How it begun

I was drowning in the abyss of nihilism, and as the lighthouse led me to him, the island I landed on was a ghost town. The weather was gloomy, the streets empty, and the walls tall and grey. The shop signs became blurry whenever I looked at them in a failing attempt to map my way back to my ship. An old woman walked out of the night haze and started showing me around.

"As you see, there is almost nothing in here. Everything has been abandoned for years. The plants withered and the walls turned grey. He's been hiding for years and years now. He's never tried to get out. He doesn't know how it feels to be on the other side of here. To feel the sun melting on his face. To let the night breeze mix with his breath. He doesn't think he needs help. He doesn't know he needs help.

"Why is the lighthouse still here then? There's still hope. I can feel it!

"It's a trap. To deceive himself into thinking that he is not lonely. To appear to others as someone who is not alone."

As she said those words, my limbs started to feel numb, and my heart was fluttering out of my chest.

"A trap??

"No one makes it out of here alive. Not in one piece anyway."

We reached an area where we had to remove our feet. We floated from one street to another. They all looked the same. The woman kept talking but all I could hear was the sound of my heart throbbing. She was repeating the same movements every 6 to 3 seconds. We were stuck in a loop. It felt like the end of time where time never really ends.

"We are here!"

I looked the opposite way and there I saw it. A concrete house with a green roof surrounded by a barbed wire. As I walked towards it, the old woman stopped me and muttered "you have to remove your eyes now. Otherwise, what you will find inside will be too much for you to endure."

As my eyes turned white and parts of my brain grey, I felt my feet again.

"Here, I sewed your feet to your body. You are going to need them."

A Journal of a Blue Bird Called Molly: Page 5: Of Suicide & co (PART II)

I remember one early morning about three years ago when I was on my way to my university, a young man hung himself in a tree. The body was covered with a white sheet. The body was not taken down till the police came. I remember it vividly now. The weather was gloomy; the scene was very artistic. I saw Antonio Vivaldi by the tree playing his Winter piece. All what I could think at that moment was 'at last, he's free'. Suicide has nothing to do with how religious or how much of a believer you are. I had had suicidal thoughts ever since I used to be very religious. I had had them when I became irreligious. I stopped having them when I realized I have to earn the keys to my chains, and I had only two paths to choose from; either commit suicide, or take that one huge step towards living for me and only me.

My family has always been financially stable: I ate good food, slept in a warm bed, spent the summer holidays at the beach, ate ice-cream, and played in the neighborhood with the boys. My childhood was fine compared to my adulthood. You see, ever since my uterus started to bleed and my breast started to grow, my life started to change radically without even being asked. I needed to start learning how to be a lady, so my family prevented me from going out to play with the boys in the neighborhood. I was no longer allowed to go out except to go to school; you can imagine how hellish the holidays used to be. I could not receive a female friend at my place without having my mother eavesdropping on us. I could not pick up the phone to have a simple conversation with someone because all my family would be harassing me. The only boyfriends I could have were imaginary ones about whom I would write imaginary things in my diaries. Of course I had a few boyfriends in high school, but they were very short term ones because with my up-tight life style, I could not get out with them, call them or even text them. Hell, I could not even go out with female friends. They would even choose my friends for me. I used to be constantly terrorized. Even when I am home alone I would imagine my mom putting surveillance cameras to tap my phone calls. I know this sounds silly. It does sound silly to me now. But back then, it sounded very logical. I believed it. 

The terror escalated when my brother turned from my best friend into my biggest enemy. This transformation also happened when he hit puberty. Somehow, society explained to him that he needs to be a 'man'. And by 'man', they meant someone who is a macho, misogynistic being who constantly tries to fill in the gaps of his weak egoistic existence by unlawfully/wrongfully controlling his female counterparts to convert them into the slaves of the patriarchal dominion. 

Is this my fault? Am I the victim of the scars that these people left me for life? Or have I fallen victim to my own dark thoughts?

The Story of a Blue Bird Called Molly- Page3: Introduction

It has been a while since I last wrote something. The thing is.. I have been depressed for a very long time. I was trapped in a hell hole, and the only thing that helped me survive it was writing. I ran away from it thinking that this depression will end. It didn't. It turned out that while I was planning my escape, along with my books and laptop, I actually packed my depression.

Knowing this paralyzed me. I thought I could write because I was good at it, because I could do it. Discovering that I used to write just to survive devastated me. It crashed me into alphabetical letters that I am now failing at creating meaning out of them.

Today, I have decided to get out of my shell and talk about my state of depression. I am going to talk about the feelings and thoughts I have been having and have been afraid of sharing because of it makes people feel... "uncomfortable" and because it makes me look "unattractive".

I have been planning on starting a series of blog posts for a long time now. I will be sharing intimate stories about the childhood, adolescence and adulthood of an almost young Tunisian woman.. about me.

I'm Nada. I'm almost 27 years-old. And this is my story..

(to be continued)