The "I don't owe you anything" mentality and love as a utility rather than a luxury.

I think I talk about love more than I talk about any kind of philosophical thought. It's always been in my head from when I was a sensitive kid to understanding how others feel and also realizing that love is a social interaction. Being someone who has loved in many different ways, I've begun to understand how it actually works for me but also how it works in a communal standing, especially as a cross-cultural body. I want to explain in this how the "I don't owe you anything" phrase actively hurts the way love interacts in a social standing especially in a post-capitalist society but also how we need to view love as a utility that requires us to give people what they need rather that what feels good for them. This also isn't meant to say that giving up when necessary is the problem, like no leave your partner if they are horrible, but when things get hard we shouldn't just give up.

Falling in love is a very rare and abstract feeling that comes with a risk. Having a love that actually works to where it's concurrent is even more rare and has this incredibly amazing but horrifying feeling attached to it. For the past few weeks, I have been in a very great and growing relationship that has been helping me understand what love should look like and means which comes into the realization of why most younger relationships look incredibly bleak now.

Love isn't really about actual work anymore, it's just about quick gratification. In a post-capitalist and post-colonial society, we worked ourselves so hard and created such a strategic accompaniment to relationships that if they cannot be commodified and used to give you something, then it is not valuable. It comes with colonization and reinventing how social relationships work especially since in the space of how we analyze relationships, there are no more traditional values. We don't see polygamy working in the way of helping one another in a community but rather regard the competitiveness between women for a man's value. We don't see prior relationships as a way to actively learn how to love and be part of the youth we understand, but instead as a threat. It does again tie to the new patriarchy that has been tied to western feminism but also it goes back into entitlement. We have created a more selfish understanding of love in the sentiment of how it can serve us rather than it serve others and when we do that, we have fulfilled the colonial project. We only value other opinions when they serve the higher powers and to suffice ourselves because in the reality of it all, there is no other option but to have an all for one and nothing for all kind of love. According to this way of love, if the dominate party of the relationship cannot be served, then therefore it is invaluable. 

I say these things in retrospect to the "I don't owe you anything" mentality, due to the fact that we have used this as a way to shield ourselves from the reality of sacrifice that comes with love. We separate the way that love should work for others and instead when it gives us a slight inconvenience, makes us tired, or even makes us feel the slightest amount of annoyance, one would mention that the love I am meant to give you isn't yours anymore because I am giving this to you and now I can take it away. It falls back into the selfish attitude that capitalism has brought on to others but also how as individuals we see emotions as transactional. It gives into the idea once again that as you grow close to others, you need to live a fantastical life because it is the only outsource to give to others. Through this, love apparently can only survive if simple and when it isn't, the resolution to this is to leave and try again. It reflects back to how factory parts can just break down and we should be able to replace them when in fact, human beings are NOT machines. 

In retaliation to this, I think of love through the lens of being part of the diaspora. Imagine you have lost every single thing, ashes to rubble, having to restart your whole life, and you are still capable to love. The fight that comes with love and even if you feel guilty, there is still a beauty to be held with the vulnerability of your trauma and pain that forces you to give back. In the manner of being Palestinian, I have learned that our whole lives are only in regards to what you can bring to others as a sign of kindness not just as a sign of survival. The type of sacrificial love that is to be given not because you see yourself as a means for this person but rather that the love needed to keep others alive is a blessing to give to one another. Also desensitizing intimacy does nothing for anyone. I think the reality is that we've used trauma as an excuse to not love and when I say that I mean on all levels, on the scale of deep friendship or a romantic partnership. We exclude the need to extend our hearts to one another and end up leaving when it starts to get scary and I feel as though there is no true need to do that. I would not have cared so deeply if it weren't for the depth of my love from my mom and dad as well as as my friends and the reality of creating companionship that doesn't just ask for the easy things but also for the harder things.

 Lately my new experiences have been so rewarding and I cannot ask for more which gives me a chance to grow a fondness for the connections I seek out. It also makes me want to hold people more and more accountable now that I also have finally been understanding what a healthy care for others looks like and what boundaries look like. 

