Stung By A Bee

Last night my mom tricked me into sleeping at my grandmother's place in a village I really despise. We were supposed to come back in the evening, but it turned out she had other plans and I had no choice but to stay put.
It wasn't so bad. I had fun playing cards and all but still, I felt tricked. I wasn't there by my own free will.
After everyone went to sleep, I set my laptop on the balcony and sat there for a while. The power got cut and I was out of battery. While I was shutting my laptop down, to top it all, a bee stung me in my neck.
I am more pessimistic than ever these days. I am broke. I am unemployed with no prospects for a job. I am single. I am lonely. I am surrounded by all kinds of people but I am too impatient for people. I am not sure how that may be but I am.
The bee sting gave me the feeling of being bitten by a vampire, especially since the bee chose my neck to dump its poison.
I am not sure if it is the effect of loneliness, but I am having lots of illusions lately. Everything has a weird connotation to it. Maybe it is the boredom and not the loneliness after all.
Spilling white chawarma sauce all over my favorite top had a connotation as well, although I am not sharing this one.
I have nothing to say really. I thought the bee would cover a larger subject but it doesn't.

Reminiscence

When does one stop reminiscing on the good old days? Why did we fail to notice how good they were when we were living them? Why is it that we have missed on savoring those days when we had the chance to do so?

So many phases, so many friends, so many moments… Why did they seem so ordinary at the time? Why do they seem so special now? 

What was it that was missing then and what is it that they can fulfill now?

Most people’s memories are triggered by a place, a song, a situation… Mine begs to differ: it is triggered by its pure and simple existence. I keep finding myself lost in thought, going back in time, trying to recapture those moments and those friends in their purest essence. 

I look like I have moved on. I haven’t. My all remains in those days. Each meaningful day that passes keeps a token of me in it. My mind keeps living those days and those days keep hacking into my system in turn. 

I wish the relationship I have with my days is a platonic one, but it isn’t. It is definitely a lot more sadistic than I would have liked it to be. 

I can even find it in me to feel nostalgic about the bad days. I can’t push myself to regret them. Something about those bad ones, or something about me for that matter, just can’t overcome them. 

Do you smell unresolved issues? Ah well, maybe.

Do you think I might be a bit off? I am. I am not sure what the hell I am writing about. 

I am looking around me today, trying to do some effort, trying to fit in somehow. I can’t. It is as if today wasn’t in my calendar, as if I am being compelled to live a day I wasn’t meant to live. I was supposed to skip this day. 

Not that there is anything different about today. Today looks almost exactly like all my unemployed status days. I just don’t feel like living it today.

Because I Have Nothing Better To Do

I considered reading, but I am not in the mood. Instead, I decided to lose my virtual poker chips while listening to depressing songs. 

I am sure you have heard this advice before, but there is no harm in repeating it: Don't listen to depressing songs when you are already depressed. 

I am sure that like myself, you never listen to your own advices. 

Question: Are anxiety and impatience caused by depression, or is depression generated by anxiety and impatience?

Comes a moment when the only people you can stand are the exact same bunch who can't tolerate you at this very moment.

No need to elaborate on the ones you can't currently stand and who, for some reason, won't leave you the hell alone at least till it goes away. What would it be you may ask. I can call it depression but I am not sure if it is the correct term for it.

Whatever it is that I am going through right now, there are some adjectives that can describe it, but no scientific term that I know of that can give it justice by name. It is sad, pathetic and peculiarly mind numbing.

Did I bring this upon myself, or was it merely universal justice?

I am suffocating by the sight of the same people, over and over and over again.

Self esteem: Is it its lack or its abundance that is fueling this feeling?

I am in deep shit, shit caused by arrogance, stupidity and lack of analysis. I just throw myself into impossible situations. I am aware it is my choice. I still blame it on others. 

And where the hell is my stop button?? Just STOP!!

Lack of control. Lack of will. 

French rock tunes. I hope they help me out of this mood.

I Am A Sinner I Am A Saint

What is the difference really? It all boils down to what exactly? Everything is relative. What you may find wrong I may find right and vice versa. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending sinners or sins; I am just trying to figure it out. 

But wouldn’t you agree if I said that almost every pleasure on this planet is in one way or the other sinful? Not necessarily sinful in regards to one’s own, but perhaps to someone else. 

What are the rules? How far can one push the limits? 

I remember a civism lesson in which we learned that “your freedom stops when the freedom of others begins”. This is a literal translation. I am not sure why I associated it in my mind with the sinners’ subject. The important thing is that I did and now I should find the connection. 

