Closing Pandora's Box

While waiting for my train home from uni a few weeks ago I sat down and watched the men with the long coats brushing their ears, suitcase in one hand and the Evening Standard in the other, the boys from school sprinting to buy some chips, the old lady rubbing her hands for warmth. People were running to catch their trains while others waited and planned their journey. It made me think. There are always many trains to choose from, but before you get on one, you gotta know where you wanna go. Same with life.

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Title: Last train home – Lost Prophets

But lately her face seems slowly sinking,

“If the girl wants to learn, let her, my dear. Let the girl have an education.”

“Learn? Learn what, Mullah sahib?” Nana said sharply. “What is there to learn?” she snapped her eyes towards Mariam.

Mariam looked down at her hands.

“What’s the sense schooling a girl like you? It’s like shining a spittoon. And you’ll learn value in those schools. There is only one, only one skill a woman like you and me needs in life, and they don’t teach it in school. Look at me.”

“You should not speak like this to her, my child,” Mullah Faizaullah said.

“Look at me.”

Mariam did.

“Only one skill. And it’s this: tahamul. Endure.”

“Endure what, Nana?”

“Oh, don’t you fret about that,” Nana said. “There won’t be any shortage of things.”

[Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns, 18]

~

Wasting. Crumbling like pastries.

Sarah stood in front of the mirror studying the angry bruises which decorated her face. She could hardly recognise herself from all that purple and blue business that was going on around her left eye and down her cheek. Her upper lip was swollen from his swinging punch. Her right ribs throbbed and she was could feel the bruises on her arms from where he had gripped her. Everything hurt. Even the slightest bit of movement couldn’t be done without her hissing in pain

But nothing compared to the ache which had settled in her heart.

Her gaze ran from her forehead in the mirror down to her lips. She couldn’t believe they were the same lips which had spoken words of love to him, who had now destroyed her in the worst way possible. Tears suddenly stung the back of her eyes, as the pain and helplessness rose rapidly in her throat like a raging forest fire and exploded. The tears, mixed with sorrow and agony, frustration and weakness escaped from her sore eyes like a waterfall.

It was the salt last night. It had started off with the salt. There was too much of it in the cooking. And then it was the remote control for the telly. The kids had misplaced it. And now here she was after another horrific sleepless night of souvenir and scars. She didn’t bother to wipe away the tears and wetness that gathered beneath her eyes, she let them flow like she always did. Through the mirror she saw the window in her room. It was tightly shut. Her mother had said she should stay.

“It’s your home. You have to stay. Try to understand. Where will you go? Think of the kids?” she had said the last time Sarah had gone to visit her. The words made her angry, yet she was convinced that this was another dark tunnel she had to walk through. Walk through alone. This was another trial God was testing her with because He loved her. And with patience and strength she was going to pass it. Wasn’t she? There was pain but what could she do? Just hope and pray that his temper would go away. Night after night, she would clutch her hands to her chest, desperately praying to God to let the next day pass in ease, and the next one and the next one.

“Mama, why are you crying?”

She suddenly jerked away and swung round. Everything made her flinch now. She hated it. She turned to her six year old son, who stood in the door staring up at her with huge eyes filled with concern and worry.

“I’m not crying, sweetheart. Come here,” she said, quickly sniffing and wiping away the tears. She bent down and held out her weak arms for him. He slowly walked over and entered her embrace, resting his head on her shoulder.

“Mama,”

“Hmm?”

“Why was…was Baba shouting?”

The innocent question made Sarah panic for a minute. She hesitated. Then gulped.

“He wasn’t very happy. But he will be now,”

“Why wasn’t Baba happy? Was it something we did? Did I do something wrong, mama?”

A fresh set of tears clogged her throat; she pressed her lips tightly together and squeezed her son closer to her chest.

~

And they scream. The worst things in life come free to us.

I have come across many women who struggle in their daily lives, whether it’s issue of domestic violence, unhappiness in a marriage or desperation for freedom. It’s a really sad state of affairs and each time I hear a story or witness the destruction of misery on a woman’s face, it leaves me with one big question.

Why do they stick around?

Because they can’t face the rest of the world with their sadness? Because they have become so accustomed to living like this that they treat it as normal? Despite all our advances and open minds we still live in a society where women suffer. And they believe that they have to suffer in silence, that this is a test of their patience. But who is forcing you to stick around? Is it the situation or is it you? Is it your mind set that stops you from reaching out and attaining what you thought was unattainable all along? I think for some women they actually believe that they must endure this suffering; whatever kind it is, because that is the way they must live. That’s life.

No it isn’t.

You can’t just hang around and wait for things to get better for you, because the truth is you’re going to be waiting forever and life doesn’t work that way. You need to stand up, push away the barriers, and wave goodbye to the pain and misery. Every day is not about a silent struggle and agonising acceptance; it’s about moving ahead, embracing yourself and believing that happiness resides inside you.

It is not an easy ride, but who said living was easy? It’s the giving up and hiding away that’s easy. Remember you don’t deserve this, no woman does.

By Smiley
http://twitter.com/Smiiiiiley_x

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Subtitles: A Team – Ed Sheeran

I stepped onto the conceited weighing scale, dreading the outcome. The cursor began to move as fast as my heart was racing. It should have stopped by now. The vacillating cursor found its place at a number. At that meticulous moment, my entire life changed. Countless thoughts circled my mind; they rapidly overcame me until looking at my own reflection became hazardous. I felt repulsive, I hated myself. Nothing was ever the same again.

