Poetry Friday: Bridges

Hello and welcome to my blog! I’ve had a long day today, and I know I say this every day, but I’m exhausted! I went to my grandparents to see my uncle and his wife before they head back to the US where they live, but the exhausting part was before and after.

Dealing with a husband who is constantly in a bad mood is exhausting. I have to walk on eggshells, and when I get to the point where now I’m in a bad mood because his mood rubbed off on me, he switches and acts normal and I snap, so he snaps back to a bad mood. It’s a weird dynamic. Please don’t give me marriage advice. My marriage is too topsy-turvy right now and I’m getting a bit dizzy but I’m dealing, kind of. I’m finding other things to make me happy, like blogging.

Anyway, since I had such a day, inspiration hasn’t struck to write a poem, and the notes section of unfinished poems on my phone are too depressing (even darker than how I feel now) so I’m bringing back a poem I posted in 2017, but with better grammar (thanks to Grammarly).

Bridges

Sometimes I feel lonely
Even when I’m not alone
But sometimes I feel worthy
Loved and cherished to the bone

I know I’m super moody
But at the end of the day
I have a couple of friends
And family-ish bonds
It makes me contemplate

I say why do I have such few friends?
Is the problem in me or is it just them?
Do I need to change?
What were my mistakes?
Hold up!
Maybe I’m better off this way

Because I cross the same bridge a few times
Before I finally learn
That some bridges are to be crossed
And some should be burned

I try so hard I’m relentless
But sometimes I just go “f*** this”
Some people are worth fighting for
But most aren’t worth the hurt

Most people are two-faced lying snobs
Fake smiles and hidden agendas
I know a person or a few that fit the profile
Only talk to me when they need something

The hardest decisions in life
Are the one in which you decide
Whether to give up or try
One more time
And the one in which you decide
Whether to build a bridge
From your side
Or burn the bridge down
Because it’s not worth the fight

I’m a pretty loyal person
And I get that people have lives
But I believe it’s a matter of priority
Who you give from your time

This is a good poem about friendships and holding on for too long. Honestly, I feel I have 3 friends, and 2 of them live abroad. I barely see the 3rd one. As for my marriage, I’m working on it. Sometimes I feel like we have a good marriage but we need to work on a few things. Other times I feel miserable and emotionally abused. Sometimes I feel like I’m the emotional abuser. All I know is it’s hard to know reality from anxiety and depression. The lens through which I see life and people is distorted. I’ll keep working on myself and pray that God helps me make the right decisions in life and that he surrounds me with good friends and good company and makes me good company.

P. S. Shocking news. I’m actually a pretty fun person with my family in the absence of my husband and son. I laughed so much at my grandparents.

Transformation Tuesday: Controlling my Emotions

Hello 👋 reader and welcome to my blog! Today I’m going to talk about my lifelong efforts to control my emotions.

I’ve always been over sensitive, and over emotional. I’ve always been full of insecurities and fears about not fitting in and I’ve always reacted rather than responded (later on I found out I had anxiety). I cried easily thoughout high-school so much that I become known for crying a lot, but when I was at university, I learned that I must bottle up my emotions. By 3rd year university, I hid my emotions so well that my friends would tell me that they were surprised I never got mad. Little did they know that I let out my emotions in the comfort of my dorm, crying and on occasions yelling to let it all out. After I graduated, I got better in public, but at home, everytime I got upset, I cried.

When I got married, my husband was horrified by my tears. They angered him because this was something new to him. He has sisters but apparently they don’t cry, at least not in front of him. It took my husband years to accept that sometimes I just need to cry to feel better, but he still acts like I’m an alien everytime I have a mental breakdown, so I try not to have them in front of him.

Bit by bit, I learned to hold in my tears, but that built up emotion turned into anger. Not being able to be vulnerable and honest about my emotions was overwhelming, cue the raging hulk. Every once in a while, I’d snap, explode, and just rage on like a storm for days. That’s exhausting too.

This rage was making me feel like a bad mother and wife and I knew that I had to deal with my emotions in a healthy way. I read about how to control my emotions, how to focus on self care, healthy ways to let them out, and how to let them go. I’m still working on putting these things into practice. I think that I appear calm to the outside world. But then again, an aquaintance of mine once told me she could see anger festering beneath my calm exterior. I have this constant fear that I’m not enough for my husband and son, and I don’t know how to make that feeling go away. I also still have this feeling that I don’t quite fit into society or belong anywhere.

It’s been a goal of mine since November 2020 to control my emotions (I literally wrote it down on paper). I have no problem identifying, analyzing and expressing my emotions. I just don’t know how to regulate my emotions or let go of negative emotions.

I read that the signs of emotional immaturity are trust issues, lack of adaptive coping (failing to look after the self by not eating well and exercising, lack of communication to friends or family for support and an inability to foresee stressful events), self-blame and the lack of capacity to stay calm.

By all accounts this means I’m very emotionally immature but I’m trying not to be.

November 2020 I failed to control my emotions with my husband and son. I went full on Hulk at every inconvenience.

December 2020 I focused on not losing my cool at my son and halfway succeeded. I don’t even remember how I was with my husband.

January 2021 I went back to trying to control my emotions with both my husband and my son. With my husband, I succeeded 63.5% of the time. With my son, 58.2% of the time.

Now we’re in February, and I’m trying so hard to focus on controlling my emotions with my husband. No yelling or crying. But with my son, I’m yelling till I’m blue in the face, but I’m also making it up however I can. However, my success is 28% so far, meaning I’m failing miserably.

I’m so burnt out and as a mom who has no job to occupy her (I have my blogs and they’re a big help but still) and nowhere to go (in the middle of a pandemic, teaching my son online) and nobody to go with (I’m bound by my sons online hours and his homework responsibilities and the lack of a car of my own doesn’t help).

I’m not giving myself excuses to keep blowing up or breaking down. I need to grow up and mature emotionally and learn to stop my automatic negative thoughts on my own and not crumble every other day.

I’m trying to be okay. I really am. I’m trying not to play the victim. I’m trying to create my own happiness, but everytime I create a bubble and hide inside of it, it bursts and the reality seems too unbearable.

I’ve been practicing gratitude and meditation. I’ve been reading and writing. I’ve been working on my goals, but I still can’t seem to manage to control my own emotions. Instead, they’re controlling me.

My strategy is basically to keep myself busy (with purpose because boredom is a petri dish to negative thoughts), avoid burnout by attending to my self-care (I’m working on it), increase my self confidence by doing a self confidence challenge and focusing on my strengths, create my own happiness, turn anger into compassion towards myself and my husband and son, focus on the positive attributes of both my husband and son, socialize more (difficult to do in these circumstances) so I don’t rely on my husband to give me all the TLC I need, and last but not least work on strengthening my spiritual connection through prayer and reading quraan.

The goal is to become emotionally mature so I can regulate my own emotions and let go of negative feelings and challenge negative thoughts on my own. I even have woeksheets I’m yet to fill out and more worksheets I’m yet to print.

Quote of the day

You can’t move forward if you’re still hanging on.
-Sue Fitzmaurice

This goes hand in hand with this month’s theme letting go

What do you think of this quote?

Letting go (a poem)

Hello 👋 reader and welcome to my blog! Today was the 1st day of December and the quote on my calender says “Inhale the future, exhale the past” so before embracing the future, we must let go of the past. That’s why I decided this month’s word for me is letting go.

Disclaimer: I realize this is idealistic and far fetched and easier said than done, but nevertheless, I wil try.