Grief

 Grief is such a complex feeling because of the weight the word has. You expect it to just mean the actual definition that it holds with itself. The American Psychological Association dictates it as,    

                    Grief is often distinguished from bereavement and mourning. 

So how could anyone possibly grieve anything that was never physical nor there in the first place? 

    There is a deep loss about the person I used to be and who I've become now. I hold in my doubts and let go of my peace when I'm in conversations, I get sporadic and create situations I wished never even existed, I get so excited and ruin potential connections that never had to get complicated. 

    I have been grieving the independent picture I saw of myself. There are lines of my past I choose not to look at. I keep reaching for a life that was never even really fully there and will never be there. I funnel and channel everything into moments that live on. At the end of it all too, there was nothing to be done. I have done a multitude of public talks, introduced people to hundreds of people, been nominated awards and after all that, there is still this burden that lays on the fact that I am not my own individual. I escape into a hole all the time of what my tiny body holds myself into. I teach children now that same age and I wonder at the confidence and pride they hold throughout the day as well as the pride I feel having the honor to be in their presence.

    At 13 I wanted to be a journalist. At 13 I wanted to write and tell the world my feelings on things where I could explore the complexity of every single thing I felt was complicated. I have not become this and in ways I am grateful that I didn't but at the same time there is a hole in my chest. I feel this burden of not being as efficient as I once wanted to be and that I'm almost stuck. There's a lot of deep emotion that I'm trying to let go and a lot of moving on I've done. Sometimes I wish that I was this image of a person I saw myself as this deep contempt writer when I was 17 but I hold back on the dream that never really flourished. I've lived multiple different lives and I get really upset coming to terms that academia will more than likely not be for me, that writing for a life time will burn me out, that my life in this bubble shell of a romantic entanglement might actually kill me. 

    There's a lot of reality that's been setting in and I'm still not ready in the ways that I thought I would've been and there is no certainty on what will happen in my life. I think at times I hold this standard that I need to live in my own shell rather than care about the standards I create for myself. I think there are times where I feel like I haven't done the work I've wanted to. In my little head, I always expected that Palestine would be free, that I would lead organizations forever and do the peace work I wanted to. I do still work with these goals, but I am not a superhuman. 

    The grief does still exist but at times as well too, coming to terms with reality is really the punch in the face. Not everyone is going to like you, your dreams are not really what you think they are, the life you try to develop can fizzle out and actively be destroyed. There is so much grief with that and sometimes I think of the fact that this could be a response to the system we live in but I'm sick of intellectualizing everything to where I can't even process everything. What is going on right now is life, not a system breaking me down, not a man actively ruining everything in my space, not the actions of feeling restricted from everything around me, it is the cause and effect of my own actions. 

    I've felt this mourning of who I once was for the past two months and since last week, there has been a shift simply because I learned I needed to just be quiet for ten minutes. There is a process of learning who you are and feeling unseen but in all seriousness, sometimes you need to be desired elsewhere. Sometimes that grief will overflow and leave you bedridden for months leaving you behind with a void, but the failure means you will have success elsewhere. As corny as it is, there really is light at the end of a dark tunnel.

    As I've begun to distance myself from the dream of academia and a lifelong pursuit for activism, I've learned my love is with teaching. I've started subbing and realized that all the wishes of being wanted have a deep value in the kids who see me. They ask me if I'm in bands, what kind of music I like, if I love drawing and what books I love to read. They wish to dream big and I dream along with them which in its own self, gives me purpose.