Should I stop in my tracks and refrain what I am thinking of doing because it might be hurtful to others – though not so at all to me? Should others’ rights be respected by me? Are they really entitled for those rights? Why are those rights theirs and not mine?

I have tried to put myself in other people’s shoes. I couldn’t. I am not the others and the others are not me. I may never know the harm I am causing them unless I get to be in their position someday.

Till that day arrives – if it ever does – should I be blamed? Should I really care?

I am not a monster. I do have some feelings. I do feel sympathy for example. But I am also selfish. 

I am selfish and I am not afraid to admit it. Everyone knows it. It is not something I try to shadow. 

But how far can I take this selfishness before it gets me into real trouble?

Should I fear the trouble? Should I dread the consequences? Should I step back?

Should I this, should I that.

I wish the series of questions would stop at could I this, could I that. 

Because I could. Because I can. 

Because I want to.

Because in my twisted world, I want to, and in my compulsive mind, I have to.

Sorry for all the abstractness, but although I want to, although I have to, although I could, although I can, although I shouldn’t, I am not proud.

Uncertainty

I am not sure what to write about tonight. Eva said I should tell the exorcism story, but I had my mind set on writing the cat story, which leaves me uncertain...

I am going to take the request first and tell you the exorcism story. I am not sure if it could be put into words, if I can tell it again or if it will be meaningful at all, but here is how it went. 

My mother was convinced that all my bad luck was due to a higher, evil force and so when her colleague told her about an exorcist priest, she decided he was going to be the solution to her daughter's problems, the long awaited and finally found one. 

On Monday morning, she asked me if I was free in the afternoon. I said yes, why? *and that is when I learned that I should always answer with no, why* She said she would like me to go with her and my father to church tonight; there is a priest she would like me to speak with. 

I didn't want to disappoint my mother, I am already a disappointment to her in so many ways, so I decided I should go just for the sake of pleasing her, it seemed such a small effort to make. 

And so we went. I hadn't been to church in a long time, and it seemed that since I had last been to the service, they have added a load of prayers and rosaries prior to the actual mass, which left me feeling exhausted even before the service started. And when it finally did, it took yet another hour if not more to finish.

I am not sure how I used to withstand all these ceremonies. I remembered that day why I stopped believing in all the rituals and put an end to my practicing them. I couldn't stand how fake everyone was. How mean they were. How they said the prayers between their teeth while looking at each other with utter disdain. The rosary sounded like a school poem they felt forced to recite. The mass sounded like a test they studied hard to pass. And if you ask for my opinion, they failed miserably. 

No one seemed truthful. No one seemed there because they wanted to. They all somehow "had" to be there. They either had nothing else to do, either felt it was a duty they needed to fulfill. I so desperately wished one of them would smile or seem in any way sincere.

Anyway, it was what happened after the service that needs to be told. After having waited in a "queue" of people who wanted to meet with the priest, my turn finally arrived. I went in his too white office with my mother. What ensued was so bizarre I don't even know how to describe it, but I will try. 

It started as a simple conversation. But soon enough my mother told the priest that I haven't been going to church for many years now. This occurred right after I tried to pull myself out of the session by telling the priest that I had felt peace while in the service. She just had to tell him all about my lost devotion. As if I had defected from Christianity. I haven't actually; I just did from the church. 

This led to the priest asking my mom to leave us alone. And he started bombarding me with all kinds of unnecessary questions, not to call them stupid. He tried in every way he could think of to convince me to rejoin the church. He then proceeded to make me repeat some long sentences after him, and repeat them I did, until he reached the last syllable, and then I didn’t. It exasperated him, but I felt no guilt; I had warned him not to try with me from the very start. 

At the end of a frustrating hour or so, somehow the subject of my insomnia came up. And the priest’s face lightened up as if he had just found the missing piece of my puzzle. He inquired about my dreams, and when I said that my recurrent dream was cockroaches, he gave me the title of a book to read and referred me to yet another priest who would REALLY help me. 

I wasn’t going to go to the other priest if it hadn’t been for the first one who insisted in telling my parents about it, there was no escape from going after that.

A couple of days later, I went to see the other priest. And I am not feeling into going into lots of details anymore, but the essential is that he performed the same ritual on me among many others in the church’s yard. It was an absolutely ridiculous ritual which involved him and another priest praying over my head and blowing “the Holy Spirit” IN MY EYES and noticing that when they blow their disgusting breath in my face, my eyes TWITCH!!! Oh yeah, they twitched!!!! And that of course meant that I was “possessed” by something and the treatment includes taking off my “Satanic” pendant (it was just a random piece of metal!!!) and puncturing the bottle of holy water with a pin and spraying the water every night in the house in the form of a cross. I would also have to come back next Thursday and bring with me water, olive oil (not frying oil) and rough salt, they would “pray” on those too and give me the guidelines on their usage.

