Loss

That phone call, it changed everything and yet nothing changed. How dare people keep smiling and laughing. How dare the sun come up and keep shining even after the most important part of my life is gone? How selfish is it for me to expect the world to stop spinning for the sake of me and my grief.

My dad has passed. I wake up and realize it is not a dream , my dad has passed and I reinforce it to myself to make it easier in some twisted way. Sometimes it’s easier for me to just ignore the pain and move forward get on with my day. Easier said than done. But I catch myself looking at young toddlers with their grandchildren and realize my dad will never get to meet his. He will never get to give me away at my wedding.

I know I cannot allow myself to dwell on it. Death is a part of life.It was only a matter of time before it caught up with my beautiful family. I cannot allow myself to stay in that dark place because I just know that it will take me into its seductive fold and I will succumb to it, no matter how proud I think I am. Grief is a complicated thing.

I make myself see the positive and realize he would not have wanted me to be strong. He would have wanted me to carry on. And most of all I know I am lucky enough to have had him in my life. I carry his wisdom , his eternal optimism within me and that can never be taken away from me.

I’m glad.

I was in my own world of to-do lists and endless Instagram scrolling. Then I met you ,”oh hell i thought, what’s one coffee.” Except one coffee turned into hundreds and our shy smiles eased into conversations about what kind of childhood we had and the not so distant future. I’m not anxious about the rest of my days anymore, I’m calm. I don’t wake up with a million little pieces of stressful thoughts begging to be ransacked.

I love it .

adulting to me is buying the most expensive brand of greek yoghurt because I can afford to and it makes me happy .

this must be real life

Another day another three rejections from job applications. One even decided to give a former employee the job back. oh for f**ks sake.

I know reader, I know I shouldn’t giving up. And I’m not giving up. Let me just just wallow in self pity for five minutes eat ice cream and pick myself back up in an hour.

A white wine called Fat Bastard.

He spots me in the crowd and its all the same. I can predict in perfect motion the sequences of looks to come.

There’s that look of relief on his face.Relief that I’ve even bothered to show up. He didn’t get stood up like so many times before .

I move in closer into his personal space and take it all in. The clothing,the shoes of course.Call it shallow if you must but I believe that the first date at least, requires effort. Some men made an effort with office quality shiny shoes,others go down the edgy 2019 cool dude road with the too intimidatingly blinding darn white sneakers . Not this guy, he’s super casual in sandals or thongs as they call them here in Australia. I didn’t realize there’s a beach in the middle of Perth CBD. Perhaps I should have not wasted so much time on my outfit. I spent the better half of the last two hours choosing a nice dress and shoes surely he could at least have come up with covered toe shoes.

Okay, I tell myself, lets give him a chance.

As he relaxes I can tell he likes what he sees, yes I actually look like my photos on that dating app.He does a glance at my figure as we leave the bar.I’m no Victoria’s Secret model but I take care of myself appearance wise and it shows, so I know I look good.I have not gained weight since few weeks prior when they were taken. Suitably impressed, He stares a little too long at my face his glances go from my eyes to the moles around my lips and the not so subtle hint of cleavage I masterfully shaded with bronzer. We’ll call the man M.

Later we order food, M is keen to impress me now realizing he is severely under dressed compared to me. I get the cheeseburger and fries and choose the Fat Bastard white wine from California purely for the quirky name.We have a good laugh about it. I try (try being the operative word) to come with conversation topics. Reader I must say,it was at this moment I confirmed he’s a lad’s lad and I am the top shelf china your mum keeps for special occasions only , sad but true.He does that sideways stare, the one men do when do when women laugh a little too loudly and the male thinks its the greatest thing he’s ever seen since that whats its called video game was released. He’s appreciative of it.This cinema he chooses is swanky, you order food and drinks and they magically appear as you’re viewing the movie. He’s chosen a fantastic date spot I’ll give him that much.

Lad’s lad chooses a lad’s lad movie of course. I run through the things I could be doing instead of watching this snooze fest with cringey M doing cringey middle fingers whenever the villain shows up.

