things I've never told him

my heart is heavy and my chest is burning and maybe you were right about alcohol. it gave me so much courage, it reminded me how to be brave for myself. but you make the pieces of my heart shatter, make the stars stop being a light and start being fire. fire that seems to lick my skin from the inside so I can't scream for help because no one sees it. but you make me happy too and can I call this emotional abuse? because God knows I haven't hurt like this in a while. and god knows I've scrambled around for a blade one time too many. and I can't figure out what's good for me. and I can't stop hurting. love is a funny thing. you break apart and you hope for him to piece you back together but you keep forgetting how jagged the ends of this glass is. and he has bled one time too many over you. I am not worth anything. maybe I need to drink more maybe it will numb everything away because I've been looking for something that will melt this heartache. 

transitory

Hi I'm Irdina Suleiman. I was born on a Thursday afternoon, at about 4:44PM, 18 February 1999. I suppose this is how all our stories began. I used to wonder why so many babies were born light skinned but as I grew up I've realised that at the time we were all canvases waiting to be marked by the different people you meet through your life. I should've known. After all, the canvases I've seen in the museums I've been too are filled with history and an outpouring of emotion that I wouldn't know where to begin with. So I  started my own canvases and I tried to find the right colours, a palette to my liking before I finally realised what I was doing to myself. I destroyed any possibility of being a showpiece when my knife became my paintbrush. I don't know why I decided to do this. Maybe because there's 31 days left to O Levels and I can't decipher this aching sense of loss. I've been feeling heavy lately a lot. It's the same kind of heavy you feel when your father takes you swimming and decides to tuck into your swimsuit a stone, one for every year of your age so that by the time you're 16, the only thing you know better than the burn of oxygen in your lungs as a fire you didn't know you started rages on, is the flickering of a dim heartbeat. I should've known. I should've seen this coming right from the moment I was born that I wasn't meant to live. How could I, when 4 means death and 4 means I shouldn't exist. Remind me why I'm siting alone trying not to convulse into tears even when something inside of me has been ripped to shreds. And remind me how to fix me. 

calligraphy

I've written tremendously these past few days. and I'm trying to find what attributes to that and I figured there's a lot of pieces of me that forgot how to function together. I just want to feel safe again but I end up with a hole where my heart used to be. 

incoherent

not necessarily tired I just am trying to find an excuse to avoid everyone and everything — it feels like a good alone day I want to be alone today as soon I can I think I've run out of strength to be around people. I don't mean to [ maybe i do I never know; can't tell the difference anyway ] but it's taking a toll. I just need to cry and I haven't felt so vulnerable in a while. 

prerequisites

Hey DINA here's a list of things I want you to know.

When we get married:

I want either hot tea or hot coffee. Tea to be served with two teaspoon of sugar and Milo to be served with one teaspoon.

I like my toasts to be a little crunchy and js I love PBJs

I want to be woken up with a kiss or two.

I want you to Salam me and give me a kiss on my lips before we separate.

I want you to know that I like my bed to be clean and pillows to be nicely stacked on top of each other and bolsters to be tucked away either by the side of the wardrobe or under the bed. I'd like my comforters to be placed in the sun at least once a week.

I'd like my shirt to be ironed and make sure there's a knife edge crease on both sleeves (and pants).

I want to come home to at least 30mins of talk with you before we have dinner of 1hour dinner including talk before we go to bed.

I want to pray with you.

Before we get married (right now)

I want you to know that I would love you even without —

If I'm paying, you cannot say no.

If you feel bad that you're always on the receiving end, tell me then maybe we can get lunch and you can pay for it.

If there's something that's bothering you, speak about it to ME in real life. I can control my anger better irl when I'm with you.

If you miss me, you can call me anytime that's a privilege card. If I don't answer, please forgive me.

Id like to have lunch with you at least once a month and also a bus ride home with you also at least once a month.

Hug and kiss is a must everytime we separate from each other unless your mom is watching us then it'll be over text or mentally kissing/raping you.

Do note that I'll touch your ass whenever I want to. 

Punching you or a strong nudge doesn't mean I'm gna hit you in the future it just means that I'm strong and I want you to know it. jk. It's usually a friendly punch or nudge. I don't want to hurt you. 

If I start to rummage your body and you don't feel comfortable, stop me. I'll stop.

If you think what I'm doing isn't right, tell me. I'd love to know.