    It's worth mentioning that I am also barely picking out the fruit of experiencing a newer more calm life that I've never realized was for me and in ways, I am so grateful to be as open to the things. The patience I have learned with kids has given me the chance to understand and be forgiving to myself as sometimes the grief will overflow, but I will get a bucket and pour that grief somewhere else. 

an ode to friendship, studying, and love of life

I am officially a grad student now. I've developed this really intricate idea of who I am but also where I want to go because it has been such a long road since I came to UHD and created the space to venture into my own wants and needs. At 18, I had a concept that was rooted in this idea that if I wasn't loved by a romantic partner I was never going to be loved. This took four years to unlearn and then to develop into myself. I don't only owe a sense of respect to myself, but I owe respect to my loved ones who even when I would loathe away at my worth being gendered and set into a box that could never be closed. They knew my walls and where to step into the box of love. I've come to sit and realize, the selfishness that comes with depression and anxiety desert all the people that have sat with you when you cried to sad slow core. They make you desert that your value as a person should've never been sought out in unfulfilling relationships when the people who always mattered have always been there. I would've died if it weren't for Anita, Jasmine and my Parents. As trauma bonded as it may sound, there are anchors that can be cut and lost by a rope and if it weren't for the resistant chain that they held, all would've been lost. I seek out ways to escape at times with my studying and with this part of myself that I feel is so close to being the best I have ever thought about. I have gotten this Bachelors degree and I promised to myself that the learning never ends. You can be the smartest person in the room and there is still so much to understand and learn. I'm now going to UHCL for a Masters in Literature to continue on the work and to keep writing, reading and thinking and contemplating till I get to teach what I was taught to me and my peers. As time comes again and again, I've come to terms that all the pain, all the breakups, all the tears, all the times I could not get out of bed has taught me that every single thing that has led up to this moment was something deep with passion. I've learned to understand that passion isn't only shown through intimacy, it's showed through acts of kindness and generosity. I've learned that my love is not exclusive to the people I am romantically entangled with, it's with the debriefs at chess nights, noodle dinners, and talks in between climbing. I am not the depressed 19 year old girl who can't figure out herself anymore. I have flourished and created myself from bones and all. Things are aligning and shit will indeed hit the fan, but all of it will be with the cost of needing to learn things. I'm so grateful that life did not end when I failed a class, got caught up with the potential of addiction, and instead chose to regain my autonomy. Things have finally been flourishing. Life really is so beautiful.

The Texan Warrior

 I feel a warmth in my chest staring out with a blue-sky envisioning walking towards the house with the white brick alongside Andres. I’m beginning to feel at home and gaining an understanding of what this is. There are flowers in the front porch with the wisp coming around a turn in which we begin to understand that this fantasy hasn’t been real for the past 20 minutes. The weight on my shoulders is gravitating while I’m in deep darkness after this occurrence and suddenly I’m feeling my eyes pry open.

I tried to go back to my room in this time but was dragged by a blurry vision with a barely recognizable face and fabric covering. It’s 4AM, I must wake up for Fajr, eat the first meal of the day, pray and then proceed to continue with our sleep. Mom get’s me up in the most altered mood and is surprisingly incredibly excited for the day which I refuse to acknowledge for myself.

“Ya Habibti! Don’t you want to get the day started? You can’t just pray and then go to sleep like that calling didn’t mean anything to you!” Mom said to me.

The most exhausted I’ve felt, “I barely keep my eyes open mama.”

“What ever you say Nalia.”

The day usually begins hard after this breakfast, I sleep for three more hours and then proceed to force myself to wake up and feel like I’m suffering for the rest of the day. It’s the seventh day out of 28 days of Ramadan and this year has probably been the worst I’ve felt since I was a kid. This is around the 15th Ramadan I’ve participated in since I started fasting at eight years old. There is nothing worse than realizing you have the wrong thoughts during this month. I should be printing out flashcards of Surah Al-Baqara and repeating them to Baba instead of laminating on the idea of a false narrative.

I participate every year during Ramadan but during different periods of my life, it wouldn’t be for the right reasons. One year I wanted to be skinny, so I fasted and pretended like it did anything after looking at the weight scale still say 157 pounds after four weeks. Another year I did it because my parents were expecting me to. The year before this year I decided on fasting for the sake of the people, not really for God which isn’t the worst suggestion but still. This year, I do it because there is something I look forward to everyday after I break my fast, a wish in my last prayer of the day that I will be forgiven for not always being right, for the life I used to live, and for the life I’m in the process of choosing to live, not even using words for the wish.

