Hesitant (but hopefully not for long?) I'm officially starting to crack. And I'm not the only one. And no that isn't a comfort. I held out this long, I guess, because I'm the smiley one, but now I need a smiley one, and nobody's ready to switch places yet. And that giggly tone of voice isn't as reassuring when it's forced, and i'm losing the ones who befriended the laugh without befriending me. My brother calls my need for true connection and nothing less integrity, I call it socially devolving--either way we both agree I need some air. I feel guilty for wanting air when the world is on fire. It's pretty creepy that the news has become my window to the city. It was easy to paint away my life on the outskirts (of everything) when I knew that CIC was still screening artsy films, schools were still trying to reach children, the people I could make friends with were still dancing through the traffic and the 9 to 5 and the "see you Friday"s ...and I felt like they were all kind of waiting for me to eventually sort things out and be a grown up, so I let them wait Nobody and nothing is waiting now Everyone and everything is shoved into the same uncertain place I was living in I could handle not knowing what I was going to do with myself It's harder feeling that my country doesn't know what she's going to do with herself It's hard to call her my country--I didn't feel worthy of her before, even with all her flaws I always felt like the half breed who dropped by but would never really feel all the intricacies of what it was to be here, to live here After so many Egyptians showed the world what it can mean to be human-- I feel like an alien who was lucky enough to find the right credentials in her wallet I'm Egyptian and it meant something and it means something else now...maybe something more-- but honestly, I still don't know what it means to me Not an identity crisis--it was never so dramatic that I'd call it a crisis, everything else was dramatic but that part was always just some tingly thing to think about in the background I know, i know it's small to think this way in the middle of the fight, in the middle of the fight that I'm not even fighting properly And I dont know why I'm not fighting, I dont know if it's because I dont want to scare my parents or scare myself or get sweaty when I try to say a slogan and my lousy Arabic reveals itself and I look like a foreigner and I cant get that stupid man who yelled at me for looking Asian out of my head or if it's because I dont have a BBM and now feel morally compelled to tweet information all the time or if or if I really believe I dont belong there anymore or even here, on the outskirts of everything I tried so hard to disappear, and then the world as I knew it disappeared. I'm scared, I've got to try to live meaningfully again, and I'm not sure I know how to step outside of my head-- This isn't the only fight I've been avoiding, and I can't avoid them anymore |