nahidshafreen

[nahidshafreen]

Can’t believe I’m still alive and not thinking of wanting to die as often as I used to ???!!!???!!

Matter of fact, I actually want to live now.

[nahidshafreen]

For a long time, I felt indebted to my pain, believing it had sculpted me into the person I was—even as I struggled to appreciate that very self. I felt like I owed it a sense of gratitude for all the things I liked about myself

You know, like how you hear all the time that you're shaped by your experiences.

So I credited my "trauma" for my empathy, kindness, resilience, patience and everything that I felt was likable about me (but none for the things I despised about myself)

This belief fostered an unhealthy bond with my pain. I clung to it like a familiar companion, reluctant to let go of the one constant in my life that didn't abandon me. It wasn't until my beliefs were challenged that I experienced a paradigm shift.

I realized that my positive attributes weren't a result of my "trauma", but were intrinsic to who I am and who I choose to be. My resilience didn't stem from trauma; rather, it allowed me to navigate it. Kindness wasn't a lesson taught by pain, but a conscious choice I made.

However, I had allowed my trauma to occupy so much space in my psyche that there was little room for self-love or affection from others, and if someone else tried to love me, there was barely any room for their affection to take root. Only when I consciously pushed it away did I create space for love to exist.

Yet, in a bitter irony, I found this newly created space empty.

I had longed for love all my life, and when I finally made room for it, there was none—just me, all by myself

It was just me in an empty room of defeat, not even my trauma to give me company, waiting just outside, hoping to be called back in but I was so detached from it, as if we were strangers.

The void left by my departed pain remained unfilled, leaving me alone with myself for the first time. This solitude prompted a question: If I yearn for love so deeply, why am I still waiting passively for its arrival?

- nahid

[nahidshafreen]

[nahidshafreen]

No, I don't wish death upon him; I want him to be haunted.

I want him to be haunted by his own mind. I wish for him to endure a harsh realization, to be utterly consumed by the guilt and shame of the inhumane and unfathomable cruelty he inflicted on thousands of innocent lives. I hope that guilt will never grant him a moment of peace, nor allow him to look another human in the eyes, not even his own reflection.

I desire for him to be haunted and drown in the remorse of his brutality, to the extent that the notion of death by a million nerve ruptures while being boiled in the core of the sun becomes more appealing than the torment of his own conscience. I want him to remain alive until the unbearable weight of realization presses down upon him relentlessly.

I want for him to yearn for death as an escape from the relentless torment of his own conscience. At this juncture, death is no longer a fitting punishment for him. The luxury of death is reserved for those who have the right to escape. He deserves the inescapable captivity of a guilty conscience while he craves for death.

Death is a luxury and I want him to be deprived of it.

-nahid

[nahidshafreen]

[nahidshafreen]

It's as if she is gradually morphing into the knife that once stabbed her, becoming the embodiment of the fiery flames that once danced upon her ashes, singing songs of mockery. Now, she bears an eerie resemblance to the all-encompassing darkness that once terrorized her soul, rendering her paralyzed with sheer dread, unable to confront it with open eyes.

Her voice echoes like a haunting melody, akin to the suffocating silence that once gripped her throat, nearly stealing the breath from her lungs. She's growing colder, as frigid as the cruel hands that once mercilessly thrashed her, tossing her about like a worthless twig. Her tongue is sharpening, resembling the very dagger that once pierced her tender heart.

Now, she has transformed into the executioner, the one who wields the knife, twisting it within the victim's gut without remorse or second thought. She ignites the match, watching with sadistic pleasure as the victim's flesh is consumed by the merciless flames, relishing in their anguished cries that dance like macabre symphonies in her ears. This time, the fingerprints upon the neck are hers, and so is the palm that stifles the pleas for help.

She observes the crimson rivulets cascading from the wounds, staining her garments as they seep into the very fabric of her being. Yet, it no longer troubles her. The scent of blood no longer unnerves her; instead, she inhales it deeply, savoring its familiar essence like a twisted cherished memory.

The only divergence now is that the tormented and the tormentor reside within the same tormented vessel, and this time, the torment unfolds in sinister whispers, drowned in shadows that consume all light.

-nahid.

[nahidshafreen]

I'm now comfortable with being misunderstood, unwanted, hated, unloved, rejected, uncared for and all these things which used to hurt or unsettle me in the past and it gives me a sense of power, control, autonomy and liberation that I never experienced before.

It makes me feel secure in a way that's more peaceful than receiving the opposite but also disconnected and dissociated from my past selves almost as if they were different people with different bodies. I can no longer recognise their experiences as my own even though I know it was still me. It's like I've lost the ability to perceive those experiences from a first person's point of view, rather it feels as if I'm a mere observer of those experiences, like it's a movie and I'm just a part of the audience even though I'm the performer on the stage.

I'm sitting on the front row watching myself perform on the stage, our gaze connect once in a while but we're strangers to each other.

It's scary, sad and reliving at the same time. It relieves me off the pain but there's also this huge pile of grief sitting on my chest constantly reminding me of what I lost and pointing at the closed doors of the rooms that I'm no longer capable of accessing, taunting me.

I'm relieved knowing that I can never have to go back in those rooms and face the horrors which are locked in there but it also makes me feel sad that I'll never be able to access what was once my own. It's still mine but nothing will ever tether me back to it.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I want to take a peek and confirm that it was all real and I'm not making it all up in my head because it's so difficult when you can't even feel it anymore, but I can't because the bridge between us has been destroyed.

