Nine-Eleven.

It’s always been a sad day. There’s something morose about September on the whole. It’s undefined. It’s not really summer, but it’s hot, it’s not at all winter, but it sends chills down my spine, it’s not really autumn because the leaves are just beginning to change colour, and it’s not spring at all… because there is nothing new in sight, everything is old by the time it is September, everything is sorta dragging like a dog with one leg that doesn’t work but remains attached to the dog.

I can’t remember a single good September in my life.

 

 

This 9/11 I will especially remember. I’ll relive it over and over again in my mind and with my soul:

I was the twin towers and I was the planes that flew threw them, splitting everything down to rubble. I was the people inside the towers who couldn’t go anywhere and knew they were going to die. I was the people who panicked and jumped to their deaths. I created my own 9/11, in all its glorious death and destruction. I made my own ground zero. A giant hole in the ground, as deep as it is wide.

The thing about tragedies is that we only remember our own.

If you were to ask me about the actual 9/11 I would not have too much to say – I'd share the same recycled info, the stuff already been through the news on loop, the things that were posted on social media, I wouldn't know anything more... because it was not my tragedy. It was not my pain, I didn't "feel" it, it was a little less real for me. But my own tragedy… my own destruction I remember in great detail. It's like a tube stuck in my nose, it's like a thorn in my foot, I feel it constantly... I remember how every single molecule of me felt then and how it feels right now, my head, my heart, my hands, my feet, my legs, my eyes, the inside of my throat where tears seem to be collecting even now as I sit and write this, even when I thought I had nothing more left inside me to make these tears. My eyes should have felt dead by now with all the crying that I have done… but no, my eyes are even more sensitive than ever before. Everything hurts really, in every possible way... the light hurts, the air hurts, and making eye contact hurts.

I hurt. All of me hurts.

 

We all go through our own Nine-Elevens. People tell me I'm a "survivor", that I can get through the bad stuff again and again; just because I've survived some extremely terrible things in my life doesn't mean I excel at enduring pain. If anything, I excel at smiling and making others laugh when my insides feel like the ground zero rubble of the twin towers after the collisions, I excel at standing up even when my legs refuse to, I excel at putting on my kajal even when my eyes hurt, I excel at remembering good things and I excel at understanding that everything changes.

 

Wake me up when September ends.

~ JB

Hold it.

I was laughing and smiling and dying inside. Parts of me were hurting badly, out of fear and exhaustion, and all I could think of was holding your hand. And you just couldn't do it.

I so badly needed you to hold my hand.

Just remember not to hold my hand when I'm dying.
I don't want to then.
It will make no difference at that time, to me. It will be for you, when I'm dying and you want to hold my hand, it will be to make you feel better, like you helped me in a difficult moment. So, don't.

Hold my hand now, today, this week, now - when I'm alive. When I need to know you're there, and when I need to know you're holding my hand. When I need to know you are there with me.

When I'm dying it will mean nothing to me that you were holding my hand.
It won't make me feel better then.

~ JB

LoveIsADemon

 

At its strongest and wildest and most authentic, love is a demon.
It is a religion, a high-risk adventure, an act of heroism.
Love is ecstasy and injury, transcendence and danger, altruism and excess.
It is a divine madness.

~Cristina Nehring

Ergo... I am happy.

People say the funniest things when they are trying to show they are better than you.

“Be who you really are!” someone said to me today. But they forgot to add, “…but be the version of you that is acceptable to me…” they also forgot that they are who they really are… ummm… on selective occasions that suit their needs.

I am who I am. That is the beauty of me. I love who I am. And I have to. Because no one gets me… okay, maybe parts of me… but not all of me, not the details, not the little things that make me happy or angry. What about sad, you ask? I don’t count sad – because parts of me are always sad, life is like that. And anyone who says they are 100% happy 100% of the time – is lying! Yes. Lying to you, to themselves, and to everyone and everything else. Carl Jung said it before I did…

 

Stay happy, but stay real.
Not just when you need to be real, but accept your ugly parts too
– instead of just pointing out the parts of others (that maybe only you) think are ugly.

~ JaneBravo

GO GREEN - #CelebratePakistan

The year is 2014. It's August, the weather is typically hot in the sun but cooler in the shade, and the wind in Karachi screams "we need a monsoon rain"...

14th of August is the day Pakistan "happened".
We're 67 years old and still learning how to walk and stand tall.
We're 67 years old... wow... that's old in human years, and (well, pretty much) dead in dog years... but in "country" years it smells like teen spirit. Two parties own Pakistan now - the Mullahs and the Youth. And the politicians know this. This is why they can't seem to figure out their political strategies - one end they need to cater to conventionalism, fundamentalism, and on the other end to the Youth... an ever-changing, hormones-raging, trigger-happy lot. I'm personally rooting for the Youth.

If anything can bring revolution - it is this hot blooded generation alone. If anyone can be a symbol of true Democracy - it is the Pakistani Youth.
Unfortunately, I doubt they know how much power they have...

