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.

Strength

They say what doesn’t kill you, makes your stronger. I don’t know why people think that is a good thing. Strength is not about winning against death. It means you were on the brink of dying in the first place and for whatever reason you came through. It means you have been through hell.

Fighting against demons don’t make you stronger. Fighting demons gives you scars that don’t often heal. Fighting drains your energy and shows you the worst version of yourself. Fighting your demons, makes you a little of what you have been fighting. Or else, how could you win?

To all the people I love, I do not wish you strength. I wish you contentment with the direction your life takes you. I wish you dreams to carry you through your darkest nights. I wish you compassion, and passion and all things good. But you don’t have to be strong all the time. Strength comes from struggle and sacrifice. And I wish the harshness of the world never seeps into who you are. I don’t wish you a steel backbone to carry the world’s burdens. Too often they make you bitter. I don’t wish your shoulders to be concrete, nor your heart to turn to titanium. Strength sometimes can make you cold. And you are nothing but warmth, bones and muscle and love. I wish you to hold onto the brightness you carry within you.

I wish a world where you wouldn’t need strength. I wish you a world that wouldn’t scorn you when you cry, or force you up before you are ready. Being human means breaking down every now and then. Being human means you heal. So I would never wish you strength that turns the best of you into something so much less than that.

If strength is bouncing back from rock bottom, then I wish you never hit that low in life. Because no matter what they say, when you fall that down, that fast, it chips something essential of you away. And yes, that hurts like hell. And yes you might come back stronger than before, but what they don’t tell you is, that strength comes from replacing what you have lost with something foreign. Fall too often, and there wouldn’t be enough left of you in you anymore.