Needless to say I never went back there.

The Good Life

There are some moments in life that makes it all worth it somehow. Those moments are scarce, they are short, but they do exist. 

I had one of those moments a couple of nights ago when I was with my friend at her workplace. We had just finished dinner and were about to head to the coffee shop. But since she still had some things to finish, she suggested that I have an espresso while I waited. A Nespresso to be more exact. 

You might not know this, but I love coffee. And I came to love it even more that night. 

My friend offered me a selection of Nespresso with the catalog to choose which one suited me better. I went for a Ristretto, the one with the highest "intensity" she had available, and she placed the matching Nespresso longo cup in the beautifully carved machine, and when the coffee was ready, we waited till the foam seperated from the coffee and floated on top of it. 

That was a beautiful cup of coffee. A truly amazing one. It looked great, smelled fantastic and tasted wonderful. 

That cup of coffee had me dreaming of someday owning the same coffee machine with an even wider selection of Nespresso  in my own home, a home I am yet to buy, I am even a long way from buying, but still, a home I would like to have one day. And you know what you will get if you visit me there... someday.

Today I had another one of those lovely moments. And it seems food and beverage are my number one source for such moments. Because the moment I had today had something to do with sugary watermelon crushing between my teeth. It was so good I couldn't believe I had to miss on this taste all winter. And I am a winter person. But it seems even the summer I hate conceals in itself some good things it keeps stashed to compete with my winter. 

I know this must be disappointing, to feel the greatness of life in such petty things, but it is enough as long as I get to feel it, no matter through which means. 

I am having another great moment right now actually. The old singer guy with his Tarboush is sitting across me singing old Arabic tunes that I love and people are tossing coins towards him. I like this guy. I like afternoons sitting outside at Sassine Square, sipping my bad coffee and listening to this old guy. I just love it. I wish I had some of my friends with me, or that special someone sipping bad coffee with me too, but I think it is nice enough as it is. Company would have made it a lot better, true, but sometimes loneliness isn't so bad after all.

My Cat Made Me Cry

It is true. I am not sure if this should be ranked as embarrassing and pathetic or as sensitive and fragile. Mainly because I am not sure which of the aforementioned categories I actually belong to. 

I never thought that I could be so much moved and annoyed simultaneously. I am not sure which of these feelings dominated the other or which was the actual ignition for my tears. Nevertheless, I cried. I cried like I haven't cried - or allowed myself to cry to be more specific - in ages. 

In fact, I am lying. Not too many weeks ago I cried endlessly. But it had been a long time before that time since I had cried. And this is the truth.

I used to cry effortlessly before. Now it takes tons of problems, a huge amount of stress and exaggerated emotional wounds to topple one over the other to make me cry. And they are never the direct reason for the flow of tears. It is always another irrelevant yet significant incident that gets me going. 

My cat is in deep agony. She is a fantastic cat, but like any cat, she has reached that period where she needs to mate, and it is torturing her so much that she is spreading her anguish all over the place. It is distressing us all. We haven't slept in a week. We are kept awake by her constant never-ending mewing, if that is what it is called, because I am pretty sure there is another word for the horrible sounds she is making while she turns on her back and starts rolling around. She is growling, she is hissing, she is shrieking, she is screaming. 

Tonight, I was alone with her. I begged her to stop it, to shut up just for five minutes so I could catch up a bit on my sleep, to do me the favor of going back to being a "minor" cat that is just fuzzy and cuddly; she just wouldn't. She kept looking at me with those big passionate cuddly eyes while rolling over herself under my feet. I am not sure what was the first thought that came into my mind that second, but it was followed by a quick bunch of other frustrating thoughts, and all of a sudden I felt deeply depressed and tears came down flowing over my face. 

Yasmina - my cat - understood. Don't ask me how, don't ask me why, because I am anything but a cat expert. She just did. She stopped all the sounds and all the movements. She climbed up next to me, tuned around me cuddling my back, sat on my left, and she looked at me with the most understanding look ever, a look so piercing with sympathy and perception like you couldn't believe. She started caressing my hand with her paws. Yes, my cat cuddles me just like I cuddle her. It was her apology to me. And I accepted it with a wide open heart. 

Don't you dare laugh at me. This is an absolutely true story. You could always ask Yasmina if you don't believe me. You probably should actually; the communication I experienced with this tiny beautiful cat tonight was far beyond any I have had with another human being in quite a while now.