*****

Every single ounce of my reality was directed towards being thin. It started with only skipping one meal a day in order to avoid suspicion, but it wasn’t working, I looked exactly the same. I decided to skip two meals, and gradually my body became accepting. I stopped getting hungry but I knew that I needed to stop eating altogether to make any sort of difference to my physique. Eventually the headaches became customary. The dizziness became my vision. The aching became habitual. My eyes began to sink into my skin like coins in water. My skin became pasty and lifeless. Tasks became futile. I could not walk up the stairs without getting out of breath. My smile became a façade.

Sometimes it wasn’t about being thin, it was about making myself feel good. The satisfaction of not eating for a whole day was blissful, knowing that I was losing weight, that I was making something happen, that I was in control of something. I began to live for that feeling. Everything around me was moving so fast, I was being dominated. I continued to starve myself, but it was never enough. I was not thin enough. I was not good enough. It became a living nightmare and a dangerous routine, until one day I collapsed in a clothes store beside my mother. Reality should have prevailed, I should have reformed myself, but my only concern was that she would know. My reflection should have notified me that I was beyond unhealthy; instead it screamed ‘FAT.’

I needed to eat, my body was desperate for food but my mind would not allow it. The two debated furiously. Eventually they came to an agreement; I could eat and then make myself sick. It seemed to work, what a genius idea. My bones were already aching from the lack of food. Making myself sick seemed to aggravate them further. The pain intensified, sometimes suffocating me to the point that I wanted to die. I would spend nights watching endless hours of television to distract me from the pain, to try and make myself feel better. The television gradually polluted my mind. The girls on the screen mocked me for my weight; they told me that I needed to look like them to be beautiful. I watched how the pretty girls at school had everybody’s attention and I gradually became a breathing corpse with no soul. What was wrong with me? I wanted people to like me, I wanted to be pretty.

People stopped caring. My best friend was preoccupied with her crush. She knew what I was going through, but she failed to realise that it was about more than wanting to be thin. It was about my perception of myself, my confidence and my self-worth. My parents failed to realise that I seemed to physically be disappearing. My skin became sheer elastic stretched over my bones, ready to subside at any second. I was ugly, the pages of the magazine said so. The girls on the billboards ridiculed me. My mind taunted me. I was drowning in my own clothes but I still did not look like them. I was lonely and afraid. Nobody in my life even cared enough to help me, a voice in my head kept reiterating that people wouldn’t even notice if I was gone. I loathed myself; I should have made it easier for everyone and disappeared. Suicide became a daily thought.

I lived in this malicious world for months and months. I had lost my place, I became insignificant. I watched the boys in my class become fixated with the girls on magazine covers. I wanted to be loved, I wanted to feel good. I would if I was thinner. Eventually it became a way of life; there was no other way to live, until one day I found myself on the floor in the kitchen. How did I get here? I was alone; the dizziness had overpowered what was left of my body. I had fallen and I couldn’t lift myself up.

I was in so much pain, my vision had become blurred and I couldn’t even lift my own limbs. What was I doing to myself? Something needed to change. It had become increasingly difficult to make myself sick, the pain was too powerful, it was as if my body had given up. I wanted to die. I was losing control of my body, it was slowly shutting down. I was trapped in my own delusion and I couldn’t see a way out. When I gathered enough strength to lift myself up, my first task was to keep food in my system. Eating had become a punishment; a horrible chore. I ate as if I was being asked to consume poison, but I furtively knew that it wasn’t going to reside in my system for very long. This time it needed to. It took every ounce of strength not to make myself throw up, I couldn’t do it.

I found myself crying at how weak I had become; I needed help. The next day I tried again but every single time I ate, my body wanted to throw it up. It was routine. Eventually I kept it down, but it took months to eat a whole meal without being sick straight afterwards. I had only participated in two P.E lessons in the entire year. I gave the teacher excuse after excuse until one day I finally revealed the truth. Saying it out aloud made it real.

I stopped talking to my best friend and started spending time with people that taught me how to enjoy life. I looked in the mirror everyday and told myself that I was good enough, that nobody could tell me any different. Gradually my life came together, but my best friend never understood. She stood amongst the people that will never understand, those people that label eating disorders as attention seeking, those that claim that it is for vanity purposes. It is simple for people to say these things about something they have and will hopefully never experience. It is horrifying and it is difficult to find a way out.

I sit here today, 6 years later, still affected by what I went through. Today I weighed myself; I watched the cursor move until it stopped. I sighed at the number and decided that I would skip the snack that I originally came downstairs for. Eating disorders are dangerous; a relapse can occur at any time. Even as a 21 year old, I still cannot cope with being called ‘fat.’ The sizes on clothes still possess the ability to affect my mood. I am a girl, living in a society that dictates the way that we should look. Plastic surgeries are becoming common because people are unhappy with themselves. We are encouraged to undergo procedures that will keep us looking young. New diets are advertised, weight-loss schemes, everything is directed at keeping us thin. The media tells us that we are not good enough, that there is always something more that we should be doing in order to improve our appearance. They dictate what is acceptable; they determine the definition of beauty. New cosmetics are promoted, manipulating us into believing that we should aspire to be perfect, that we are and never will be enough.

Eating disorders are a disease, not a fashion statement. They can kill.

By Special K
http://bringmeacupcake.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/likecherrypie