Child of the Moon Read online

  Or find a love that lasts more than three months

  So I went to therapy

  Secretly

  Because I am Lebanese

  And therapy is for crazies

  Desperately

  Because I am Lebanese

  And have to get married

  Fear of abandonment

  I leave you

  Because in my mind, you left me every day

  Conversation with my therapist:

  Q: Why is it so scary to look within?

  A: Because beneath the surface lie skeletons, ashes, and snakes

  Q: Why is it necessary to look within?

  A: Because if you don’t do it, you will become the ashes and the skeletons, and the one after you will have to look at a more horrifying sight

  Someone will have to do it, and it will only get worse

  Wall of anger

  Patriarchy

  Spiritual bypassing

  Cultural appropriation

  Instagram influencers

  My parents

  Big corporations destroying nature

  People who don’t own their shit

  Consumerism

  Capitalism

  Addictive technology

  Systemic oppression

  The things I wish she told me growing up

  You’re beautiful when you cry

  What are you feeling right now? Stay with it

  (A long hug every time a bomb exploded)

  You do not have to achieve anything for me to love you. I will love you even more when you fail

  You are enough

  Don’t rush in love, you are worthy of it, and only say yes when it feels right

  I am sorry I slapped you, humiliated you, and abandoned you. I am suffering myself

  You do not need to lose weight to be beautiful

  “All that you have is your soul.” — Tracy Chapman

  Never doubt yourself. Never let any man make you doubt yourself

  This is your life and your path, and I will be there to support you when you need me

  When you can’t love yourself

  Sometimes you wake up and you can’t love your breath

  Sometimes you go to bed and you can’t seem to rest

  They tell you you’re the best and all you hear is you’re a mess

  They tell you it is not your fault and all you know is you are the cause

  You read about self-love on the internet and the mantras lead you to desperation

  You buy the book on meditation and the breathing causes you frustration

  You empty the bottles on your shelf

  Then you shame yourself for shaming yourself for shaming yourself

  Until you break

  Your body hurts

  Your brain hurts

  Your heart hurts

  Your chest pounds

  Your legs stall

  Your back pain grips you

  Your gut wrenches

  You cannot connect the dots

  You cannot even discern squares from dots

  Your reality is a nightmare

  You cannot distract from the mental noise

  You have no choice

  But accept that today you don’t love yourself

  And that’s ok

  It is not hard to love yourself

  It is just easier to hate yourself

  Tomorrow is another day

  When nothing can take away the pain

  Sometimes

  Nothing can take away your pain

  No positive psychology TED Talks

  No guided meditations on Headspace

  No mountains of advice, suggestions, “I-have-been-there-befores” from people you love

  No Xanax, alcohol, burgers

  No social media scrolling

  It feels like you are stuck for the rest of your days

  And the rest of your days seem infinite

  You smell the flowers for show

  To show that you are in the present moment

  But deep down inside you envy the flower for its short life

  You cannot control the pathways in your brain

  As if your brain detached from your body and turned into a dictator

  But most people won’t get that

  They will say you are not trying hard enough

  You are causing your own misery

  Your negative thinking will bring you negative things

  Just change your thoughts and all will be jelly

  A bunch of rubbish that causes you suffering above the pain

  Let me make this easier on you

  There is no escape from the pain of life

  The betrayal

  The death

  The sickness

  The heartache

  I also say to you when you are in pain

  I humbly, silently sit here with you

  In awe of what it takes to be a human

  No words, no this, no that

  When your home is a faraway land

  Sometimes the only way to realize you have grown up in tragedy is to move to a faraway land

  Sometimes the only way to get curious about your origins is to leave the land of your origin

  Sometimes the only way to forgive your parents is to get to know them from thousands of miles away

  Sometimes the only way to meet yourself is to leave the place that shaped parts of you and also obscured parts of you

  Sometimes the only way to see the beauty in your culture is to wash yourself with that foreign culture

  Sometimes the only way to fall in love with your heritage is to realize that everywhere is a little broken in its own way

  Sometimes we have to leave our country, our home, our parents, our city, our habits