Andres Flores has been a friend now for around three years since I’ve been back in Temple. He’s been my companion at movies, the champion of murder mystery nights at the local bar, and a conspirator of history from the past. Creating all these new fine lines within the life I’ve known and will continue to know. I hold this weight of feeling like I haven’t been doing much right. There’s a world out there I want to experience, and I have a body that feels almost incapable of all of that which now leads me to resenting what I’ve been conditioned to think I am. Andres has seen that rawness and has known my true self since the beginning of our friendship. I think I’d rather hold my tongue about that in particular because this is unexplainable. I may have problems with who I am, but the turning of eyes is what draws me in and then pains me.

There’s no one else in Temple Texas with my name nor my background. We have around 93 thousand people in this city and there are only 175 Arab’s. We have maybe two Palestinian families here, and one girl named Nalia. I hate feeling like I stand out because there is so much to become scared of. One day someone will say that the olives in my container smell, the next they complain about how I can skip class when I need to satisfy my family’s salah, and even after that Mckittrick would say, “Nalia your last name freaks me out, my dad’s told me thing’s about the men like your dad who hit the buildings when we were younger,” in our fifth period history class in 9th grade. I haven’t even seen that kid since then and it still lives in my mind. We don’t belong. Not only do the kids in my class know it, but their parents also know it.

I’ve been telling Andres this since we got our dream jobs after college. I came back to this town around the same time he moved from Dallas to come here hoping for our lives to be afflicted in the same immigration team we work for where I’m a paralegal and Andres is the grant writer for the foundation branch. Andres comes from a Salvadorian family where the coffee grows strong, and the volcanos rumble more than the past that his family would try to leave behind. He really is the only person who got the gist of my problems when he saw me cry that one time in the breakroom after I explained my roots. Out of all the people in my life who’s dealt with my breakdowns, Andres has been the only one able to sit down and calm me down rather than rile me up.

I’ve sat down more than I can count on days like those where I just must be the one to reassure that my life was meant to be this way and after everything, I am sitting here in the consequences of what I had to do. I pray, fast, do good deeds, yet absolutely nothing hits me right in a way where I can sit down and just like myself. I’ve been begging for a day where nothing will hit hard anymore, that through everything I will just forget what my parents had to do to get me here, what I had to do to get here.
            As the day moves on from the desk, Lawrence gives me the casual stack of paper’s I’ve been glancing over for our newer client who hasn’t been able to speak to us nor work towards the case for them being better. Andres and I have been speaking about Brian Perez for the past two weeks because it’s been the biggest weight of our lives. Brian came stumbling into the office on the 12th of June, telling us his story after his recovery process after being separated from his family. His file is from the university for finding certain issues out since his parents were detained by ICE and then were sent back to Guatemala. We’ve been working with Brian’s case now because he’s in the process of potentially being deported as well.

I caught the eye of Brian one day as me and Andres walked off to have our break which compelled something out of me to excuse Andres and spend the hour with Brian.

“Hey Brian, how are you feeling today?” starting the conversation was probably the most anxiety peaking thing I could’ve done on my empty stomach but there’s a first for everything.

“I’ve had better days, I haven’t been able to contact Lexie,” his foster mom now after his parents left, “and there’s a lot on my mind. I have paid any attention to the shit show that’s been my parent’s case, but DACA isn’t pulling in.”

“We’re trying everything we can at the moment, but do you think you can tell me about your parent’s?”

“They’re pushing through since being back home but it’s this constant feeding of my issues that I can’t seem to forget. They keep saying they’re fine, but they’re only being treated this way now because of me. I went to college to get a fucking degree in something so useless and now they pay my consequences. I haven’t been able to sit and sleep in my room since because of this guilt. Now because of this they’re on the brink of losing everything.”

