To Eva

Dear Eva,
I get it now. I always used to think your "I close my eyes when music is playing because it helps me see" was just a romantic line of yours, you've always loved to make everything poetic. But I get it now, I do. I closed my eyes and saw him. And I swear to you, when I opened them, it was only him. I saw everything, Eva. The way the ghost of a smile would come across his lips at a certain part, or the way his fingers would slightly move of their own accord, I know he can't help it. Hell I even kept imagining what would go on in his head, does he miss someone? Does he ache?
You know how when you're longing for someone so much that you start imagining them everywhere? I don't even need to close my eyes anymore. I miss you. I've been thinking too much, too too much it's getting suffocating, I even had this letter in my drawer for three days, thinking, again, too much about whether am I gonna add in what I am going to write now or not. I don't know what's wrong with me, Eva. Or maybe I do, I know my principle problem, I keep everything unresolved and I bury them, the thing is they never settle, they jump back at me with so intensely I can't take it. I fall, I fall and I fall and I fall, harder each time. I am always scared of my next fall. In fact, I think I am approaching my next fall, I am approaching my next breaking point and I don't know what to do, I choke on my words, it's like I have this unbreachable wall, and if even I can't push through, how can anyone? Don't worry, darling, I am not asking you for answers; consider this is one of the bottle letters that never reach anyone. How have you been? How many times have you fallen in love since we last talked? Tell me all about it.
Love always,

To Tom (3)

Dear Tom,
I know it's been too long, but that was our deal right? We will never be superficial, we will never allow mundane details into our relationship, no ingenuity of any sort. So here I am, reading this book about lightness and weight and remembering you. I wonder how one could bear both the weight of their existence and the lightness of its insignificance, all at once. It's kind of funny; I've had this book on my shelf for ages and I only happen to pick it up when I am struggling with both contrasts. There's another concept in this book, this concept is "Es muss sein"; it's a phrase that means "It must be". Do you think reading this book at this exact time of my life is my Es Muss Sein? Isn't this the kind of coincidence you'd read about in one of your novels? Do you remember that time we were sitting on your bed and you told me "I don't want to wake up tomorrow, Anna" in the most casual tone ever, like you were asking me what are we having for lunch? It horrified me. Not the fact that you didn't want to wake up tomorrow, but how calm you sounded when you said it, because I know you, Tom, you're not the kind of person that can conceal their feelings, your voice always betrays you, so I knew you were feeling as calm as you said it and it scared me. I didn't understand, but now I do. I've always aimed for the lightness of being, but I can bear neither the lightness nor the weight of my being. I want it all to go away, Tom. I can't stand myself, do you think it will ever stop? In my lifetime, I mean, has it stopped for you? Talk to me, Tom, I miss you like hell. I'll always think of you as the most precious thing I've ever had in my life.
Yours always,

To Suzanne

Dear Susan,
I've been confined in a crappy hotel room for 3 days and I had a vision. I'll keep it to myself for now until my soul is sure of it, you know me, one day it's a vision, the next day it's just one of those dreams. I feel different since the last time we talked, Susan. I am more worn out, more heavy with sadness, with loss. No, I haven't lost someone, I've just been losing myself bit by bit. I am so detached from everything, everything. Last night I was looking at the sea and I had an overwhelming desire to dissolve, for all my particles to be scattered in it, never come back. I feel like I am not fit to be here, I am not made for anything earthly. Since I mentioned losing myself, I am losing my writing, too. You have no clue how painful it is to sit down and write these words to you. I am quelling an irresistible urge to crumble the paper and just cry. It seems like all the addresses I've be given for home are mistaken. I think it's absurd to keep writing this, I just can't, I am sorry. I'm only writing to let you know, I am fine, alive, and well.
Till we meet again,
Wed, 8:07 PM

To Ezra

I've been reading a bit about how drama originated, you know I have a thing for beginnings and first times, and I think of literature, and how it began. And because to me, literature and love are more or less interchangeable; one thing leads to another and I am thinking of the first two people to fall in love with each other in the history of mankind. Do you think the concept of love existed then? Did language even have the word love in it yet? Because as much as I love literature, as much as I love poetry, there's something beautiful about having no words, no language to describe your love; the frustration, the ache in one's bones to express something unearthly, something at the time they didn't even understand, didn't even know existed. It's enchanting to even think of. I am actually quite jealous of those two people because imagine feeling this thing which you have absolutely no explanation for, towards this one person out of all people in the world. This thing that makes you want to touch them, or look at them, or just hear them breathe. Then imagine touching this person for the first time, I mean, do you see what I am talking about? Because hell, this would the richest version of love that existed, not your first love, but _the_ first love. One more thing about love, I've always wondered how people know they're in love, and now I think I've figured it out. It's silence. Yes. Not just any kind of silence, because any two people who are comfortable with each other's existences can be comfortable with silence. I think there is a kind of silence that's exclusive to people in love, a silence that feels like poetry, even though there is no poetry whatsoever. Your mind is blank, you're not thinking of something poetic, in fact, you might not even be thinking at all. But the silence embraces you with a feeling that only poetry can grant you. And this is when you know you're in love.

