Looking for my tears
unfinished letter #13
A gentle note that the letter below is part of my unfinished letters series, where I share my most tender, unvarnished thoughts on topics like Islamophobia, sincerity, and the visibility in being a visible minority. As such, today’s post includes a paywall. If you’d like to access the whole letter and want to support my writing, consider upgrading. If you are already have, thank you!
I am beyond split-brained at this point — split-hearted? Split-souled?
These are the words I write to my friend in our text chat, trying to explain the overwhelm of conflicting feelings, the overwhelm of conflicting states of being that have settled inside me as the genocide continues to unfold.
I keep searching for a word to articulate this and falling short. Simultaneous doesn’t feel accurate. Simultaneous is when you do two, maybe three things at once. But this is not about juggling or multi-tasking. This is about a deluge. About trying to wrap my mind around one awful thing when another hits and another and another and another until I am buried beneath a blanket of suffocating layers of horror. Multiplying. Compounding. Accruing interest.
An exhibit of the my split-hearted state:
I finish reading
’s book, You could make this place beautiful. Or more accurately, I start reading it, cannot stop, and finish reading it within 48 hours. I want to dog-ear every second page and highlight every word with thick yellow marker, except I’m reading on my phone.I want to tell you that this book made me cry, but it didn’t. Because of course I can’t seem to cry anymore.
My tears have been giving me the silent treatment for about three years now. Partway through the pandemic, my whole emotional coping system broke down, but since the genocide, this struggle has reached a whole other level.
I am dry and shriveled, like the pit of a prune, not even the flesh of it.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I try the things that have always brought me tears — cheap tricks, but they’re reliable.
I play Castle on the hill by Ed Sheeran and my eyes water a little at “singing to tiny dancer” but as I try to catch the crescendo, the lump in my throat disappears and I am dry.
I am a drought, papery thin and ready to set alight. I am the beginnings of a forest fire.
So I go searching for my tears in the songs that used to get me when I was younger. I search in To Sir with Love, in Adia and Joey and One Sweet Day, but my sobs stay trapped inside me.
I go searching in a book of poetry called Water & Salt by Arab-American Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. Her poem, Immigrant, catches in my throat, the way she describes America as,
“…the place where the planes are made
and the place where the president
will make the call to send the planes
into my storybook childhood..”
I can feel my tears trying to awaken, but the numbness gives them a sedative, shushes them back to sleep. No. It’s not time for you yet, the numbness tells the tears. She won’t be able to cope if you show up today.