If you're jealous of something, just remind yourself that hakim loves you then hurry go look through your gallery and assure yourself that Hakim is yours because I know for a fact my love, that I do love you with all my heart.

appropriation / appreciation

this may turn out more of a rant than a fairly balanced argument because i think i know where my loyalties lie on this one.

first of all, i personally think there's a stark contrast between "cultural appropriation" and appreciation and fascination. globalisation has brought light to many cultures people have considered primitive of "backwards" and i think this is the most important part because if you study imperialism particularly in southeast asia / asia in general in the 17th-18th century [ because this is the only kind i know forgive my ignorance and lack of broader perspective, maybe i'm just being pushy about my beliefs ] you will understand that much of spreading influence was a result of "white man's burden". the asians with their deep-rooted cultures and whom found comfort in traditionalist ideas were shoved into a blinding light of commercialism, that perhaps tainted many different cultures. so we get to see, i suppose, what the "white people" [ a term i will use loosely because quite frankly i hate it ] thought of many of the asian and other so-called exotic cultures. [ exotic is another one of those weird words because like just because it's different from yours that doesn't mean it has to be globally classified as exotic; cheeseburgers were exotic in asia before macdonalds blew up globally ] anyway back to appropriation. "white people" didn't exactly love us and took it upon themselves as a personal mission to socialise western behaviours. this would tamper with cultural beliefs don't you think? i mean look at us now, scaling into singapore specifically. we were a land sat on the richest of malay heritage. we had ingrained into our system a belief we thought would be unshakeable but as the days age [ and so do the people because i like to make up pseudo-witty remarks about ageing population which really doesn't make me laugh as much as it pressures me when i think about it so perhaps it is a story for another day when i get a degree in political science and can make every single politically incorrect joke ] how many people wear the baju kurung out anymore? it is our culture isn't it, and a long time ago, it was about the only thing people wore out. and fuck that look how they wrapped different influences around even the traditional clothes -- how many people wear the real shit anymore? but its justifiable, hey, it's called fucking globalisation. we adapt to orientate ourselves to the current state of things and this is the world we live in now. but, hey, again you could argue that there are so many places where heritage is untouched by time. i think i would cite India [ again based on personal experience; i apologize for my ignorance ] because i know certain women who still don saris everyday, complete with the red smear of a bindi. and you would argue that these women get oppressed because of what they wear [ honestly what even why would people think that maybe again this is my ignorance after all i've lived in a racially diverse society all my life ] but really how would a "white person" who wears it, who can hardly understand it's poignance in the indian culture and so wears it to a tacky, over commercialised event like coachella get appropriation? she's just fascinated if not my the beauty of the bindi, it's by how beautiful the bindi looks on her. there is no appropriation here only because that culture was seized, westernized, socialised the minute the british flag was mounted everywhere. [ this is really what i feel and i doubt anyone will read this because really i like to type long passages because who even has the patience to deal with my ramblings? ] and henna. for that, i really really rEALLY DO NOT SEE THE CULTURAL APPROPRIATION? maybe it's the context i was raised upon but from what i've gathered, it's not a cultural thing. the people of the middle east and india and anywhere else around that area had lathered themselves in henna due to the immense heat in places surrounding the equator that kept them cool. and it became a tradition i suppose, when people realised how pretty it looked. so how is that an appropriation?

bottom line is, don't moralise i suppose. i suppose we don't have the right to pass judgments [ even when i do it all the time ] because really some people are trying to appreciate these endangered cultures, trying to preserve what's left of it. and that itself shouldn't be labelled appropriation. i think that's downright courage because so many of us don't have the capacity to appreciate our own heritage anymore. so when someone else adopts what you thought was unique to a certain group of people, think about it. how many people still practice such things anymore? when they pick up what you left behind, it's not their fucking fault. its yours. [ now i'm moralizing but really this post has gone places it wasn't supposed to go and i didn't expect this length but oh well i'm quite impressed with myself i never knew i had the patience ]

so adieu till the next time i decide to over-analiyse and rage about little things people do that bug me.

-dina xx

the shock of the fall

dina, [22.08.15 20:38]
i've been thinking about death a lot and maybe this anxiety is my own fault but everything that's been happening have involved death or the perishing of my soul and maybe i'm just an unworhy mess of atoms and a lot of sadness maybe some people are made of love and kindness and peace and does that make me any less a person because i am not i haven't felt worthy a lot lately and half the time i feel like that's my own fault and i am so flawed i have such a horrible character and i am so messed up in so many ways that people tend to give up and walk away and i know i also shouldn't be taking this out on you its just i don't what to do with these goddamn feelings and i'll keep saying its this godforsaken book or movie or song when really its just me trying to figure out why i fell apart. maybe this is just me falling apart maybe thi s is me asling for h elp m ay be ic ant d o thi s an y mo re

12:26 AM

there are sounds that make you feel. there is a music that grips your heart in ways. and there's a sound your heart makes when you learn to indulge.