            My head is immediately banging when Andres comes to tell me that our break is over but he clearly sees something’s wrong. I get up to go back to my desk but once I sit down I’m running down to the bathroom to sob for the next hour and a half. This kid is me. There are differences, but there is a life out here I have ignored for the past 20 years where this struggle is constantly a battle through and through from the rest of us. I haven’t been able to explain it but it’s this final guilt. Creating a life here has been nothing more than a constant disappointment. From the empty prayers, to the simple words to Allah, to a meaning I can’t figure out without my parents in the room. I sit and consolidate with the emotions Brian is feeling solely because this poor 19-year-old boy must face a reality of a world that is not built for people like us and to become something that is not to be minimized.

            I see Brian, I see the little kid who wants to achieve a world of blisses and beliefs that create nothing more than grievances for our family. In a life against a track of being what our families have always wanted. Andres has been standing outside of the Restroom to see my face immediately red and he already knows what the deal is.

“You finally heard the kid’s story huh.”

“It’s cruel. The things that keep happening is such bullshit.”

“Nalia, there is a lot of us in all these new kids.”

“I know but it never gets old, I never fail to see myself in these cases and in a way I wish I could tell my family the problems we see here and that they’ll understand why we did this.”

“They’re not meant to understand it, Nalia.”
“Then why do I constantly keep fighting for them Andres?! Why can’t they see that this work is all for them?”

“Because they were never meant to.”

            I’ve sat with this for a while after and begin to reel myself back into what Andres feels. He has been blamed by his parents for their hardships and has done what he loves even after it was a scary path, but there really is a light in all this. My mama and baba still let me come back home after all this, they still have their home even after their struggles. I need to remember my resilience needs to be enough to create Brian’s resilience. He’s still somewhat startled by my abrupt walk away from when me and Andres clock out and I go to talk to him.

Brian blurts, “I’m very sorry if I said anything really offensive miss. I’ve been so scared these past few months since my parent’s were taken away. It’s been a lonely road.”

“I know Brian, we’re all fighting here for you and I should apologize for me leaving so suddenly. I forget how much I see myself in you and how much you remind me of who I was in college.”

“That’s reassuring to know that since you’re not in the process of helping me, I did my work in college to try to become a lawyer.”
“Brian, I promise you from here on out, that will happen. I don’t care what hardships we will face, but you will be a lawyer here in this town or even in the Capital even if it kills me.”

identity politics and colonialism

    We have this very specific understanding of how colonization works. We see a civilization that is seems "untouched", we create a nation, and then we proceed to oppress the people that are undermined in the so-called "nation". I don't think a lot of people understand how there is actually a difference between colonization and colonialism. While colonization is the physical aspect of oppressing a group of people, colonialism is sociological and psychological way of taking advantage of others. There are many foundations that run along with this. We have the colonization of one person through dominion and "ownership" in which begins to develop into colonialism which is rooted in relying on people to begin to believe they do not belong. You can even claim parasitic relationships people have on one to be a variation of colonialism. The main point to be brought here is that, identity can wrap into this by the factor of how as people, we feel inclined to fit into the standards of others who refuse to understand us, both racially, ethnically, and personally. 

    For the past few years, I've relied on identity to be my format of labeling who I am to empower myself in this space. Trying to understand the experience as a child of Arab parents as well as living in an American society being part of an alternative community surrounding music, there is a lot that cannot correlate within this notion of an identity. I grasp my understanding as a person, but not within these communities and especially as someone who struggles with my queer identity. There is a lot to be said with the understanding of being a person solely in these communities but you learn to grow up and see that throughout your community, there isn't much to said on your experience but rather "what" you are. I kind of formulate myself into this idea of creating a label for myself especially since we feel almost all portions of this need to be identified. I have never been one to be a true "American", but I was raised here and cannot deny that nor can I actually proceed without accounting my privilege of being a legal American when I have the same upbringing as some of my undocumented brothers and sisters. So how do I continue on with putting on a single label as a person with one thing when everyone's story is complex? The answer to this is understanding intersectionality. We need to begin understanding that to put labels on every single thing is similar as taking one piece of land and chopping it with a name for the nations that the outside colonizers want. The way I am comparing this is to the Berlin Conference in the late 1800s. We see a nation look at something only for it's qualities and instead of understanding the complexities of the peoples, they care for the goods that they offer, the positives that these nations have to give. 