This realisation drives me mad and makes me question my reality, it blurs out the line between what's real and what's not and I sometimes I can't tell which side I'm on and what exists on which plane. Sometimes I feel as if I'm a byproduct of my own imagination and everything I know is nothing but mere fabrication weaved to mirror reality, which I'm not sure what it is to begin with.

-nahid.

[nahidshafreen]

The lover in me was stabbed and murdered with the broken shards of my faith and buried underneath the ashes of my hope, no amount of rain or sunlight will ever be able to revive and make it breath again.

I'm done mourning and the last tear has dried, now if anything trickles down my face, it'll be blood of my generosity when I'm beheading it.

-nahid

[nahidshafreen]

I made a life changing discovery today:

I'm not 5'0, I'm 5'1 ! I was in a hospital today and there they had this scale on a wall and I decided to check my height and found out that I'm now 1 inch taller than what I measured last time and it feels so fucking exciting to know!!!!

[nahidshafreen]

I have ideas, way too many of them, but I don't have enough energy or will or desire to act upon them. I love art and I love making art but at the same time I'm somehow drifting away from it, and all the other things that I love and the pain that I feel from it is inexplicable. #nahidshafreen H #Art #DigitalArt #GraphicArts #GraphicArtist #Delhi #DelhiBasedArtist #Photoshop #PhotoManipulation #ConceptArt #GraphicDesigning #Moon #ArtistSupport I hate using hashtags because when I use them I feel like an attention seeker lol but ArT pAgE 🤡 (at Delhi, India) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cocp8Q0SrJE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[nahidshafreen]

Back in 2013, I noticed that I had an unhealthy habit of chewing my nails and finger tips.

I stopped doing that after trying to give it up for an entire year but then started sucking my thumbs instead, then when I realised what I was doing, I actively started trying to avoid it and managed to ge out of it but then I started chewing, sucking and biting my lips.

Somehow I got rid of that too but started chewing the insides of my mouth until they'd bleed.

Then I gave that up for a while but started picking on my skin, then I managed to get rid of that habit but switched back to assaulting my lips, then I switched back and forth between my lips and skin for a few years.

Then I moved out of college last year and started growing my nails, shaping them and putting on nail enamel so I wouldn't want to chew on my nails or pick on my skin just to maintain the shape and paint and I successfully gave up chewing my lips too to some extent.

I started using lip gloss and put peppermint oil in it so the burning and cool sensation would remind me that it's there and the bitter taste would prevent me from sucking or licking my lips or assaulting them in any manner and it was working fine so far.

Yesterday I started thinking about how I'm no longer doing any of it and got happy for a moment until I realised that now I'VE FUCKING STARTED PICKING ON MY SCALP GOD FUCKING DAMN ITAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKAKAKAHAIAJSISIIAOWIWHSBDBDBDBDJDIIDIDJDIXIAHQIWJDNCOSNKDOFOEHQBWBDIQUHDIWJS

No wonder why my scalp is so sensitive and hurts all the time and why I'm losing so much of hair and all the dandruff and stinging and the burning sensation and the fucking clots of blood in my nails!?!?!?!

Why are you like this nahid???

[nahidshafreen]

merry crisis

[nahidshafreen]

A #SelfPortrait from February this year, I had no clue what was coming for me. #nahidshafreen (at Uttam Nagar) https://www.instagram.com/p/Clv55GEvQEG/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[nahidshafreen]

My music taste is like a bunch of strangers with violently conflicting personalities decided to put their playlists in a blender and made a smoothie out of it to feed the devil in hopes of giving him a nasty diarrhea which didn't work but now the devil is mentally ill with an eating disorder, chronic headache and an unhealthy sleep schedule and he won't stop crying because he's lonely all the time and is in the constant state of an existential crisis and he is me so plis don't ask me about my Spotify wrapped this year (or any year) or I'll cry.

Thank you.

-nahid

[nahidshafreen]

He was so fond of fullstops, as if he wanted it to end as soon as possible and I always try to use them as less as I can, as if I'm scared that it'll end too soon, the sentences and us.

[nahidshafreen]

Thursday

November 17, 2022

01:42 am

It's midnight again and I have so much to do and say and fix and I didn't get much ticked off my list yet, I haven't done much yet and I have so much to do but what I'm doing instead right now is sitting with lipstick on, again;

It's like a new coping mechanism, somehow everytime I get sad I end up with red lips or nails. Red it is, still.

I have conversations to sit with and knit, I've got responsibilities to deal with ans things to get done and I have so much left to figure out and I've barely been able to scratch the surface yet.

I've got questions to answer and I have answers to hunt down, I have pieces to find and seekers to be found by;

There are unread texts in my inbox and unwashed dishes in the kitchen, unsolved puzzles in my head and abandoned notes on my laptop, unfinished books on top of my cupboard and unsaid words in my mouth.

I wish I could just dump all of it somewhere so I'd not be crushed by the weight of it and I wish it was possible to have someone who would lift it all off of me, and me, even if it's just temporary. I want to exist without this for a while, as if this doesn't belong to me in the first place and as if my existence isn't intertwined to it like my flesh to my bone.

but here I am, sitting with my lips painted red again.

maybe it's my new way to cope with what I'm being consumed by, it's still red, but a safer red;

-nahid

[nahidshafreen]

If the moon was a man I'd marry him.

and if it was a woman...

what? keep your eyes off of her, I'd still marry her. BACK OFF !