when you're happy, your heart skips to the tune of flamenco dancers amongst a dizzy crowd, trying to figure out if its too early to be drunk or too drunk for it to be this early. when you're happy, the sun leaks golden dewdrops through your bloodstream so that the fire just feels like warmth. like honey skyrocketing through your body, like champagne fizzing in your heart as the neutrons combust to form stars. there's an inexplicable ache that craves you to be this happy again. and god i want to remember. i want to remember the way it hurts to feel my jaw sting from smiling too hard, i want to burn the laughter into my throat so that i don't forget how it sounds, i want to tattoo your face onto the forefront of my mind so that it becomes a place i know how to revisit when the warmth starts to burn out.

when you're sad, the universe pulses through you, as it tries to make it a full orbit. what it doesn't know is that its squeezing you, inside out. the sun blisters inside of you and the rings of saturn try to pierce its way out of your body and the milky way looks for exit wounds to sneak out of. but if you let them out of your body, how can you be sure that you won't drain out completely? how can you be sure that you won't collapse inside yourself? when you try to save a few stars, slitting little spaces to squeeze them out of your system, who's to say your wrists will stop shaking and your eyes will stop trembling? when the tears don't spill out of your body, they are consumed by the black holes that seem to get bigger until you sink into them. when you're sad, your heart stutters and your eyelids tremors and somehow you forget the warmth as the things that were once beautiful tries to kill you.
-dina xx

anarchy

I woke up with the deepest and darkest of despair manifesting somewhere inside of me and I'm trying to figure out if this black hole is inbred because the universe flows through me and maybe it is my duty to rid myself of the galaxy. I don't know anything about planets or the meteors or anything that lives in this space outside of Planet Earth but I know that it drowns me. it is the veil that you wear to hide the fact that some days the sun is hidden by an ocean of grey clouds wafting through the sky and if something that big and bright could be shut out by a collection water vapour then maybe I wasn't meant to get through it maybe this world is meant to deceive us into thinking that we are bigger than all of this when in reality we are just people waiting to die. they say sadness does not last forever so tell me who placed this seed here and asked for it to grow? what hurts more than loss is the realization that love cannot part you. because your heart forbids you to forget.

-dina xx

travesty

i don't know how to bring myself not to care when my healing process began with learning how to wrap myself around you. i wish i knew how to empty my heart because crying doesn't drain my heart of worries. i wish i knew how to stop the anxiety because god knows i've tried and i know its meant to be ramadhan and all of that is meant to be gone but god knows its so hard because it keeps raining on the days i forget to bring my umbrella and even when i do the rolls of grey, trail me so that even when i look up, there are shadows. and i wish i knew how to drown my voice in the thunder so that momentarily i can pretend i am a bolt of lightning.

PLEASE TEACH ME HOW TO CONTROL THIS BECAUSE I CAN'T BREATHE ALL OVER AGAIN. IT FEELS LIKE MY HEART IS BEING SQUEEZED TOO TIGHT INSIDE MY CHEST BECAUSE MY LUNGS ARE OUT OF OXYGEN AND THEY'RE TRYING TO KEEP FROM COLLAPSING. EVERYTHING INSIDE ME IS SHRINKING EXCEPT FOR MY LUNGS BECAUSE THERE'S NOT ENOUGH OXYGEN IT HURT S UTHYURYS ITHURTS GO DH ELP M IT HURTS

please don't ask if I'm okay

here is a list of things I hate about myself:

1. everything

and no I don't mean it in an emotional way – no. if I did mean for it to be an accurate depiction of a somber emotion, it would be masked behind my supposed mastery of the english language; which is to say that "everything" is not a metaphor. it is not a broken personification bearing some sort of symbolism that really is a outward plea for help and attention. it is not a door, it is a gateway. it is not meant to keep me trapped inside of my head, confined to the highest floor so that the only company I have is the different shadows that move around me as the sun does. my "everything" is not that. when I say "everything" it is an evaluation upon how much I know myself – it is to sieve out the characteristics of human and savage to try to mend together a person. this isn't a cry for help – this is a call of frustration. this is climbing to the top of the tree to find out that the fruits bear poison encased within their skins; this is hate. this is the loathing that I have planted and cultivated to grow into a field with its flowers filling up the places between each bone and twining itself around each muscles so that every move I make is a reminder to hate. to hate is to love. and to love is to appreciate.

so this is not a sad piece, this is a self-reflection.

-dina x

relentless

why is it that i'm always wavering in between fire and ice and when the fire rages through my veins i can't find the ice i need to douse it and when i feel like ice all the fire in the well wouldn't know how to unfreeze this mess of glaciers.

maybe its the heat and the cold fighting inside of my head like armageddon. i wish i knew who to pick to win because i am so tired of feeling like i'm going to burst into flames one minute and shatter into a million pieces of ice the next. i am so tired of trying how to be an in between when being an extreme is something i knew best and maybe after i char all my bones to ash, it'll choke my lungs as the ice creeps vine around my heart sending a signal to my body to learn how not to respond - because you have nothing inside of you anyway.

maybe i'll learn how to keep it from hurting one day but till then some parts of the battle have to go on.