    Making this similarity might be pushing it because I come from a land that has a history of colonizing these same people in similar ways, but there is an analysis to be made. To understand our identity is to understand as people putting labels is like putting the lines in countries and separating parts of ourselves to create exclusive environments. This mainly is in regard to how certain ideologies cannot be compared to one another and how as we create points within our understanding of our identities, it gradually becomes harder and harder for people to relate to one another. The way we look at identity in America is that we feel as though we need to create bounds of how we feel and why we feel them when in reality, we should just feel them! Identity isn't necessarily a bad thing as it gives so many people euphoria which is not what I am going on about. Being a queer person means to also recognize that I will constantly fluctuate with my emotions as a religious person and as a woman. 

    I have constantly always felt more euphoric for calling myself solely "Yasmeen" rather than feeling like gender or sexuality has to make my identity. Truth be told, why is who I have sex with the primary understanding of my character? Why is what I want to be called, such a controversial thing? To say "oh there needs to be labels on everything because this is science" invalidates almost all of the problems that we see today! You cannot define emotions with one word, you cannot define who you are in one word. There are many things to be examined with this and I have a lot more thoughts on it but the reality of it all, being who you are alone is more than what people have to see you as, what the world needs to understand you as. 

love, it's things and the way we grieve

You know, you would really think taking philosophy of love would help your concept of what exactly love is but everywhere is so different and so insanely hard to just have an objective definition of love. When we first think of love we think of the heteronormative concept of where a man and woman get married, have a family and live happily ever after as if there's no problems in the in between and no consideration of who we are alone. This by the way is also just so boring. I feel like as of lately I've been trying really hard to understand my definition of love and how we can even perceive it especially at such a young age. It's clearly not tangible, it's a psychological emotion (at least that's what science says) and lots of other stuff that freaks younger people out who just want to live through life and just settle down and will look for anyone easily. Loving can be really beautiful as I've seen with my friends. Lately I've realized how romantic love as itself is solely that we can have one singular friend and the depth it comes in. Recently understanding of how intensely I feel, not one single person can bring this to me and in a way, it's communal but not in a romantic setting. I feel like the one people who I feel like have genuinely loved me have been my close friends. I guess you can consider partners like this but I cannot grasp the idea of being solely with one person and that is who revolves around the world. This is not a pro-polyamorous take I think there is this kind of depth with women friends. I have two amazing friends who actually show me 10 times more than what I deserve. Dealing with losing people is so heart shattering but in a way, I know I will love again, I know that I am actually lovable even if I keep telling myself I'm not, one person's concept of me will never change who I am to the people I have learned to dedicate myself to. Losing a lover is difficult, losing someone you create a deep connection with in itself is a hard concept to even live with. I grow everyday loving and feeling like I recess back without one feels so draining but also, life is so big. We really do have an ocean out here even if we don't understand. There are people in worlds you couldn't even fathom. We are all only so young. Believing a bigger world where we can love once and that love is just so beautiful alone makes you feel so big but also so brand new. I learn to be honest and express myself in my writing which in itself is my own personal way of loving myself. I love my friends by listening, by spending genuine time with them and knowing that I have felt things that they have felt and I am just as intense as they are. I always have moments where I sit and cry and contemplate why I even care to love if things don't fully work out sometimes then I remember the joy of being passionate about someone. I remember how it feels to be able to sit in a setting with your closest people and enjoy something as much of a blessing as music, or as a poetry event, or even just a movie you enjoy and you just talk with them and never stop thinking about it for days. This week has sucked but I've learned and I'm ready to finally love myself even if I don't feel so great in the beginning. I've got one body and this body is mine. 

