45 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10111, USA
be kind. always.
May 28, 2017 • life, musings, personal
A little over a month ago, I wrote a piece for Teen Vogue about a Norwegian show called Skam. My article focused on the current season’s centric character, Sana, and how important she is for young Muslim women in this day and age. I am really proud of it, but after writing it I went through a mini writer’s block where I couldn’t make sense of any of my words. Because of that, everything I attempted to write has been sitting in my Google Drive as drafts.
Recently, however, while going through a rough patch, I started thinking about season two of Skam. The centric character for that season was Noora and she had a quote taped to her bedroom wall that read:
Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.
It sounds like a generic quote that I think we’ve all seen passed around over the years, but I think it holds so much truth. I come across so many people everyday whether it be while walking down a busy New York street or riding on a packed subway compartment. Everyone’s got a story. They’ve all got highs and lows that I will never know about. However, I don’t need to realize this to be nice to those I come across. I’m a strong believer in treating others how I wish to be treated. That isn’t always the case for everyone else, though.
So often I hear people say, “Oh, sorry for acting awful toward you. I was having a bad day.” Or, “Don’t mind them. They’re just going through stuff.”
Why is it okay for people to behave rudely with others because they’re having a bad day? Why is that a free pass to be a shithead and spread negativity?
As someone who tends to bottle things up, I find myself cracking at the seams as soon as it all becomes too much. And usually when I reach that breaking point and find it hard to hold in all my stress and anxiety, it’s usually triggered by others behaving rudely with me. Now, I wouldn’t say I’m the most sensitive person around, but it’s off putting when someone lets out their frustrations over other things on you when you yourself are going through your own problems. It can put a damper on your whole mood causing you to think negative thoughts.
I, personally, don’t want to be an unpleasant person to anyone because of my personal problems. I try to be as kind as possible to everyone I come across because that’s how I would like to be treated. And people say they are “always nice,” but they don’t actually practice it, which is so irritating. Practice what you preach!
That quote from Skam points out that we may not know anything about what other people are going through, so being kind could go a long way. It doesn’t take a lot to be nice. If you’re kind to those you come across, it will not only make that person feel good, but at the end of the day, you will also feel better about yourself.
Just a thought.
My school email inbox is full of reminders to sign up for graduation this upcoming May. I still haven’t even made an appointment for senior portraits, either, but in my defense, I always look so bad in those pictures. Where are the Snapchat filters to give me a little extra flair so that I can hide my face behind masks and pretty flower crowns? It’s just a scary, daunting thing to know that I’m finally getting to the end of this chapter of my life. Mostly because it was such a long one. One full of lessons learned and growing up, but that discussion is for another day because there is something bigger frying in my head at the moment.
I’m currently working as an intern for academic credit. It’s a pretty huge company, full of amazing opportunities in terms of where I see myself going in the future, and it pays! I also occasionally drop in at my old place of employment that I’ve worked as a temp since summer of 2015. It’s nice there, familiar and easy, but not entirely where I ideally see myself in the future.
Come early May, my internship will end, and I’ve got a lot of decisions to make. I have the opportunity to ask either of my employers for a full time job after I graduate, but I get insecure and wonder if they’ll even want to hire me. On top of that, I also have to keep in mind that I want to do my masters ASAP so that I don’t lose my school momentum. When I talked to my mom about this, she asked me why I was even bothering worrying about all this now. After such a long, hard few years of college, I deserved a break. She is insisting I actually sit around at home and relax, or go on a vacation. The idea seems tempting. I even reached out to my cousin in Australia about possibly coming down under for two weeks in June, but then I thought, did I want to slow down?
A few months ago, I was reading Mindy Kaling’s book, Why Not Me?, and there was a part in it where she talked about the term workaholics:
We do a thing in America, which is to label people ‘workaholics’ and tell them that work is ruining their lives. [...] And to some degree, I understand why the trope exists. It probably resonates because most people in this country hate their jobs. [...] The reason I’m bringing this up is not to defend my status as someone who always works. It’s just that, the truth is, I have never, ever, ever met a highly confident and successful person who is not what a movie would call a ‘workaholic.’ We can’t have it both ways. Because confidence is like respect: you have to earn it.