- dina xx

quintessentially average

I'm not big on this whole real life thing so let me try to relate this to something because apparently my whole life is a metaphor about trees and wind and the night sky and the galaxies and honestly I doubt its a bad thing. I mean, every snowflake is different but just as beautiful and all that.

but I can't tell if the music I hear that lulls through every background at every event is getting monotonous or if its stagnating and my fear is that one day the conductor will put down his baton and the bows will rest on their strings and the choir stops singing. I am not ready to call it quits. not when I haven't done anything significant enough to bring about the melody of the flutes or the bass of the drums and I can't breathe like this maybe I need to inch myself closer to the stage, maybe the orchestra isn't playing loud enough. I need to block out the noises too please don't be selfish when I get used to it they do too. give me something new please I can't have my lungs choke in the embrace of my own ribs screaming "you're holding on too tight!!!"

shhh. I can't hear the trumpets. shhh I can't hear the alto solo. shh. I'm trying not to get used to this.

- dina x

愛情

you're stupid.

but i hope you know you keep my wrists clean and my smile tattooed onto my face like it was made to sit there.

i hope you know that the stars don't look like stars when your eyes sparkle next to it and they make the moonlight pale in comparison.

and if you forget that i love you, i hope you know to look within you, to look at all the cracks where you've tried to unsuccessfully breathe while your body screamed against it.

i hope you know that its the only way i could inject little pieces of me within you.

i hope you know i love you.

i hope you love me too.

and if you decide that i'm not worth that i hope you know that you have the whole of the heart i had made into glass to smoothen out the rough edges i thought that i had.

i hope you know better then to let it slip onto concrete.

and even if you did, it's okay.

"and i love the way you hurt me; it's irresistible."

-dina xx

veni, vidi, vici

let the rivers take who they might, 

let the currents pull where they flow, 

this ship landed where there was great height 

and baby stay close i'll never let go

i am yours, don't give myself back to me 

je t'aime mon cheri

your smile keeps me reckless.

and the sting in your touch and the fire in your gaze and I can't help it I cant breathe when I'm around you and my heart goes crazy just at the thought of you.

旖旎; a conversation

do you think i'm pretty?

but you are. you are so pretty, love.

but i've always wanted to be more than that. i want to be a soul, a beautiful one, one that is indestructible even by the sharpest of words. when i say i want to be pretty, i want to be a pretty picture with all the colours filled in, i want to be a bouquet of your favourite flowers and i want to be your smile, because i swear, i've never seen anything prettier that that. 

you're beautiful; oh my god, i wish i could find the right words for it. i wish i could find words big enough to express this perfection that even i can't comprehend. you're my princess and i can't love you because this love, this would kill me it feels like the all the nebulas inside of me are combusting spontaneously, creating stars in the form of you. and i would slip on my sunglasses but i would miss all of it. 

so you love me?

i do. oh my god, i love you. goddammit, i love you so damn much. 

qui meus est orbis

I never understood when they said a lover's carress could make me forget that there were 7 billion other people in the world, but when he presses his lips at the rise of my shoulder, I swear I feel like this world is ours. and time is a beautiful thing that kisses the rest of my body that he can't reach and oh my god I love him.

I love the way his eyes are flat black before they sparkle into mine, I love the way he breathes down my neck to see the goosebumps rise before leaving a trail of fiery kisses. I love that he would hug me tight and know exactly what I meant when I said it wasn't tight enough because this isn't gonna ever be enough. I am never going to enough for you but I love you. I love you harder than the pain it would cause to lose you.

be the king of my world and I can be anyone you want me to be.

-dina xx

CATHARSIS

catharsis, noun: I'm tired but my heart is still sore and my eyes are still wet

its crying till your eyes feel like butterfly wings on the tips of magnolia flowers, its making your heart pour out in drops over the finished bottle of tequila. crying is only rain after the sunshine has sucked out enough light to veil the world in it's darkness and some days I watch the grey hide the twinkling stars and I wonder how could anything be seen as beautiful when it shuts out every form of light until you are left with only gaps where the sun fought to pierce through and you think that if this was catharsis, you wouldn't have to battle against everything to feel like an empty nest because I LOVE FEELING EMPTY. but if it equates to feeling alone then I'd pierce my gut every night so that I can remind myself that loneliness is an emotion and it cannot destroy you unless you destroy yourself first

so if crying is carthasis would suicide be that as well?

-dina xx

(In) training

there's a warmth when I feel my hands curled up in yours, as though if you held it tight enough, I won't find a reason to escape.

truth is, I gave up trying.

I wish I could say I played a little harder, went a little stronger, kept indifferent long enough for you to think that I can live without you.

truth is, you had me the first time your soft smile and softer eyes captured me in an embrace without me having to wrap your arms around me.

-dina xx