sex and the city is not the best show ever

I'm gonna say it. Sex and the City out white girled me more than I realized. I cannot stand Carrie's dumbass and not going to lie, it will send me down a spiral if I have to go through with her dealing with her love for Big when he clearly think's he's too good for her. Maybe I'm a hater, but I've left off on season 5 and I'm kind of over watching this while there are genuine real world things to worry about other than a loser single man who doesn't actually care about her!!!! I also think that though there are some really good things, this really does bring out this one thing I just pay attention to at least within growing into an adult recently. People don't care to be genuinely good to themselves! Carrie has this incredibly messy tendency to go back to Big and every damn time it crushes me because it really always is this weird trope lots of people have grown into. You have one major love, you need to be with them, whatever happens you just deal with it. NO!!! What happened to womanhood was based off of just other people's experiences and not letting relationships define you??? I feel like the writers really had me so fucked up on that and maybe that's just why I can't watch the show about it. I may be judgmental on people who do that, but in all seriousness, why do people genuinely put themselves through that much pain for someone so embarrassed to see them? 

I guess it might also be a reflection of who I was before this past year. It's really hard to love. It really is, but there's some solace in knowing you can trust yourself to choose you. There's some really beautiful thing about knowing that as a person you can look at yourself and say, I love living in my little body, my stupid little nose, with my freckles that remind me of a smaller version of me, the hip dips I used to cry about. This is my body! I love it! 

It's hard to live in a world where you have to concept who you are as an individual. I've been facing it head on for the past two weeks figuring out how to be comfortable alone while I learn who I am and why I am loved. It's hard trying to understand why you are your own villain but you aren't meant to just sit in your own wallowing pain, gosh you're supposed to enjoy your loneliness! It's hard out here but I think the woman in me is so happy that I'm getting some stuff to decorate my little study corner and potentially get my grad school life ready as I process who I am. I'm finally getting old enough to just be myself and enjoy who I am. I weirdly enough have found a huge knack for reading about Art History. I love learning in general and just planning and I found that love all on my own. There are ways to have identities without a love, you just need to put boundaries on how you process those things. This week I grieved very hard, but I'm not letting that be just my reason for being upset and depressed. I have my own personal likes and wants which no single person can take away.

Sex and the City overall kind of just proves to me how all of their problems revolve around the fact that as single women, we all apparently strive to be cared for without realizing that the love of a sisterly friendship is so much stronger than any love you could see in the rest of the world. 

the way music's been evolving for me

While a lot of this blog so far has been my political views, I do kind of want to talk about myself for a lil bit here. It's kind of frustrating being where I'm at and realizing I've kind of gotten used to the wine mom life style but I also sort of love it. I've never really partied growing up or even really did much sneaking out and I feel like that's probably due to my upbringing but also, there's a lot of my personal life that changed and how my priorities in the past two years have been done for. I feel a bit disillusioned by music now if I'm being quite honest. It's always been on and off but as of lately, I've realized that I'm not actually passionate about music. Not that it means that I dislike it or anything or that there's a feeling of displeasure to it but it's more on the fact that I feel as though I don't feel that immediate want to make music as much anymore. Maybe it's the shift in feeling or honestly even just taking Philosophy of Music but I think I'm away from the feelings of music solely because I'm just not angry and 17-20 anymore. I've for the most part also hated over analyzing it when I got into philosophy, I want to sometimes just get away from my work not just constantly be reminded that when I look or hear anything that i HAVE to think about it and make it into a sort of discussion. Weirdly enough, I kind of learned to love music with no lyrics or spoken voice at all. I for the most part genuinely just love the content of it. The fact that with the music there really is no certainty of what the artist could've meant and you can make assumptions but you'll never actually understand or get the feeling because of what's being shown in front of you. For the most part, it does sometimes make me so sad because of how much I've grown my social life because of music. In a way it really is a part of me but I don't think my purpose in this world is to create music or to be some sort of great artist where I sing. Sure, I like writing music and I like performing, but I feel like in genuine all seriousness, my true passion in the world is philosophy and will always be philosophy. 

