On May 10, 2018, at 6:02 AM, Said Farah sent the following as an email to 145 recipients:
All together now, sing it from the rooftops of the tenements: let’s get free.
Today I found out that I’m a global citizen. A friend of mine saw me having a very public panic attack on Facebook and offered some sage advice which put it all in perspective. First, he said, it is unwise to expect a real connection with people on something as fake as social media. Second, I should know that people like us expect too much of people in general and so we end up being let down. People like us find it hard to let fake people be fake people, and so we end up isolating ourselves — which only causes us undue misery. The only one suffering is he who too-willingly cuts off ties with anyone and everyone. Another thing to keep in mind, he said, is that I’m a global citizen. What this means is that I’ve experienced meaningful life in places outside of America. You forget how self-centered life in America really is until you leave. When you return, it is a jarring experience to be forced back into these grinding gears of isolated depravity. He told me that it becomes increasingly jarring every time you come back because this place makes less sense the more that you leave it.
This is not the real world, after all. This is just a vacuous, unconvincing simulation. The problems for people like us start to appear when we begin dealing with people who’ve come to accept this place as the end all be all, or the pinnacle of human sociological achievement. People who are enraptured with the dream are hard pressed to be convinced of anything other than this country’s eternal superiority when juxtaposed with the outside world. That’s what salespeople call a hard sell. Keep in mind, too, that you will never feel at home in any one place. You will always be out of place because you now know what life is like on different corners of the globe in a visceral way. This was a huge clue into my personal makeup.
I’d always felt a strange sense of loss that could not be placed as I came of age in this promised land. I’d been here so long that I’d forgotten what it was like to live elsewhere; deep down, I knew that there was life outside these red, white, and blue walls. Going back to Africa cracked open my deeply rooted memory centers like a coconut on the street and a surge of emotions flooded me like the levees after Katrina. Like those refugees who fled New Orleans, there’s just no going back after that. So where does that leave me? I accept that I’m too strange to fit in anywhere and that I’ll always be longing for somewhere other than where I am. That’s just fine — I’ll learn to deal with it. This is my life, after all, and I’m responsible for how I feel about it.
My inner peace takes a complicated turn when I dwell on the fact that I am somewhat young, moderately poor and completely unwed. We have physical needs in this short life and my needs are woefully short of being met. I crave for human connection on a deeper level than most, yet am unable to find someone who sees the world as I do. When I was in Africa, I refused to get married because the women there just didn’t get me. Now that I’m back in America, I am screaming for the women of Africa because these women just don’t get me. A former friend once told me that I would only be satisfied somewhere between the earth and the sky. I wish I hadn’t unfriended her, because she was a good person. It had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me.
Do you see a trend here, dear reader? I deride my fellow Somalis for their inability to heal their broken inner workings and their unwillingness to address mountains of trauma. They say that we are quickest to see the faults in others which we refuse to see in ourselves. This must be true because here I stand, your humble narrator behind this wall of words, guilty of that very same thing. I leave a trail of broken friendships in my wake because I don’t know what it means to keep them. I cut people off at the drop of a hat because… because…. Walaahi, I have no idea why I do it. I’m sick of being alone, yet I cannot stop isolating myself. I always wish there were someone in my life who got me, truly got me, but I feel like I would only find fault with them before they ever got a chance to ‘get’ me. I would run away, run away, run away.
I’ve been running my whole life and a destination still eludes me. I am a fragmented person, a broken being. I am fallible, I am failed. But I am beautiful. I accept all my faults and love all my frailties. I thank Allah for everything. I don’t hate myself, I truly don’t believe that I do. I am trying to undo the damage to my psyche that a decade of binging managed to do. Five years ago, I was in Seattle relapsing for the 17th millionth time. I stopped taking my antidepressants and started with the weed again. I won’t drink this time, I told myself. No, I’ll just have a little weed, I’ll be fine. Besides, I’m leaving for Africa soon. Who knows if they have weed there? Thank God I stopped drinking, I thought. My only addictions now are cigarettes, weed and skateboards. What’s the worst that could happen?
