You bite your chapped lips to blood. It doesn’t matter; it never mattered and never will. You set fire to your lungs and stare at the ashtray besides your bed as you dropped another cigarette. You look at the smoke fade away and think of all the lovers who went wrong in your short but so intense life. You counted them, 58. You get to think that you were the one who went wrong after all. Very few counted actually, a couple. You think about them, beautiful strong independent women, something you’ll never be. You loved them intensely and yet you watched them walk away silently. Because you never talked. That’s what your mother tells you. We never know what’s on your mind. Does she really want to know? She’ll be disappointed once more, like always. You’re too different. You’ll never fit in. Not in this country. So you wanted to go away as if it was going to change anything, you are a mess.
You are a mess. You are deeply flawed, your wounds never heal. It doesn’t matter if you woke up at dawn to pray a god you were never sure of his existence or if you sneaked out of another stranger’s bed. You swing from hysterical laughs to crying until your eyes went dry. You take anti-depressants, controlling tools of your fucked up system as you please to call them. It never
works, you are confused, you confuse everyone, even your therapist whom you’ve stopped seeing, pretending to be okay. But you’re not okay.
You think of your parents, and you envy the fact that they stayed together for 41 years, surely, they fight but they stood for each other, they had 3 perfectly balanced and successful children, and you. You weren’t planned; they ask themselves what wrong they ever did in this world to have you. Your friend tells you that you are there for a reason, that even if your parents didn’t want you the universe surely did. But what for? You’re there and that’s it. You know you’ll never have one of these nice lives, with a groomed garden surrounded by a clean white fence. Get your shit together, Mer. No you don’t want to, not yet, you want to dip your fingers in charcoal or pigments once more, and you want to soil canvas and abandon them in your room, like you always did. Your parents look at your art pieces and wonder, what’s that obsession with women. You smile and never answer. Because you don’t talk.
It doesn’t matter if you yelled until you were out of your breath, because they’ll never listen.
You write as you read, tirelessly. And yet, you end up tearing the paper into hundreds of pieces; no one needs to know what happens in your troubled mind.
You don’t even know what you are, you look at yourself in the mirror, yes, these are your father’s eyes, yes this is your mother’s tanned skin and yet you’re not theirs. You can’t be theirs. They have tried too many times to make you fit into a mold you always rejected. You
listen to people laugh, and you drop another cigarette. It doesn’t matter what language you spoke, wrote or sang in, because you’ll never fit in.
You have a Berber last name, a Hebrew first name and yet they insisted in calling you an Arab. You’re not an Arab. You’re not even sure that you are you. And you have long struggled with your identity and still do, often, during those sleepless restless nights of yours. And you settled for never trying to find out, you still have time. Or do you? You were convinced that you’ll die young and insisted you would live your life fully until then, and this is when you think about how many times you attempted suicide and never succeeded, because you never succeed. You think of a phoenix, but you’re not a phoenix. You’re a non-believer, a queer woman in a country that will never accept your difference, you’ll end up in jail someday they tell you, I’m already in jail you answer, drowning your sorrow once more in blended scotch whiskey, your drink of choice, you like things strong and smooth, like the black tobacco you smoke or the women you loved.
You were born on the hottest days of an ochre city. Where the sun is blinding, and you are blind. You care too much, and never truly care; you’re a ball of reckless emotions and once more you’ll throw a jacket on and walk in the night and pretend you are alright because you don’t want to hurt those you love. They don’t need to know how much of a mess you are.
You think of writing your story to the world, at least they’ll acknowledge the existence of people like yourself, the nothings, but words never come. What’s so special about your life anyway so you’d think of sharing it?
Once there was, and there is no more, no, that doesn’t sound right, you’re neither a princess, nor a sword fighter, you are a tragic waste of space, just another Moroccan that speaks so many languages that they lost sight of their identity. So paint that face of yours once again, pretend you care and you will be alright, for just another day.