  Sometimes we have to hate, feel angry, reject, ignore, forget

  Before we can look back at home with gratitude and watery eyes that only can see that broken is beautiful

  Pain #1

  My body can’t find a nest

  My thoughts can’t seem to rest

  You want me to describe the pain

  It is one year old, it can’t speak

  You want to stop the pain

  It is generations old, it’s too much for me

  You want to soothe the pain

  It is closer to death, a place that you dread

  I can’t take it away

  You can’t take it away

  I give up

  It slips away

  Leaving traces of shame and disarray

  Pain #2

  I greet you not knowing your name

  Where do you come from? Why are you here?

  How come you haven’t left, after all these years?

  You said you carry gold

  Waiting to deliver to a host

  I see my reflection in your shiny offering

  I am the host

  You bow

  Hand me the gold

  And continue on your way

  Pain #3

  Understanding, analyzing, naming, categorizing, diagnosing, I have come to learn, won’t take away the pain

  Pain #4

  How can I be alone in feeling this, if we are all made of the same stars?

  I don’t want your pills

  I want your presence

  But I forgot you are busy

  The immigrant illusion

  America

  A land far away from war trauma

  I thought

  America

  A land lying on a daily trauma


  The many ways I suppress myself

  I feel anxious

  I eat ice cream

  I feel sad

  I compare

  I feel angry with you

  I smile at you

  I feel horny

  I tell myself it’s wrong

  I feel jealous

  I make you jealous

  I feel depressed

  I make myself busy

  I feel fat

  I read Vogue

  I feel joyful

  I worry it is not permanent

  Faith

  I can give you all the hope in the world, grandmother said to me

  But without faith it’s only a mirage in a desert you’re lost in

  How did we come to disintegrate?

  To not know where our grandparents came from but know what Jean the yoga teacher just had for breakfast?

  How did we come to disintegrate?

  To not know our deepest fear but know how a celebrity took their own life?

  How did we come to disintegrate?

  To not listen to our body’s cries for help, but listen to disembodied white men in power?

  How did we come to disintegrate?

  To not know what is entering our bodies, but know who is entering our colleague’s body?

  How did we come to not make our own decisions? Not think critically? Not ask why? Not look at our biases? Not examine our souls?

  Sometimes I daydream

  Sometimes I daydream about who I would be without the trauma

  Would I be pregnant with my second child?

  Would I be sticking to a routine?

  Would I be trusting what people say?

  Sometimes I daydream what my fantasies would be without the trauma

  Would I be making beauty with my hands?

  Would I be exploding the love in me to passersby?

  Sometimes I daydream what my night dreams would be without my trauma

  Would I dream about fantastical journeys into the sea?

  Would I dream about the planets and spaces in between?

  Sometimes I daydream

  Trauma robbed me of my potential

  May all my pain turn into healing so the women who come after me don’t have to carry it

  and can live their potential

  Him not seeing me is an ongoing grief reflected back in the oblivious faces of men who for reasons of their own could not see me

  Paris, 2017

  I was walking down a Parisian street with anxiety pounding in my chest. Suddenly without any warning, a torrent of tears erupted. I sat down on the front porch of a hotel and wept. Time disappeared. A flashback of my teenage self came to me. She was in such despair that she swallowed pills, hoping someone would see her. Her father found her, she was taken to the hospital, and they did not speak to her for months. Her desperate plea for help was met with complete abandonment. She never got the chance to mourn.

  I looked up and there was a new moon hanging in the vast, soft, Parisian sky, telling her everything was going to be all right. I hugged myself, and told her the same. For in that moment, she was alive.

  I felt a relief. I felt light. I felt free.

