Pain, He Who Works Unpredictably

I have lived a life now for not too long but much to understand quite a lot of aspects of pain. Pain is not what we all think it is. Pain does not come from disasters we think will hurt us. Pain is not planned. To be clear, you cannot exactly expect yourself to know beforehand if a certain problematic situation or tragedy will sink you in pain.

People are usually called sensitive towards problems that often are not or might not be something most others react to with severe negativity. I would like to say something I tell my friends and people around me all the time. Everyone has their own meaning to any emotion. Not every lady falls for the charming, young man opposite their cubical at work. Not every man walks around seeking a female to take home for fun. So why must I get blamed for the happenings that bring me into tears and the ones which do not?

Emotion is not something that is necessarily felt with tears or laughs. I might cry if my grandfather talks about his last days but I might not the day he goes upstairs. You might fall in melancholy when your favorite singer gets injured. People will accuse you of being a dramatic, weak human, what not. But just maybe, this singer was the ‘unimportant’ reason you are still alive. The days you were almost more than half way out of your window or the days you possibly would not have gotten out of the bathroom sooner or even the days when suddenly the knife in your kitchen felt symbolic, his or her songs were there for you. The songs which contained words no other could sing better. The songs which made you smile just in one beat or melody, the songs which, word by word, sunk your heart into so many colorful feelings, that is something the accusers and criticizers will never understand.

It is our duty not to fight back the critics but imply, they are probably suffering pain as great as ours. As to defending their own heart, they have a tendency to torment others. Maybe, making others feel a little less satisfied with their life will help in making theirs’ better is what they inwardly think behind the shell of what we call innocence. Pain makes you stronger, the bigger it gets.‘You must not let pain get the better of you’ is a saying which has been heard quite a lot of times but never been clearly listened to.

For all the people suffering for whatever reason they feel, remember, this indifferent world is only testing you for your hardship and strength. Your hardship and strength is what lies deep beneath the feet of Pain that has grown stronger by time. Unleash it by walking over Pain that itself diligently awaits your defeat against him. On top of all, show the critics a good example of what they even are capable and of how they too can omit the anger and despite and indulge in joy once again.

-Iman Javed

Burger Aficionado. Crazy but Preppy Muggle. 

Heartless Angel by Jason Covert

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Chains of Glass- Part 1

Sometimes, several times, I think I saw evil in me.

I hadn’t grown up in a bubble; I was raised in an enormous oblong glass box. The extraordinary thing about this glass box was that I could see everything of the world without. But to that world, I was completely invisible. The box was impermeable, it was impossible for me to shine in the radiance that showered around it. The glass simply reflected its bright glares. None of the beams reached within.

But that never really bothered me, I was too busy looking outside. There was too much light inside the box already, and the glass just trapped it within. And almost always, it fluoresced.

Yet, sometimes, many times, I think I saw darkness- outside, inside, and either time- in me.

If I had had a desire, even just a slight yearning, to shatter this glass that interposed, like I wall, between me and this world outside, this glorious existence that I could only see, sometimes smell, almost taste, but never feel- it wouldn’t have been sinful.

It’s not sinful to crave what you don’t have. It’s human. For as alluring as this world was to me, I knew, and I could tell by the lust in their eyes, that this invisible sanctuary of mine was something they could die for, and they did.

In that was my sin.

When I was a child, the bad times drifted past. I later learned there were several, but my memory could hold only a few. Those it did, I accepted. It didn’t matter whether it was losing a parent or moving into a large glass box. I simply accepted, maybe a little too easily.

In our world, outside the glass boxes scattered miscellaneously, there are always bad times. Or in other words, times are always bad. As you grow, you become more sensitive to pain, to sorrow, to despair. There is so much of it to feel in this world. Too much. It’s unbearable.

Wars were raged, are raging and even now, are promised to be raged, from north to south, east to west. Then when they get bored of their enemy, the wars still rage, this time north to west, east to south. Peace is nowhere, not in any country I’ve heard of. Their wars only rattled the serenity within our sanctuary of a glass box. 

(...to be continued...)
- Bushra

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A Tortuous Path

Life is harsh and it is tough

The surface isn’t smooth, it’s very rough

Why do I feel so much pain?

Am I in a desert where it does not rain?

People on this planet are as clever as fox

Everyone I know is rigid of their orthodox

They are mean and they believe in selfishness

I am afraid of their evil plans and fiendishness

Their tongue seems to be like a dagger

In their eyes everyone is like a begger

Their behavior is a cause of stress

Others they just want to suppress

It is sturdy but you have to survive

With strength will you have to strive?

- Faruk Ahmad, 14, Pakistan

Amazon Under The Boom, courtesy of www.gogallery.ru

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Rejection

It’s almost as though you know it’s about to come, that suffocating second right before it finally knocks on your door. You’re expecting it, you can almost feel the pressure of the universe forcing it down upon you as it draws closer…and you try to push it back, fight it, inhibit it…just slow it down, if that’s all that can be done.

But it’s going to come anyway. So there’s a part of you that’s simultaneously bracing for the impact. Readying airbags, that just ain’t full enough. Trying to cushion the hurt, when you know that nothing can absorb that shock. Not fully. In fact, not at all.

Because no matter what you do, or how hard you try, it will strike you just the same. Just as hard. Just as cruel as it’s supposed to. How can you tell pain’s been muted anyway when it comes back rolling every split second like an indestructible current of thunder?

And when it strikes you. It’s as though a part of you’s been pushed down somewhere. It sinks. A weight falling on your intestines. Pressing against your heart. Pursing your throat. Leaving nothing but a hollowness inside. They say there’s nothingness in a vacuum, then why is there pain?

It comes for many different things. I want to tell you it happened to me for something that hurt so bad, if only I could explain it to you. But beneath your sympathetic gaze and comforting smile, I can tell what you’re truly thinking. At the moment when I least want to read your mind, I can see your thoughts plastered on your forehead.

For all you really want to tell me is, you know what really hurts the most? No, you don’t. You haven’t been there yet, you’re still caught up somewhere else, you just won’t get it. What you’re going through? It’s just a phase and it’ll pass. And you’re letting it break you?

So, I begin wishing I get there. To that point when I’ll finally ‘get it’. When maybe, at long last, it’ll become perfectly valid for me to feel the way it does. When I wouldn’t have to explain it. Or fight it. When I can just let it overwhelm me as it’s supposed to, whether I like it or not. And it needn’t be understood.

You won’t be judged. You won’t be ‘insecure’. You won’t be scoffed at for being ‘weak’…or ‘naïve’. But it’s not them and their faces that hurt. It’s not their laughter, casually cruel or unwittingly innocent. It’s that face inside of you, scorning you for your own vulnerability, that you see in the reflection of their pupils.

So you know you’re hurting in your pain. And punching yourself down inside a little further each passing moment, that strange part of you that knows so much, yet acts like it knows it so little.

How can you blame the world for bringing you down? When you do it to yourself…

Who’s to blame? Who is the cause of this? What is that fault that needs to be fixed? That blotch that needs to be obliterated? That cavity that needs to be filled?

Where can I find it? Fill it. Crush it. Bind it. Fix it. Kill it.

End it.

And let it never come back.

Where?!

- Bushra
Based on a recent conversation, true events, and things that happen to all of us, all the time.

Narcissus by Caravaggio

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