the martyrdom of revolutionaries

The news officially broke out about Hassan Nassrallah dying and my dad is probably the most upset about a political death for the first time in a long time. We see this happen a lot as eastern people living in the west. What kind of blows my mind so much is how revolutionaries all the time are KILLED. We savor life so much in political instances with the laws that we make, the fact that when someone dies due to medical induced suicide that they don't even have the right to do that and so then and there we should hold the doctors who've helped accountable. Why the hell can these doctors be prosecuted but not literal war criminals? Why do these people hold the arms of america just to dismantle our entire societies. Lebanon is in shambles for one, singular, life that they still took. Imagine being so villainized, so ambushed, every single thing you have done being used against you, and you can't do a single thing about it because instead of a world of bliss understanding like we see in america "land of the free", we see a grey world. No real education, no reservation to your own land, not a single real breathing moment where you could say something in public and not have a target on your back. It's been a weird time trying to express myself in the states as I hold a weird stance that no matter what I do, apparently being political is a weird position to have. I sort of feel this with some of my peers that don't really pay attention to the conflicts that happen nor actually want to because people would rather live in this cave and focus on the things that, in my opinion, are so small in this world. Every single day Al Jazeera is playing in my house, in the family shop, we listen to the news podcasts on it in the car. I think the best outcome of this though, is the mindset that my dad has now adopted. "You know how we'll free Palestine? Educating everyone and showing the atrocities of the world. Making people learn and see what we see." There is much in this world that we will end up realizing is a forgotten word that we have heard or even a forgotten idea that we've kept alive from the people around us. I think the main promise of Palestinian people that we need to keep is that we need to remember them. Every single one of them. These people had regular lives, regular coffee, families, someone who hated them, someone who found them annoying, someone who they would normally pass and never actually say anything to but they still just passed by because they were alive. I feel like this feeling is always lost. These ideas are never actually grounded but are the stories we tell of our people. 

feelings i have about palestinian outcries

It's been very weird being a Palestinian in America now for a year now. Something that I've been very aware of but I haven't noticed it in years. It feels weird, like I've finally had a mirror pulled up to my face and now I'm left to stay confused because in my world, I am nothing more but my identity which is worse than I anticipated. It's been a year of inner conflict, it's been a year of arguing. I recently went overseas as well and saw this world in my view point and in reality have never felt more passionate but also, in what world am I more similar to my people now than I was in years. I'm not a refugee, I'm part of the diaspora. I have an emotion within my culture that is sticking there as a holder of both a Jordanian and an American passport but I'm not like the people in Palestine and I'm not like the people in Jordan. Hell, I'm not even like the Palestinians in the northern part of America. We have a lot of parts of our community that ties within one another but my need for diversity in my inner circles hasn't changed nor will ever change. I create my world in which I communicate with the people I care for and Palestinians are in this but people forget that though Palestinians are oppressed we are a different kind of oppressed group. We have feelings in which we understand each other's oppressions, but we don't really. I cannot compare the issue of the genocide in Palestine to the issue of racism in America. These are two incredible different scenarios. The racism and discrimination that happens in Palestine is due to the dislike of a non Eurocentric population in Palestine while as the racism and discrimination in America is caused by true and utmost hate to Black Americans. The hate of Black people solely because they are Black is truly rooted within every culture. This is not comparable, this is not something that is remotely the same. We are seeing the beginning of an oppression that incredibly unique due to a context of a hatred of noncompliance as well as a hate for a race rooted in this "noncompliance". I had this conversation with a really great classmate of mine who I personally think is incredibly bright and thinks the same way I do who mentioned that with Brown and Black people, hatred is so rooted within our communities, hatred is truly in the eye of how we see our feelings of different people that we learn we need to begin to dislike because if there is no sense of white supremacy in this world, there is no sense of the world. I feel like I've been feeling this way since I saw the nannies in Jordan. The mammy's in the Arab world that we refuse to acknowledge because if we can't verify a world where people have to suffer in our economy then we cannot live in the lush, beautiful, freeing life that we have. How could a population that understands being run out and losing everything validate this? How can our struggles be so big that we cannot see the struggles of others and realize that we also feel a sort of sadness with that? We feel the frustration that they feel but it's not the complete same. We should continue to feel sympathy and listen. You are not entitled to someone's personal beliefs nor entitled to have everyone believe everything you do. There are ways to be an activist and also stand among other people while not belittling their feelings on their own oppressions.