Posts tagged Story

“I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family’s, and my country’s past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. 

This much, at least, I’ve figured out. I know this much is true.”

(Source: thedog-eared)

I’m addicted to the words he finds stumbling out of his incoherence. These drugs have him so heavy down in mental inebriations, he thinks he’s speaking to angels. He finds himself sitting at a crossroads between heaven and hell, not sure which way to go because both decisions seem to come with a consequence. Does he let her go or can he ask her to stay? These days he’s not sure how to control the thoughts coming out of his mouth so he says nothing at all. He’s speaking in hand gestures and body language. Shaking his head from side to side and swinging his arms her way. But she’s not watching. She’s too distracted by the silence of the noise, she doesn’t realize he’s whispering I love you. Days later he’s found himself at the bottom of an empty bottle, drowning sorrows in melodies of the songs he thought he could love her to. But he misses her. He just doesn’t know how to say it.

It’s officially the first day of the holy month of Ramadan and somehow I’ve never felt more unholy myself.

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last eight months of the year committing more time to sin than religion. Maybe because I’ve told more lies than truths, kept more secrets and made it an incentive to become a more selfish person.

This time of year is for the purification of mind and body but how does someone purify their soul? Yes, I can commit myself to conceding food and water. I can keep my thoughts occupied with work, family, friends and even religious scripts. I can pray. I can spend the next thirty days confined to faith.

But what happens on the thirty-first day?

What happens when Ramadan is over and all that surrounds me is no longer consumed by religion? What happens when we all go back to eating while the sun is out, sinning when it sets and absorbing ourselves in the lives we led before August 1st? How does thirty days, more or less, purify the talking demon from within?

This year I’m starting Ramadan with more questions than answers. It’s the first year I find myself questioning my faith…not in religion, but in myself. Do I want to be the holier version of myself? Am I ready, willing, to give up indulgence for creed? Maybe the answers lie within the questions themselves. If I am questioning my own conviction than where does that leave my soul?

Ramadan is an emotional journey. Every year we devote ourselves to a month of blatant worship, obligating ourselves to mandatory prayer and conscious faith. With every growling stomach comes the reminder that religion is an everyday part of life. It is a necessity, like the water and food we’ve forfeited. Ramadan is a concentration camp. It is a deliberate awareness of faith.

Day one and I am already feeling faithless. Can thirty days of religion cleanse a sinner’s heart?

“The month of Ramadan is that in which the Quran was revealed, guidance to men and clear proofs of the guidance and the distinction; therefore whoever of you is present in the month, he shall fast therein…” Quran 2:185

He must be drunk. This late at night, tequila tinged at the tip of his tongue. He always seems to confuse it for me when the hours run belated. My mistake was answering. Falling back into his addiction, like a relapse. I can hear it in his voice, the taste of liquor and the scent of nostalgia. His words stumbling over thought, he’s not sure why he called. He senses the disdain in my intonation and apologetically starts to explain himself, although he knows I need no explanation. I can hear him mouthing out words he wishes he could say out loud but even under the influence he lacks the courage. I do nothing but listen. Listen to the words he can’t seem to say between all the words he manages to ramble. I sit in the silence of the empty words, the lack of words, the words I don’t want to hear anyway. It’s 3 a.m. and he’s lonely. It’s 3 a.m. and I’m lonely. I’m waiting for the words that had him place this call, the reason why I even answered. In an hour we’ll be lying in each other’s arms, lying to ourselves and lying to each other. His drunken words. My sober thoughts.

Sometimes the words you used to say find themselves in the lyrics of songs we’d play when we made love. Now these memories are bittersweet and haunting, making their way into moments when I’m trying to forget you the most. And I almost feel bad for him when he takes credit for the pleasure he thinks he sees in my smile. I could lay in his arms the countless hours of a lifetime reminiscent of your touch, nostalgic for your taste. So long as I am consumed in your memory, I am content with your absence.

The song was haunting. A melodic chronology of what once was you and me. I can hear the tune echoing in the background of every moment we’d ever shared. This pleasant harmony of a love gone astray somehow having turned into misery’s affair with lust.

Nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be this hard.

It was the lyrics of our passion that kept us together, it was our words that drew us apart. Yet with every interlude we somehow found ourselves in refrain, singing the verses of reprise. And though our emotions danced to the rhythm of heartbreak, we’d hit repeat just so we could find ourselves falling back in love with our own tragedy.