Identity

Growing silent I watch everyone around me, I have been hushed by routine. Attend my classes at university, then off to work to teach my own class- soon after I’m home, I eat my share of typical Kuwaiti household dish for lunch, and then off to the gym. An hour in the pool,  then back home to prepare for the next day of teaching, and on and on the cycle goes. Rinse and repeat- rinse and repeat- rinse and repeat. While this routine grows stronger and my biological clock grows fonder of my stable set of sleeping hours, I lose myself somewhere. I find myself lying in wait to finally find her, and pounce; the happy me. “Come here!” I’d yell, and clasp my arms tight around her, then- happiness! “Today, I’m going to have an adventure. Today, I’m going to break free.” I say.

I unpin myself from my bed thirty minutes earlier than usual and go for a morning jog the next day. It feels nice to work out early in the morning, the wind swaying my hair left and right. The rest of my day followed the usual routine, though, which was fine because I had something to look forward to the next morning—my jog! My venture!

Two weeks later, even the jogging session I created to break free of my routine became just that, another part of my daily monotone. How do I break free of these shackles I have thrust upon myself?

I decided to paint my nails a fresh new color; Pink. This was a desperate and pathetic attempt at change, but it is all I could do right now. Sitting on my bed staring at my newly polished nails. Pink. Pink? I transferred my angst onto my nails and it is time for the polish to come off as soon as it dries. Disgusting is what it has become. Time for a cigarette, I don’t care that I recently quit smoking. Fuck it. Fuck my lungs, I need this. I rummage quickly through the box under my bed where I stash my box of Dunhill smokes, and pick up my pink lighter. More pink? Lighting my cigarette gives me the freedom I seek- oh, so very much! Sitting by my bedroom window I suckle at the cotton edge and instantly feel that comfort oozing into every ounce of my body. Exhaling, I close my eyes.

I was the girl who was once in love. I was the girl who built a fantasy life with the man she would marry, our first son was to be called Jassem. What am I now without it? The woman who is about to graduate from a university that has taught her nothing. The woman who is dwelling living another year in her homeland. The single over achiever who is suffocated by the lack of freedom and excitement in her life. I need to get out. Fast.

After tasting the sweetness of freedom and the thrilling life I could be living abroad I am unable to come back to my shackles. It is killing me slowly, and this is happening faster than expected. I inhaled the life out of that cigarette, and I am left yearning for another.

The contrast between the heat entering my bedroom from the window and the cool breeze leaving the air conditioner is hovering all around me. My adventure for the day is over with. That sweet tobacco scent is vibrating off the walls of my mouth, I am still yearning for more, more, more.

Suddenly I find myself thinking back to where I thought I would be at this moment in my life. I was supposed to be happy by now, if not happy then at least excited to start a new life after finally grasping my Bachelor degree in my hands. But no, I remain sitting curled up next to my open bedroom window and searching for this freedom, for this adventure.

What is there to do other than bask in the glory of my misery? Friends? I have a good amount of them, but loneliness lingers. Thoughts of him linger, at times dancing with my loneliness, and at others running around like dogs without leashes, sniffing away at those dirty old bad memories, barking at them to leave. I have turned into a mummy, an empty skeleton wrapped with lifeless paper. I am hollow, but the paper covers the truth.

I open my eyes and begin staring at the pack of cigarettes- they’re bad for my health yet I still can’t allow myself to live without them. My fixation with the cigarettes is similar to my fixation with him, nothing but broken lives will come out of this, but I can’t help but love it. I can’t help but yearn for it quietly. The life I had planned out for myself. The life we had planned.