for fun. For some reason that made him laugh. I rubbed my forehead aggressively hoping the mark from my helmet would go away. Why does everyone else look fine in a helmet except me ? I think it’s because my head is the size of some small fruit. I forgot how nice it was just to talk to someone. He asked for my name and phone number in order to contact me when my bike was ready. When I told him my phone number I mentioned the number “Quatre-vingt-dix-neuf” and when he repeated it back to me he said “Nonante-neuf”. I repeated his “Nonante-neuf ” and laughed. He laughed too. Then I remember he said he was Swiss. What an annoying thing for me to have pointed that out. The Swiss are right anyhow. Ninety-nine shouldn’t be “four times twenty and nineteen”. Even in Arabic it’s the same “تسعة وتسعين”. Perhaps there's some good reason ? Wikipedia tells me it seems to be the influence of pre-Indo-European languages. And in under 5 minutes flat, I have already lost interest.

I ask myself what I would need to finally be able to do what I would like to do. The same things arise. Time. Freedom. Community. Comfort.  I say to myself, with the gusto of a 15 year old tween, I've spent a life waiting and I don’t want to wait anymore ! But oh how cold it is to be in my house with all my instruments trying to scratch out a song whilst listening to my neighbour blow his nose louder than a trumpet and the footsteps of a housemate. If I were blessed with a big dark sound proof room perhaps I could be productive for once. I bought those gimmick ear plugs, the ones they advertise for gigs, and they seem to work a charm for studying. The only thing is, you can’t write music if you’ve deafened yourself with shiny metal and memory foam. At some point you’ve got to sing and hear yourself do it. But that means that whoever is in your vicinity must hear it too ? You would think by now I’d gotten over it, but writing with company feels almost perverted. It isn’t just fear, something turns off in me, it isn’t okay anymore to try and make something. It makes perfect sense then that I turned to writing essays, at first just for myself and then to share for some vague feeling of connection. No one knows what I am doing when I sit and tap at my laptop in the library. With my font on 11, my screen view on 75%, and a Times New Roman font, I am invisible. The same goes for my journals, where so far no one has been capable of deciphering my hazardous cursive. I could just as well be doing a Twombly for all anyone knows. 

I think I have listened to what everybody thinks at this point. Every gesture seems like a recurring and condescending pat on the shoulder. Crying alone begins to become some short routine or skit. It feels like every time I do it I am faking it. I break into tears and then they seem to stop just and quick as they started. The part of me that wants to keep it all together works incredibly hard. I sit and brush the tangles out of Blue. I brush away the next layer of shedding that would otherwise end up all over the apartment. A layer I would have had to hoover angrily the next time I needed some sort of emotional relief. Whenever I look at this dog I can only ever think of how he knows nothing at all of this type of pain. Or perhaps I liken him too much to that of an outside thing. I attribute an otherness that doesn’t seem accurate. He can feel just the same as I can, only he doesn’t have words floating around in his head. In fact, he's better at feeling than I could ever be. He cries when he must, wags his tail when he feels like it, and comes to lay on me when he knows that something must be wrong, something that can only be made to feel better by the weight of a large dog on top of a small woman. 

I like to smell people's vapes as they exhale walking by me but I’d never like to own one. I liken smoking a vape to children who suck on their hair. It’s probably more enjoyable than it looks but it’s a disgusting habit and your parents will be deeply disappointed in you. At the age of 6 or 7 in ballet class my teacher yelled at a girl for sucking on her hair. She told her that she knew a girl who had sucked on her hair so much she had died because of a hairball that built up in her stomach. Thinking back as an adult, I find it really quite silly. It’s not as though when sucking on one's hair, one sucks the strands whole, as if they were spaghetti. I’m not even sure any of the hair ends up swallowed. I recall many an adult explaining in vulgar detail the death of someone they ‘knew’ in order to make sure a child wouldn’t repeat a specific act. Is the threat of death the only thing that will make a child behave ? When I realised very young that global warming existed, and was convinced it would kill me, it didn’t change me into a polite young girl. If anything it did the opposite. I became anxious, erratic, and eventually begged for death itself to rid me of these mental preoccupations.

I spend one nice evening with a friend and decide that my misery isn’t worth throwing away my whole life for. I think, at least. 

I got told to go fuck myself on my cycle home from picking up my bike. I wasn’t sure what I had done. I didn’t cycle too slow, I stayed out of the way of other cyclists, I left room for those to overtake. Perhaps it was the size of my head in my helmet that was unsettling to this man on his scooter. Unsettling enough to ride beside me, continually mock me, ending it with a “va te faire foutre”. I wanted to call him, and then I realised the most important thing I had lost after breaking up. Just somebody there. I told myself that the man who swore at me and mocked me had his own problems, though I couldn’t empty my head of the thought that, for once, when I had decided to hold my tongue and not scream swear at someone in public, it had happened to me instead. I suppose it’s always a sort of “whose balls are bigger ?” competition. I debated hitting this man in the face too, right in the side of the head so his stupid sunglasses wound ping off his nose, but I know he would have thrown me off my bike and kicked it to pieces. Sometimes nothing feels more violating than being able to do or say nothing to an arrogant man. 

My week winds down but I find I’m only more wound up. Exams, a break up, searching for a new housemate, caring for my stitched up dog, and thinking, what the fuck do I do it all for ? To list these things is only to further draw a parallel between me and my fear of never really growing up. I spent enough time at an exhibition organised by a friend of mine to imagine a life in which I could be okay. The sun hits my face harder today, insisting me to be conscious of it. A forced feeling of presence. I can’t read so easily anymore. I will learn to drive a car soon. I know that three close friends will see me this summer. I need to fix the blinds in the living room. I must lay down. I should lay down. I’ve forgotten how to simply do or not do a thing. And then I start again. Stuck waiting.