  It took twenty years to mourn the pain. It took two minutes to be free again.

  stoned to death

  I bloomed from the dead

  Sitting with the child of the moon

  I saw how much I have been avoiding her stare

  Her restless stories of being alone

  I find them old and gross

  The hole in her chest

  I turn away

  She’s a big mess

  Her tears that fall for reasons she cannot accurately recall

  When my mask falls, when the leaves fall

  The sadness in her eyes

  I turn away

  She’s a burden at best

  Sitting with her

  I am itching to leave

  Back out there, a world full of thieves

  In her cell, she waits for me as her only friend

  With the same patience and faith

  I am her person

  I am her only person

  I am her world

  I am her

  She is me

  Sitting with her I choose not to leave

  And the hole in her chest heals

  I hold her close

  Her warm tears melt my walls

  She looks up and sees there is no roof to her jail

  She can finally soar away

  A conversation with the moon

  I feel scared about getting older

  It’s ok. In my eyes, your youth is timeless

  I feel that I missed the boat

  It’s ok. My boat will dock forever waiting for you

  I feel that I am not enough

  It’s ok. You mean the world and the seven seas to me

  I feel that I can’t do it

  It’s ok. There is nothing you need to do for me

  I feel that I am too much

  It’s ok. You are just enough for me

  I feel that I am too little

  It’s ok. You are just the right size for me

  I feel afraid that you might leave

  It’s ok. I will be there and won’t leave

  I feel that I want to leave you

  It’s ok. Leave, and I will be patiently anticipating your return

  I feel that I love you too much

  It’s ok. Our love is beyond too much or too little

  I feel that I should have loved you sooner

  It’s ok. For you have loved me without knowing it since the beginning of time

  Womb

  For every second you felt unloved

  You have been carried by the moon

  It is never too soon

  To return to its warm womb

  Parents

  You cannot save your parents by making yourself more

  miserable so they could feel better

  You will save your parents by learning to love the parts of themselves they disowned and put on you

  And maybe they get a glimpse of the light of the moon

  And learn to love themselves, too

  But if they don’t, it’s not your fault, you have already done a lot

  you will keep hurting and

  re-hurting yourself

  until you realize you are

  hurting a child

  Moon cycle

  Every 29.5 days

  You started anew

  Teaching me how to love again

  Unconditional love

  Seeing me in despair

  The moon skipped its phases and went from new to full

  Healing is a long process

  My ship sails rough seas

  Sinks

  But I survive and build another ship

  My ship sails rough seas

  Sinks

  But I survive and build another ship

  My ship sails calmer seas

  Still sinks

  But I survive and build another ship

  My ship sails calmer seas

  Still sinks

  But I survive and build no ship

  I go to the sea on my own and swim

  I do not sink

  Grief #1

  Let grief destroy your walls

  Like a river raging through a broken dam

  Don’t listen to them

  When they warn you

  To rebuild those walls

  Don’t listen to them when they urge you

  To avoid the river


  Instead bathe in new waters

  Born again from courage, resilience, and faith

  Grief #2

  Behind the grief, the forgiveness

  Behind the forgiveness, the love

  Behind the love, more love

  Grief #3

  Mourn the many selves you have not become

  Mourn so you can make space for the self you have always been

  The body #1

  I finally stared at my body

  I found wound after wound

  I cried and I cried sadness from years of neglect and abuse

  I asked my body for forgiveness

  My body responded

  It never blamed

  The body #2

  These emotions are not going anywhere

  Ask your body

  The unconscious

  When it finally hits you

  You picked someone like your dad

  To heal what still bleeds

  When it finally hits you

  You are acting like your mom

  To release her guilt

  Craters

  The closer I got to the moon

  I saw its many scars

  And I knew it would understand me

  go into your pain and

  you can go anywhere

  Intergenerational trauma

  You came into an ignorant world

  Bursting with wisdom

  Ready to heal

  there is no sight more

  beautiful than a woman

  rising from the rubble of shame

  to be washed by the

  delicate hands of her sisters

  The only child

  “Your brother was shot and he died on the scene, you must go to the hospital to verify his identity.”

  I am not sure who said these words, I can’t recall the tone of voice.

  I rushed to the hospital repeating to myself: “It’s a mistake.”

  The nurse greeted me with a gaze full of compassion for the inevitable I am refusing to acknowledge. I felt the tears pouring as if the light in her eyes shined on the heartbreak frozen in my chest, melting its walls away.