a daylight dream

Today, I’ve decided to silence a lot of voices, and the air when silenced is much clearer, alluring and just happier. I was working on silencing my anxiety, which came out of nowhere these last two weeks. As you probably know, I’m quite occupied this year with my double teacher-assistance jobs and my sophisticated university courses.. What really brought me to the edge was the fact that I was falling behind studies, which didn’t happen for like years. This makes me realise how perfectionistic my life was, and it created those unrealistic standards I had to live up to in order to reach the comfort zone, where fear and worry melted away. But this year, I’m more challenged to actually fall behind, but go ahead in building myself up in different, more beneficial ways. It’s what those voices failed to acknowledge. A few days ago, I was fatigued; had coffee for the first time in two months to stop me from yawning, raced alongside my heart beats and restless thoughts. It got to t

Coming back from Poland, I thought I’d be coming back to the memories I had left when I took that airplane and fled. In the airplane, I visualised myself running away from it all; my room, balcony, the heat, the ignorant society, monotony.. etc. I thought these were the things that were making my life often lacklustre and at times, miserable. I thought it was that I didn’t feel at home in Egypt, even though I had spent 11 years of my life here, making memories, building dreams, meeting people.. living, in general. The days before I came back from this summer vacation, I was dreading my return. I felt as if all my monsters would creep up to me again and turn my life into living hell since I was already primitively exposing myself to the concept of positivity and self-care, taking one small step at a time. Coming back to Egypt, I assumed, was going to collapse all my efforts and lead me back to square one. However, quite the contrary occurred. The first day was rough, an

16.12.2015 “Dear journal, Winter is cruel to me, I thought you ought to know that. It deliberately creeps into the inside of my bones and finds its shelter between the tissues that surround them.. I have no idea how, but I’d like to find out. I’m occupied by study these days, as you can see. Oh, and I drank coffee for the first time in like 5 months to give me energy to survive until 8 pm studying. My eyes didn’t droop today but it’s the vindictive chill that buries my handwriting and urges me to hide my skin under an insulator. I’m really tempted to build s fire next to my desk to blaze me s little.. hmm.. why am I always so cold? I think I’ll sleep in a while but I promised myself to write one 2016 resolution and it is: Self-compassion. I want to accept, embrace my physical and spiritual self and embed them within a deeper identity-related meaning. I am Soraya. I want to open up my self to love and peace of the soul and the body. I want to be the soul God cou

I’d like to wake up one morning and find the room dim and quiet, something other than your breaths echoing back and forth. You turn in your position, and we are face-to-face, your eyes closed, creating dreams in a headspace I tell myself I don’t know, for you are inscrutable in every way imaginable, and every day I get to know you better and better.. But you are changing everyday, but in a good way. A way that helps us grow, thrive, expand. I am wearing your t-shirt, and I confidently slip from the covers, heading towards the balcony, drawing the blinds open. The sun is rising on the eastern coast, and the clouds are accumulating near the horizon, and a faint line of light is bidding the sea, before it goes on, extending its bounds, renewing its dimensions. Slowly as not to wake you, I find myself sneaking into the balcony, greeting the breeze, thanking it for every shiver that trills across my bare skin, the hair bouncing in joy, my lips tilting to the side, forming a

My career choices are starting to loom into my mind, and they’re starkly adorned with well-built judgements based on experience and study. I’ve been working as a teacher assistant for almost a year now, and I’ve grown to become particularly partial to becoming, somehow, a teacher. I’m working full days this year, and I get to see the life of a teacher closely; their routines, attitudes and behaviours. I see myself in the idealist version of what it takes to be a teacher; the complete empathy, shimmering optimism, support and unconditional mentorship. The career itself requires so many traits I already believe I have, though I need time to let them develop more steadily and righteously. some of the things I like to see at school. :) The empathy required is quite astounding, with every single task throughout the day. Every student is like a customised book of life, and you’ve got to handle it with great care, extreme personalisation yet a fair equity. I admire the way t