I’m not saying I’m a workaholic because I’m a 24 year old girl who loves to sleep all day, but I don’t hate work. I enjoy the office setting, I enjoy talking to a different group of people outside of school, and I don’t find mind daily commutes on a crowded train. Furthermore, I have really big dreams that won’t come true if I were to just sit around and not do anything for several months.
Maybe it’s naive because I’ve only been properly working for two years, or maybe I’m so over school and the mindset of my younger peers that I yearn for something new. Either way, I don’t want to completely let go of the working life. It isn’t a money thing, though that part isn’t bad, but it’s just having something to do. After years having homework and a place to go Monday to Friday, the idea of not having any obligations is strange and unfamiliar. It’s like the start of every summer vacation where the first few days feel like a weird daze. Like you actually can’t believe you have nothing to do. That can quickly get boring.
I have a few weeks to decide what I’ll be doing, but it feels like the weeks are passing by in a blur. Time is ticking, graduation day is quickly approaching, and I still don’t fully know what I want to do. Should I relax and actually enjoy my life or keep going? Maybe it would be good to keep my options open and dip my toes in here and there so that the universe will just naturally let things fall into place and lead me in the right direction.
i know that it's mine
February 26, 2017 • featured, life, musings, personal
For the past couple of months, I’ve had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Internet. On the one hand, it’s a very good tool to keep me informed and woke about everything happening around the world. On the other hand, I started to resent it as well. I didn’t want to use any of my social media apps, but that’s more or less what the Internet has become nowadays. Instead, I wanted to chuck my phone out the window or turn it off altogether.
I couldn’t figure out why. At first, I thought it was probably because I was so annoyed by some of the things I saw. Facebook seemed like a complete drag. There were people on there who genuinely took notice of who liked their posts and who didn’t. They kept a tally to return the favor, as though likes determined anything substantial in the grand scheme of things. On Twitter, I couldn’t take the amount of people who just complained about the most mundane things or those who grew a stuck up attitude based on the cool friends or cool job they had. I usually go on there for comedy material and the occasional political RT, but I opted to just avoid it completely, popping up every few days when I had nothing to do on my phone. With Instagram and Snapchat, I had FOMO whenever I saw anyone’s pictures because my social life has been struggling under the weight of my school work and internship.
What was funny was that I used to enjoy all this once upon a time. Hours of my day went to checking all tweets, posts, etc. But at some point, it started to change. The content, the people, and the whole culture of it.
A couple of nights ago, I was feeling really down on myself based on an interaction I had with someone online. It got me thinking about why I was still even bothering with this part of the Internet. What good did it hold other than cute pictures and videos of One Direction? Why was I trying so hard?
It took a conversation with a very inspirational friend, listening to “Mine” by Phoebe Ryan on repeat, and an ill-timed think session at my job for me to slowly realize and come to terms with everything.
I have been on the Internet since my early teen days. It’s been over a decade of me working through social media sites, and during this entire time, I’ve been searching for validation online. It had become a place for me to try and show people there that I am “somebody.” Somebody who is talented, has cool friends, an exciting life, and something worth Instagramming and talking about. This was why I had gotten upset that night -- because I had come across someone who had made me question if I was actually accomplishing that. What if I’ll just spend all my years trying to show people what I’m worth? What if I’ll always just be average?
But the truth is, I am somebody. I’m somebody who works very hard in everything she does, no matter how inconsequential. I’m somebody who has great friends and is a great friend back. I’m somebody who is working toward her goals and maybe some of them are taking too long to accomplish or leading me places where I wasn’t sure I wanted to end up, but that doesn’t mean I’m not somebody.
My same friend said to me, “Learning to like things for what they are and being confident in them when others don’t validate you is something we needed to learn,” and I couldn’t agree more. I want to be proud of the life I’m leading and be proud of the fact that I got here myself. Through my dedication and hard work.
I don’t need validation from the Internet anymore. I’m confident in what I’m doing and that’s all I really want to care about. I don’t feel the need to prove all this to anyone online either because at the end of the day no one cares about the fun life you have or the cool friends you made or the exciting job with the exclusive perks you get. If you’re a good person who is good to others, then no one should have to try so hard.
