Syawal Reminders

by shz

Well, let’s see if I still have it in me. With words, I mean. To write for the love of it, even as mundane as it sounds, even as unambitious as it want to be.

Sometimes when I go back to my old posts, some dated years back, I understood the importance of writing. Of keeping a journal, of documenting your thoughts and emotions, to be caught in a moment and just fire the words away. Thoughts and memories are tricky things. There were so many moments when I read back and stimulated by my old thoughts and memories, surprised that most of the times they are not quite how I remember it. Yes, there are less words now than before. Way less than I intended to.

Truthfully, a good writer has no fears, which I think I have a lot of when writing. A lot of skepticism and prejudice in myself, one which derived from observations of others. I shouldn’t have been so judgmental I know, but in this really social world, my human weakness makes it hard not to. Things weren’t the same when I started blogging. Expressions we see in the internet were thoughtful and composed, published after a great deal of understanding towards something. Just not anymore these days. Or maybe it was me who had been visiting the wrong blogs.

It has been a testing year this year, has it not? As a nation we were struck by our own series of tragedies unimaginable and on the other side of the world, there’s Gaza. One word that should put OTTDs or fancy food posts online to shame. Personally when there’s so many ordeals experienced by others, even within my close circle, having friend who lost her mother so suddenly on second Syawal and another friend had her second ectopic pregnancy on the third, you just sort of want to cling on to whatever’s blessings you have left in your life, feeling that at any moment it could be your time to be tested next.

“But you can’t stop living your life because you’re afraid,” Carrie said. I fear a lot if what I show, share or write, of mostly happy things, are unjustified or ever being relevant anymore because away from the convenience of my computer screen, there are people who just feel the opposite. Feeling happy will almost have a subsequent to feeling guilty these days. That as I write about my travels, there are people who yearns the same but simply doesn’t have the opportunity. That as I write about how healthily and gloriously my child has been growing up, there are friends who can’t even have one, worst, had all her chance to conceive naturally literally operated on and taken away. That as I write about the love of my life, there are wives who had lost theirs to other women. Or simply lost it. Or just has not found one.

If I ever get quiet again, you know I’m away supposedly being grateful of my blessings. Quietly, as I try to be. But still, there are few drafts to publish. I just hope I have a heart to publish them without feeling so guilty.