A letter from Nobody.

 Hi,

I am someone, basically, I am no one, a Nobody. People like the dimples in my cheek more than the sad face. The dimpled smiling face is as natural as the sad face or the teared up face but the latter one is somewhat suppressed and deeply hidden in my small universe. Hidden at least when I am in front of people. One reason for it is that I don't want pity or sympathy by showing my other natural face. And I am afraid to let people know even the empathizers know how deeply crazy I am, that a glass frame banging on my head is not enough to settle down the anger, the deep rage, the deep loneliness. 

We, humans, enjoy having this assumption about happy people that... 

"Their life is simple, they don't have bigger fishes to fry and so look at them, so cheerful, so beautifully serene their lives look. And look at us having the real talk about how difficult our circumstances are. Look at us the way we are surviving. So heroic." 

I want to laugh at our stupidity and at the same time, I also want to cry. I want to burst into tears just like a volcano angrily erupting its lava. Happy people can have different perspectives, but no easy life. Life spares no one. 

Growing up, I learned slowly and gradually that my family isn't the one I can show off to my friends. A family in which the mother is bitter about her own life and so she takes that out on her children verbally and physically; a family in which father is a drunkard, trying to cope with a bitter wife every day, brainwashing kids against their mother; a family in which children have to forcefully enjoy several live episodes where the partners bound in an ultimate beautiful relationship of the world, shout, kick, beat each other up in front of their kids, kids getting injured emotionally and physically in the process of keeping their parents apart. Every kid with a family like this deserves complete autonomy to hide it from everyone. And so I did too. I remember not taking my parents to my favourite teacher on PTMs, I remember on annual functions of school how I roamed around as far as I can from my parents, I remember how hard I cried on rare occasions sitting on the last benches in school, my friends came, they asked what happened, my class fellows for whom I wasn't a noticeable person came, and asked what happened, I remember how hard I cried but was totally paralyzed to say a word of what was going back at home. As the period went on tears dried up, no more drop was left in the eye tank and so with the dialogue of "I'm fine" everything went back to normal. Normal for the crowd. 

It is this good practice, that has helped me in even hiding my tears in the upcoming years. I can gladly say now you won't see my tears in public. But that doesn't mean I can't feel hurt. I have the same skin as yours. I just don't have the courage to show you my vulnerable side. 

I laugh, I get angry, I get worried, I feel all the emotions on the spectrum, but I suppressed the ones that shouldn't be suppressed. It is due to that that I have unintentionally developed a kind of OCD where I think my family might contaminate me, won't let me survive peacefully and so for few years over washing has become a norm in my life. Initially, I used to wash everything that my family touched. The door, the switchboard, the bed, the laptop, my books, the curtain, the food I am eating, the utensils I am eating in, the pocket money that I got, the bottle, the pillow, the bedsheets again and again, the scooter. No one can wash them for me but only I will wash them for myself. Washing was tiring but letting things sit unwashed with the germs of my family's touch made me want to bang my head on the wall continuously. My family noticed how mad and crazy I went when they approached and so they started to maintain a distance. I was happy and at peace in my own little room. 

On the outside, no one knew the way I was at home. I showered every day, went outside, lived my day, came home, washed the doorknob of the room, came inside and locked myself in the small peaceful world my mind created for myself. No one knew except for the people with whom my sister laughed and made fun of the way I am. She is the heroic daughter facing the struggles to this date and I am the one still hiding inside the only bedroom that we once shared in our childhood. 

We aren't friends, we never were, but when she enrolled herself in psychology for her undergraduate, I assumed she might understand and she might try to help me. Who knows hope is the undiscovered disappointment. 

A few years practicing this over washing, this staying within boundaries and I met an accident. An accident that shattered both of my feet. I was helpless, can't walk, can't sit, can't even go to the washroom by myself. And here my over washing and staying inside my own little world also shattered. My will shattered. I landed in the hands of those from whom I was running. At that moment, the vibration surrounding me was so positive that I thought of giving my family maybe a second chance. I started to mingle again, I started to talk. Talk about obviously not how or why the accident happened (that's a secret that will die with me, lol) but about the random nonchalant stuff. I recovered fast, I thought it's a nice beginning, I sat in the dining room had lunch together. I assumed maybe the accident was a way to help me get out of my craziness. Only to find it today that I'm not glad I survived that accident, together with my legs, my brain should have shattered to pieces on that day. 

You must be thinking, what changed the bliss. Nothing lasts forever why the stay of bliss will... The episodes back at home started again with a little variation. This time I am a grown-up and in my attempts to protect one true self of mine, I reverted back to the over washing and drawing clear boundaries, only worse and strict than before this time. My mother thinks there's a jinn on me. My sister (a psychology major) thinks I'm just a drama, my brother respects my boundaries and asks me to stay in it. But as a grown-up, I do want to get good at hiding my craziness and so whenever a relative comes or we as a family would have to show up at a family gathering, I drag myself out of my little room, gets my phone and devices locked up inside because if I took them out with family I then would have to wash them and I can't afford to lose them now by washing them again and again. So I lock the devices, get dressed, goes out with them, comes back, takes a rubbing shower and then enters the room, one little peaceful room. 

It's like this only since then on. To this date I wash the money which mother gives me as a pocket money. It gets worse when my sister teases me and irritates me by intentionally leaving their dog inside my room. It gets worse when I just sit there locked up inside, crying hard to myself. It hurts to wash everything, again and again, it is tiring, it makes my hand looks weird if I don't apply any moisturizer, most of all it hurts my feelings of finding myself like this... being crazy. I never wanted to be crazy. I just can't help it. It hurts and it fills the rage inside of me, there are days when I think of ways to kill my sister when she does that. I want to smash the laptop on her head or on mine. There's no point in getting an education when we both can't help ourselves. I wish every day if that accident would have been the last day of my life. 

I know my illness is just nothing compared to the real big life illnesses that real suffering people face every day, my illness is just some weird augmented reality my shitty brain has created for myself. But the truth is it hurts, it hurts and I can't help it. I can hide it with a smile but deep down I know I am waiting for an end impatiently. It is nothing but it is destroying me. I am a nobody trying to find my way in becoming the ultimate nothingness, the void this world has. 


signing off...

yours truly...

no one...

P.S. I found the courage to write it today because I know there are more people like me hurting alone in the darkness of their room. Don't help me, HELP THEM. It's sad to see the doctors laughing about a certain physical illness that might be embarrassing, it's more sad to see psychologists like my sister laughing or making fun of someone's mental situation. I don't know what is failing but I do know deep down that euthanasia must also be legalized for the ones who are suffering from painful mental illnesses. Craziness is not an attribute one intentionally chooses for themselves. 

A Letter from Nobody - written by Sheliza Hyder