Before every birthday, I tend to stress over whether or not I’ve lived the past year to its full potential. I look back through old photos since I have a habit of taking too many in fear of missing anything. I compare how life was on my last birthday to how it is now. I worry, essentially, because I’ll never be as young as I am now and I don’t want to let time pass without doing all that I can. So I’ll try to compensate for it by making sure the last few days before my birthday are the absolute best.
Usually, it doesn’t work that way. Since my birthday falls during the end of the school term, I’m scrambling to study for tests and keep up with the curriculum. This past week I did the same, however, I had the added element of this disastrous presidential election clouding over everything. Somehow, despite feeling like the world was officially over, life kept going on.
Twenty three was difficult, as was twenty two. I had, for some reason, assumed things would get better, but it only got more jumbled. I’m not saying that I’ve had a bad year, but it was a lot of growing up, and everyone knows growing up sucks. When I looked through some of my pictures, I found that it had lessened in number quite drastically. I couldn’t explain it, but it seemed significant that I wasn’t always flipping my phone out to capture a moment. Possibly because I’d taken to watching it with my own eyes for a change.
At this age, we’re all trying to find ourselves through graduating, finding a job, and navigating through different relationships, whether it be romantic or platonic. We drift from one place to another, finding solace in new people, and sometimes old. Mostly because we all feel a little lost. We’re still in that age spectrum where we don’t quite feel like adults yet, but we are. We have existential crises everyday and question everything, trying to figure out what the meaning of it all is. Why am I here? What am I meant to do?
On top of all that, time tends to fly a little faster now. One minute I’m fourteen and about to start high school with no idea of what’s to come, and suddenly I’m twenty four with no idea how I got here. I’ve met new people and I’ve lost them. I’ve made the best memories, but had to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never get those moments back. I’ve had to make difficult choices that were never a part of my life plan simply because life can be unpredictable. And I’ve found that it’s okay to be lost sometimes because that’s when we’re able to experience endless possibilities and opportunities.
There were times this past year where I tried really hard to become who I envision myself to be. I went out of my way and did what I wasn’t always comfortable doing, but I think those moments really helped me grow. At the end of the day, I’m just trying to be somebody. I want to leave behind a mark so that people remember me as someone who did something rather than getting by. I’m already seeing the changes in me that I need, and I’ll just have to take it one day at a time from here.
So here’s to all the days where I’ve felt lost and lonely sitting in my room on Saturday nights -- it wasn’t as pathetic as I thought it was. The days where I felt happy and free because I’ve got the best family and friends who love me -- even if I didn’t realize it sometimes. And the days when I doubted myself but still made it. Here’s to twenty three.
Sometimes you’re 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you’re reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but “Mom’s” probably wouldn’t feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened everyday and arms that were never for anyone else. But just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breathe in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes.
my greatest fear
October 31, 2016 • life, musings, personal
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People always ask others, “what is your greatest fear?” Until recently, I never had a proper answer to that. I would hear people say things such as spiders, heights, the dark, elevators, etc. When the question would be directed at me, I’d make something up, like ghosts or roller coasters.
Over the past couple of months, I have realized my greatest fear is death.
I fear people dying. I fear for their lost time and sudden end. I fear what happens to their loved ones once they’re gone. I fear mourning because I’m not quite sure how to express my own. And I fear the heartbreak that comes along with knowing that these people who have passed are gone forever.
I’d been exposed to death since a young age. All four of my grandparents passed away, some while I was too young to understand, and others not too long ago, making me catch a glimpse of what death really means. Soon after, I became exposed to younger people dying. People who were in their twenties and thirties, like my cousin, who passed August 2015 from breast cancer. It dawned on me then that death had no age. Someone could die at any moment from anything, no matter how old or safe they were, and that was when I began to fear it. Because it was something no one could truly see happening or predict, and it was so final -- no second chances or do-overs -- both for those that died and their loved ones.