1. Update my resume,
2. This date would make a great post on Define Elation, might prove amusing for my future husband to read what dating was like for me before we found each other.
3. Leftover tofu and miso soup in the fridge to nourish my wary tastebuds from the tiny cheeseburgers they magically served in the dark, complete with the inappropriately large beef patty squished in between fresh from frozen section sad pathetic excuse for burger buns .I had been dating a chef before and chuckled at how he didn’t want to do the whole gourmet food in cinema experience and I’d mildly sulked at that. Now I understood why he chose not to , he would have given me shit if he knew I’d done it now. Then he would make me a proper cheeseburger the way they’re meant to be prepared with passion and cherished and the ingredients treated with respect.I even miss him a little if I’m honest..
4. The said chef who I’d been trying my hardest not to contact for the past 8 months because those are the rules but I’m only human and even if we are not talking I do admit I am missing him. In all honesty, M probably isn’t half that bad, but I am unfairly comparing him to a memory from the past , yes reader, I know .

As the movie ends and so does my misery, I hint at getting a rideshare but apparently M wants to walk me home. “Not too tired yet” he says even though earlier he’d made a big theatrical monologue performance about ‘having to work 12 hour days to rise up in the world’. I am suitably impressed here and he is glad . His face lights up when I smile, they all do. These men all like it when I smile the genuine smile the one where my eyes join in. All these endless men with monotone voices and bland stories..its all same old same old i find .Since The Chef left me , they might as well be the same person with a blank face if I am honest with myself.

He tells me about his new car or his mate’s car or someone else’s god damn car. I zone out while outwardly I pretend I am hearing, nodding and politely smiling. I think about the potential new jobs I have applied to with the intention of starting afresh. I think about the cute old couple walking towards our direction , and wonder if they truly love each other , have they broken up before ? Only to get back together? Or really ,actually, are they just settling with each other?

Mondays.

Dear all,

Monday : has the word ‘Mon’ which incidentally is French for ‘mine’ just in case you weren’t aware. It makes me think of Monday as “my day” and frankly that sounds like a much more promising start to the week .

Here we go again;

Those first dates jitters.. It goes from anticipation to anxiously waiting to the actual date. It was going alright until he mentions his friend said “Don’t convert” .. The audacity, from someone who knows next to nothing about me.Just because my name and nationality was something this so called friend was familiar with, he felt he had that right to assume about me.

I couldn’t get it out of my head. At the end of the date I knew I couldn’t get past that remark, and that truthfully I did not feel like I liked him enough to get past it.

So I ended it there and then. Sent my ‘dear John’ and wished him well.

Talk about wordpress

I’m feeling stuck in a rut. I have stacks of drafts on here just waiting to be edited and possibly published.And of course there’s the private posts, just slightly too personal or maybe I am just lacking the courage to make them public.There’s one or two in there that I want to keep special just for me. They’re for the 75 year old me, when I want to look back on my life .

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

raw.

“the below is raw, unedited. its not perfect and its not meant to be. “

I didn’t choose the day dad passed. I couldn’t be there to bury him and that’s something I have to live with for the rest of my life.

You came to visit me I knew it was coming, the intervention the “what are your plans talk” the “we’ve spent so much money on you so now you come back” Never mind i worked my ass off for a scholarship that’s worth more than your whole life savings. never mind I managed to stay afloat on my merit. that I did well in my studies and thrived in the meritocracy system of Australia . The guilt trip was real. How dare you. How dare you say you done lots for me to guilt trip me into coming home. Can’t you see i am building a life here for me. I am in love and I am willing to work hard to build a life here whether you like it or not.

You can try and manipulate me .

Its not going to work.

poems by men

My resident of solitude, my everything, my beloved,my shining moon

My friend, my privacy, my everything, my shah of beautiful, my sultan

My life, my existence, my lifetime, my wine of youngness, my heaven

My spring, my joy, my day, my beloved, my laughing rose

My delight, my sugar, my treasure, my delicate in world My saint, my joseph,my everything, my khan of my heart’s egypt

My istanbul,my karaman,my land of rum my Bedehsan, my Kipchak, my Bagdad,my Horosan

My long haired, my bow like eyebrow, my eye full of discord, my patient </p

My blood is on your hands if i die, mercy o my non Muslim

I am a flatterer near your door, I always praise you Heart is full of sorrow,eye full of tears, I am Muhibbi and I am happy

• By Suleiman The Magnificent to Hurrem Sultan