Now, see, back in the present day, I sure do have a lot to be thankful for. I have come a long way and am thankful to be alive. Trust me, I came too close to death on too many occasions for me not to believe in Allah’s Decree. I may have my moments of weakness and emotional vacillation, but then I remember that 6 years ago I was an alcoholic for almost 6 years. Add to that, it’s only been 5 years since the last relapse which put me in the hospital. Then I remember that it’s only been 4 years since I quit smoking weed, something I’d done for nearly a decade. Flash forward to 2 years ago, when I finally quit smoking cigarettes after God knows how many attempts. And yet, I still manage to find ways to be impatient with my own progress. The thing about trauma is that we cannot bear to keep it in active memory. It must be suppressed, suppressed, suppressed. When I think of my life in terms of progress, I don’t factor in the hurdles which I’ve overcome just to get to this place. There are two things which I rarely stop to do in my life: 1 — give credit to myself for working so hard to change my life, and 2 — give thanks to Allah for saving me from such treacherous circumstances. I was lost, well and truly lost. I would be wise to stop comparing myself to other people and quit envying lives which were never meant for me.
I am as Allah Intended me to be. I am just a man, nothing more. I am doing the arduous work of repairing a life which 10 years of self-imposed disaster had destroyed. I had a two-year college degree before I finished high school, can you believe that? That was 12 years ago. I am hopeful to finish my bachelor’s by Spring 2019, Insha Allah. You can understand my frustration, dear reader, at not being where I wish I could be in life. You can understand why it hurts to see people younger than me doing significantly better than me in life (at least on a surface level). I know that no two paths are the same, but man, I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t linger in the back of my mind. How many times have I been called a failure, a starving artist, a broke ass bum in my life? Back when I was an addict, those things didn’t really matter. I could just smoke or drink or pop or snort away the pain. I didn’t have to listen to anybody, I was too high to even hear my own thoughts. I passed out next to people who shot up. Many of them died of their addictions, but Allah saw fight to pull me out of those cesspools. Now that I’m here, in the flesh, I am realizing what it means to be truly vulnerable. I am haunted by the lasting memories of all the insults which stuck to the back of my brain, the bottom of my heart, and never really left. They fuel the voices of inadequacy which linger and list inside my soul, the ones which pop up only when I’m about to take a new challenging step in my life. Ah, I am such a mess, such a beautiful mess, and I am so thankful for every bit of this ordinary madness. Yet, I wish I could be married.
I’m about to be 30 years old this May 22. My savings account is damn near nonexistent, but I have enough to survive, and for that I am grateful. What I do not have is enough to get married. It’s hard to convince myself that I am worth marrying, first of all. If you look at my recent past, you can see why I would have doubts about my ability to provide. It’s harder still to patiently wait for Ms. Right to come along. I am always scared, so scared, of not being in a position to sweep her off her feet when she does mosey into my life. These feelings of failing to meet the demands put upon me by the sacred institution of marriage are what keep me up past my bedtime every night. This lingering sense of never being good enough, for myself or for anyone else, is very hard to shake. It’s stuck to me like white on rice. It talks to me like Hank Hill talked to Propane and Propane Accessories. I am a broken man, carrying the trauma of a thousand lives. I am struggling to put myself back together, one fragmented piece at a time. I don’t know how long it will take, but I am grateful to Allah for putting me in this position. One day it will all make sense. One day I will find the courage to write about it all, in vivid detail, and my heart will be put to ease. One day I will marry the woman of my dreams, and the only tears which grace my eyelashes will be those of joy. One day soon, Insha Allah, I’ll learn to accept myself because Allah SWT would not have Written my life this way without reason. Alhamdulillah, always.
As always, thanks for reading. Thanks for caring. Thanks for being a friend (even if I go out of my way to alienate you… please don’t take it personally. I’m trying to change. But change takes time.)
Best,
-Your Friend Said Farah