Forgive & Forget, and donot Expect.

That's my new motto to life.

In a land crawling with hideous creatures that live on cheating and lying, you really need a plan B to fall back on. 

My plan B is repeating this sentence over and over in my head till the impulse to kill passes. Atleast 20 times each day. 

And then you ask what I do all day. Pfft.

For the last 8 years of my life, I've spent countless moments going under the constant torturing of wanting to slap sense into the stupid people of this country. 

I've been emotionally blackmailed, my conscious raped, wronged and guilt tripped into doing what they have always wanted. No matter how wrong it was. No matter how much my conscious screamed at me to stop. 

I've been in this constant heart/brain battle that has left me scarred in so many ways.

Revenge had become my mantra. 

For taking my freedom away from me and trapping me in an endless loop of empty days.

For taking advantage of my innocence and emotions.

For ganging up on me and pushing me around, and laughing every time I fell.

I was filled with anger. Intense overflowing anger  boiling in me for days and days. The more I suppressed it, the more it pulled me under. Till it finally let lose in torrents of tears and wailing.

A breakdown.

All that pushed me into deep corners of deafening silence. I stop talking, I lost interest. I got lost in my own thoughts. Depression. My biggest enemy. 

I strayed from reality.

After a million days passed and till the scars deepened did I understand how to finally get myself back. How to be happy again.

It's very simple.

Forgive 

Forget

And donot expect.

The day I started doing that I found peace.

I forgave people for the way they treated me. I forgot it ever happened. And in return I did good without expecting them to do the same in return.

I stopped caring about their happiness and started caring about mine.

I wouldn't say I'm 100% content and happy. No. I maybe around the mark of 53%. But that's something to start with.

Till the end becomes better. 

Living in Fear

I never knew what fear was till I moved to Karachi 7 years back. 

I wasn't prepared for this. 

Sure we don't trust people that we deal with in everyday life, or we teach our kids to not to talk to strangers. 

But do you know that cold paralyzing fear of approaching death that cause the very core of your bones to shiver uncontrollably?

Yeah that. 

Karachi embeds it in you.

You see that fear in the way people start panicking at the sound of fireworks, mistaking them for gunshots.

You can see it in the eyes of a mother dropping her kids to school early morning, double checking the security, looking around for evil lurkers in the shadows just as she lets those tiny hands go. 

You can feel it in the fast beating of those hearts when a motorbike slows beside you, just waiting for that muzzle to be pointed at you within half a second and for you to be robbed and killed.

That fear is in the polluted air around you. In the eyes of little kids. In the way a beggar flees. In the way cars speed. In the way crowds disperse. In the prayers of a repressed soul. In the bowed head of the helpless. In the barred up windows and doors. In the sky high walls. In checkpoints at every gulley.

That fear infests in the pit of a shopkeepers stomach, who has no money to pay the blackmailers. And threats after threats he waits for his last breath.

That fear of dying. 

Of losing the ability to watch your kids grow older. Of losing the right to enjoy every plate of delicious food your mom cooks for you. Of losing the sense of pure ecstasy of living every second you are alive.

It could be one gunshot. 

One suicide bombing.

One hit and run.

One robbery.

Karachi is not the city of lights anymore. It's the city of fear. 

And as much as I try to brush it off, uproot it from inside me, I can't. The news doesn't let me. The number of people killed everyday is my neighborhood doesn't let me. The fact that I was in that place few minutes before it was blown up, doesn't let me.

Everyday seems the last.

Everyday I kiss my kids good night and close my eyes in agony of restlessness.

Fear.

It has robbed me of my life.

It has killed me inside.