Around the end of 2013, one of my uncles passed away. He was getting old, but none of us really expected it because he’d been doing relatively well despite his heart problems. No one ever really thought about their loved ones dying unless they were severely sick and it was confirmed that they had a limited amount of time to live. Even then, people thought, “we’ve got time,” and there was no way this person could leave them forever. I had thought something similar and there’s something so naive and innocent about that thought. So hopeful.
School had been keeping me busy and I had been angry with my uncle about something that is insignificant now. Because of that, I had delayed going over to see him even though I knew he was due a visit from me; he’d treated me like his own daughter and we were close. The week of my final exams, my parents told me they were going over to see him and if I wanted to go with them. I’d told them no and that I’d go over and see him the next day for sure.
Little did I know, he wouldn’t make it to the next day.
We got the call sometime around two or three in the morning, only a few hours after my parents had said goodbye to him. My heart was in my throat the entire drive over, praying over and over that he was going to make it and that it was alright. I didn’t want to believe that he wouldn’t be because it had been so long since I last saw or properly spoken to him, and I needed to do that before he died. I had so much I wanted to say. I was suddenly filled with undeniable guilt, even though I knew I couldn’t have ever predicted this. No one could. When it was confirmed that he was gone, I sat and watched him on his bed for the rest of the night and into the morning, still and so peaceful, while inside my heart it was anything but.
I understood then that time was truly precious. That it was short and fleeting, and when people told you to never forget to tell the people around you that you love them or never let a day go to waste because tomorrow wasn’t promised, they knew what they were saying. These sayings weren’t cheesy nor untrue. It was powerful because if I’d just gone that night with my parents or I let my anger fade, I could have seen my uncle once again and told him what I tell him every day in my prayers -- that I miss him and I love him and I hope he’s okay.
Sometimes it isn’t even anger that gets in the way. Sometimes it’s your own time. As I mentioned earlier, one of my cousins, who was only in her early thirties, passed away about a year or so ago. I grew up with her and she very often took care of me. She had been living in Australia, so with time difference and our busy schedules, we couldn’t keep in steady contact after she moved away. We only reached out every now and then through Facebook. And sadly, the last time I’d seen her face to face was in 2009 and even then, we didn’t get to properly hang out.
Hearing about her death, there had been so many times that it crossed my mind how I should have made more of an effort to be with her when I last saw her. How I should have reached out a little more and just let her know I was thinking about her. Because truth was, I really was thinking about her, and worried about the cancer looming over her while she had two young kids and the rest of her life ahead of her. I just never made the move to message, which drives me crazy now. Just like my uncle, I also think about my cousin and my grandparents everyday, and pray that they’re resting easy.
Mourning all these deaths were strange. People say that there is a “mourning period” but I feel like I’m still mourning them to this day, and probably will forever. I believe that the act of mourning is different for everyone. Some people cry until they’re all out of tears while others freeze up because they don’t know how to deal with it or accept it. For me, personally, I try not to think about it. I try to distract myself and occupy my mind because otherwise, I’d break down. It’s difficult thinking about all these people that I love not being here anymore while my life goes on. It’s hard coming to terms with the fact that I will never get to see them again nor will I ever be able to talk to them again. They’re gone and one day we all will be, too. We just don’t know when and that’s scary to me.
It has made me extremely paranoid, too. I don’t take death lightly at all and I constantly worry about my loved ones. And sometimes it’s not even just loved ones -- even hearing about death in the news regarding mass killings or shootings is difficult. We’re all powerless and so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. You never know when the last time will be that you will see someone. Realists might argue and say, “we’re all going to die. And everyone knows it, so why be scared of it?” While that is true, it doesn’t make it any easier. Simply by saying that won’t make me fear death and the unknown any less, nor will it take away my heartache.
In the wake of all these attacks happening around the world, especially Syria, my heart goes out to everyone who lost someone. No one should have to live in fear and pain like this. Same goes for those who are battling cancer. October was Cancer Awareness Month, and I know how scary it is knowing that your time here could be limited. Working at a cancer research hospital gives me hope, though, knowing that some of them might be okay even if it’s for a little while.
My greatest fear isn’t something that will go away because it’s inevitable and it’s real. I just hope that in the future when someone passes, God forbid, I can mourn them without regret that I hadn’t made an effort to tell them how much they mean to me.
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