Harbor

When I was younger, I would ask Allah for very specific things, thinking the path to happiness is linear, as if certain things would make or break the thread that guided me to a sanctuary. But as I have grown older, I have learned that happiness is both like the sound and light wave. Sometimes it flows straight and other times it winds before it takes you where you wish to go. Lately my prayers sound a lot like this –

Allah please grant me peace in whichever way or form that would benefit me the most. Allah, please grant my heart a harbor, and I’ll learn to make it my home.

Homesick

She asks me, with all the innocence of her nine whole years, Are you homesick? 

I consider my answer for a moment, Yes. 

For what? She questions back.

This time I have no simple monosyllables for her. How can I explain to her what home has always been to me and how many different degrees I miss what it represents.

I want to tell her, may be, I am homesick for the place I have grown up in. That place doesn’t exist anymore. How can it remain unchanged through these years, when nothing has remained the way it once used to be? Is it fair for me to even consider asking the same of a place I love so much? I am homesick for all the people I have loved there, and in all the other places I have been to since then. If love is supposed to stay, why do some people leave? How am I to love people who don’t love me enough to stay?

I am homesick for who I used to be. A little childish, a little unaware of the world around me, taking the kindness towards me for granted. She was more at peace with herself than I ever would be. I am homesick for days when the weight of the world couldn’t chain me to my bedside, days when dreams used to be light enough to carry me through the day.

How can I tell her that I am homesick because I am lost on this journey. I was meant to head somewhere different, but all the detours and shortcuts, falls and failures have set me on a different path. I am not sure where my destination is anymore, so here I am, taking each day as it comes. But some nights I lay awake, frightened, knowing that every step I take, takes me away from home.

I am homesick for the past, because let’s face it, the nostalgia of the past always makes me smile. The past was a good place to be, although I didn’t realize that until it passed away. Now I look back at those bygone moments and know, it will never come to be again. I am not just homesick; everywhere I go I feel less at home. May be I have never had a home.

Perhaps, I am endlessly waiting for something that would never be. Perhaps, I am working towards building my home, the one I never had. I am homesick for something to be. I am homesick for days when the four walls of my home would protect me, not just shelter me. I am homesick for a place where happiness would stay, not just come to visit. How can I ever tell her what homesickness really feels like?

So instead I wish in my heart, with all my heart, please, let her never find out what it is.