To Tom (2)

Dear Tom,
I think I am stuck in some kind of loop. I keep going back and forth to the same spot, with the same pattern, it's getting kind of pathetically funny. If you open your top left drawer, the one you keep all my letters in, you'll find that I am right. I am tired. Exhausted. Drained. And by the way, speaking of repetitions, you'll also find these exact 3 words in almost (if not all) of my letters. The words are worn out. One thing changes though, Tom, and one thing scares me. The wall gets thicker and thicker. I try to say something, to tell someone, but the words that manage to fight their way up my throat bounce back at me. Hollow. Weightless. And not sounding like they're mine. It's why I haven't been writing, too. The distance between me and my words keep getting bigger (I'm going to entertain you with the fact that I've been staring at this for 10 minutes trying to explain how it feels to lose my words, but I think this is explanation enough.) I can neither use words to explain myself nor to understand myself, now. I am utterly and wholly lost. Things are piling up and I am starting to feel a little bit like the ticking bomb hidden inside a teddy bear in the movies. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. I don't know when I'll go off. I am so alone, Tom, and the reason for that is that alone is the only place I know how to be without being ashamed. Please send me some light.

Yours always,

I do not tell him

I am sitting in a microbus and the man next to me is getting a little too comfortable. I take a breath, and shrink myself in my seat, it's okay, we do this every day. Just 45 more minutes and we'll be home. He keeps touching my arm and I keep shrinking further. Another breath. I politely ask him if he can move a little bit to the right, he looks at me with appalled eyes, like I just accused him of something. Did I? I bite my tongue. I do not tell him. After all, you do not tell a random stranger these things, right? So I do not tell him. I do not tell him about the man who touched my thigh when I was a kid of no more than 13, then smirked at me, daring me to say something. I do not tell him about the man who threatened to slap me because I stood up for myself, or the man who spit at me for no reason at all. I do not tell him about the man who yelled "يا خول!" at me in the midst of a crowded street, I do not tell him how I felt then. I do not tell him about the boy who threw a stone at me and snickered with his friends. I do not tell him about how I dodge men in the street like my life depends on it, I do not tell him about how I'd rather walk through a thousand blazing suns than walk by a group of men. I do not tell him anything, after all, you do not tell a random stranger these things, right? Another Breath. He touches my thigh. Stomach drop. I pray. Even though God hasn't been exactly present. I wonder if the rules of physics would allow me to become one with the window next to me. I ask him again. He looks at me dumb and I envy him. I envy him because he is completely unaware of anything that does not revolve around his existence. I shrink and he stretches, like it was an invitation for him to take what presence I had and make it his own. He touches my arm, again. Fists clenched and jaw tightened. I can already feel my neck aching under the strain. How do you tell someone he's taking all the air you're supposed to be breathing for himself?
I am tired, of shrinking my whole being for men. I am tired of folding myself into bits, and bits, and bits so I can fit in whatever tiny space they allow me. I am tired of shrinking my anger so I wouldn't be taken for a (God forbid!) man-hater. I am tired of shrinking my niceness so it wouldn't be taken for an invitation to something I never asked for. I am tired of feeling like I do not deserve to occupy a place in this world.

To someone

Everything is piling up on me and I am crumbling down under the weight. I've been having more anxiety attacks lately, it's painful, and it's more anxiety inducing to go out of the house wondering if I am going to have one in the next couple of hours, to wonder whom I am going to be with, and whether I'd like them to see me this way, to wonder if I can keep it on the low, wait it out without anyone noticing. I haven't been kind to myself and it's not making anything easier. I drink coffee when I don't need to, I smoke too much, and I barely eat anything at all and when I do, it's mostly nothing my body can thank me for. The sadness is cornering and smothering me; and it seems like the more I try to look for the light at the end of the tunnel, the more the tunnel closes down on me that I don't know if I can make it out. I was looking at old pictures yesterday, and I saw my mom and dad. They were smiling, holding hands, eyes lit up, they were happy, and they had the looks of people who didn't know what was coming for them. Before that I had come home to my mom looking like she just made it out of a storm. Bags under her eyes, her face paler than I've ever seen it, she looked fragile, ready to be broken at any moment now. Her voice broke with every sentence she spoke to me and I had no words to comfort her with. You see, whenever I opened my mouth the words turned into air. Do you think that this is what life will do to us eventually? Maybe that's what it's doing already. Dimming us down, breaking us apart, piece by piece until all the light goes out altogether? I hope not. I hope The Smiths were right when they said that there's a light that never goes out, and I hope to all that's holy and sacred in the world that if there is, we know how to hang on to it before it's too late.
Anyway, I am still always trying to embrace all those who need embracing, and I am trying to weather the storm.
Love always,