This is a quite unexpected post, and I never thought I’d actually write anything with this content. But that’s the point, isn’t it? To stretch out my limits and go far beyond my comfort zone. That’s what I really want, even if I don’t end up perfecting it. 6th of October in Egypt signifies a really important day because it’s the day when the Egyptian army crossed the Bar Lev line and made its very first moves towards victory in the Egyptian-Israeli war in 1973. Until today, all schools and media agencies bring veterans who talk and talk about the triumph and the journey towards it. I’m proud of it, because hearing those stories every single year makes me realise how much potential we as Egyptians have, in order to reach what we really desire. We did not desire victory in that war. We desired justice. What pains me is that we didn’t have a similar triumph for fourty four years, in which we kept observing the world moving on to newer dimensions of development, and we enc

September had been astounding and so creatively charming. It is my first September to actually feel so free from the pressure of boredom and torpidity for I spent the whole 30 days in productive action; I started working, my second year of university and rearranging myself both emotionally and intellectually. I started dreaming more vivid dreams and building myself an empire of balance and positivity. It's been easier this month, and I don't know if it's just a temporary situation or not.. but all things are temporary anyway, and it's an alleviating decision to celebrate it. (: I witnessed an abundance of sunrises this month and the weather had been empowering because the temperature dropped several degrees, decreasing the pressure and allowing the puffy clouds to blow with a chilly, rejuvenating breeze from the North. The sky is more blue and the horizons more clear, and its an atmosphere I cannot help but thrive in. Oh, how I'm so expectant for October!

To all of you who are currently on the road to self-love, I'd like to tell you this: it gets easier. It really does, and it's a fact. But, it takes some determination and self-actualisation. It's not something that happens overnight, and perhaps not a state you could reach for good. There will always be lapses and minor break downs because, it was once a habit to hate yourself and put it down. It was once something deeply ingrained in your mind and body and we, as biological organisms, need to give ourselves time to heal and get cured. It's difficult to ascertain the fact that some time one year and a half ago, I hated every particle of myself. To be honest, I liked some of my personality traits but still, I was putting myself down all the time. Looking back at my old pictures and journal entries, I marvel at how far I've come. I used to look in the mirror and shred myself into pieces, but in those pictures, I look beautiful.. and I didn't see it.

I'm addicted to waking up in the morning a few minutes before the sun rises up before me. I love being greeted by the crisp breeze as I'm unable to fully grasp the view in front of me, because my eyes aren't quite used to the enormity of light, having woken up after a magnitude of darkened dreams. I love hearing the blackbirds chirping. I love waking up feeling grateful. I'm addicted to going to the balcony sometime after sunset, when the sky becomes beautifully violet, trying to capture the particular moment when my eyes would see the world in grey, but I'm always disappointed as the street lights switch on a minute too soon.   I'm addicted to spending the hour before I sleep in the balcony, staring at the sky. I had discovered a triangle of stars, always pointing to the north. More specifically, it points in quite a three-dimensional manner upwards, towards the space full of mystery and chimerical magic.   And during that hour, I'm addicte

I've been planning to actually write this post for a long time now. It's been a little bit over than a month since I travelled to Budapest by bus. Five hours through Slovakia and Hungary, through hilly steppes and dazzling sunflower fields was adequate to spark my poetic side. I wrote a few poems, dreamed a few dreams, hoping I'd make them real someday, and listened to some inspiring music. We were accompanied by a travel guide, who exerted a lot of effort in the heat explaining the history behind Budapest, but to be honest, no one was listening. I, personally, was captivated by the mesmerising architecture and profound beauty of the city. It's beyond beautiful. The vast squares, the arrays of palaces and monumental buildings followed by each other, the small packs of quiet tourists passing around. Unlike Prague, Budapest was quiet and calm and it was substantially easier to just stand for a while, take a picture and imagine those who built this city. How I admi