I've been to nine different countries, I've lived in four; but nothing feels as much as home as Pakistan does. Like any 60-something country, it has its growing pains, the political drama, the rebellion, explosions, and killings, and well a whole plethora of problems... one for every single citizen... approximately 182,589,000 people. Among other positive things for a country to promote, family planning has not been promoted enough.

But all this aside, I do love Pakistan.
Yes, I do, and I will continue to complain about the electricity outages, and the broken roads, and the garbage everywhere.
But I will still love what is there to love, and I will still #CelebratePakistan with everything I've got... Freedom is Life.

#CelebratePakistan ~ JB

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x23npx1_independence-day-celebration-celebratelife-celebratepakistan_people


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x23npx1_independence-day-celebration-celebratelife-celebratepakistan_people" target="_blank">Independence Day Celebration. #CelebrateLife...
by http://www.dailymotion.com/jubileelifeinsurance"

antidote

I feel like I've broken out of a metaphorical solitary confinement of some sort in the last few months. It hasn't been easy, it isn't easy even now, but I want to stay here. It feels hard but it feels brighter ahead.

"I know about the antidote that will free me of my pain,
But I cannot owe indebtedness to the one who breaks the chain."

~ JaneBravo

So help me God.

Dear God,

We talked about a lot of things in 2013. Seems the whole year went by like it was a week or ten days total and now 2014 has begun just like a gunshot fired at midnight in Karachi.

I woke up on the morning of January 1st, 2014 with very mixed feelings; there is such a big backlog of prayers I have sent to You, and I am wondering when You will respond to them? I mean I get it, that You know best - but are all the things I pray for bad for me? 

I want to kill all my Hope. 
The last twenty years are proof that Hope is nothing but a disease bordering on becoming an addiction; that feels good but makes you sick and kills you slowly. 

You know, better than anyone, that I have survived several painful crushing things in my life. Things that left me dead inside for years. Things that have killed parts of me that will never wake up again. Still, I think that this is your greatest blessing on me... that you did not let me die, that you gave me little rainbows in every storm and for that I love You tremendously. But I want big rainbows now, and no more storms.

They say the light enters us through our wounds, but all I feel in these wounds is darkness. 

You know, better than anyone, how damaged I am. You promised me that you would not burden me more than I can take, then why does it feel like I am about to split in two with the weight of this life on my shoulders? 

When I was a little girl crying over something terrible that happened to me, someone said to me: 

God has said He will love you seventy times more than your mother loves you. Is that true.

I am so confused, to be honest... if this is seventy times more than my mother loves me, then I think my mother doesn't love me at all. Because I do not feel loved by You.

Please show me a sign? 
I need you to forgive my sins, fight my demons, and send me a guardian angel for the rest of this life. 

Thank you for 2014 - I love life - let this be the beginning, not the end, of me.

Love,

Jane

Speak louder...

You tell me actions speak louder than words, but then you say it's the thoughts that count?


As far as I know, all the cool magical stuff in us, in our lives, happens when intentions, thoughts, words, and actions are part of one whole.

And then there are times when our actions speak louder than our love.

~ Jane Bravo

Till I can laugh till I can cry.

It's not that I want my days to be easy. No, not at all.
Just these days, I can only manage the not-so-hard kind of days.

It's not like I'm doing some kind of a parade, and praying it doesn't rain on my parade. 
I happen to like the rain, I'm used to it raining on my parade actually. 

It's just the thunderstorms and the floods. I still need to learn how to dance during those... but right now, I can only manage the not-so-hard kind of days.

Days are hard some days. 
The days when things aren't at all the way I want them to be. These days are hard. When the big things don't matter because the little things don't stop pinching.

You'll see me laugh the most on the hard days. I'll seem the happiest. 
I'm laughing because I am pushing myself. Because I'm trying to push the laughter inside, till it can touch my soul, my day, my life. Till the smile can reach my eyes.
Till I can laugh till I can cry.

~ Jane Bravo

It's all a big melting pot - life, this world.

The greatest feeling is knowing that you have the power to do something.
And then, by that rule, I suppose, the saddest feeling is knowing you could have done something because it was in your power and you didn't do it.

Another very hard to do thing, but wonderful to know feeling, is when you can give a person the means to do something that you wanted to do but didn't have the means to. Why hold back when you can give someone that? How would you have felt if someone had given it to you when you didn't have it? Why don't you want someone to feel what you could have felt? Imagine if at that time there was someone standing where you are standing now - able to do, but not doing? How does it make you feel? Can you respect them - the ones who didn't do it when they could do it for you? Or do you lose respect for yourself knowing that you are the same as they were?

It's all a big melting pot - life, this world.
We are all adding things to it, you know... What are you putting into it?

~JaneBravo 

~ By Jane Bravo

There's a method to my madness -

A feeling - a happiness, a sadness,

Of things that could be, but can't be -

Of 'if' and 'but' and 'maybe';

Of what and whom I wanted most,

A dream that haunts me like a ghost.

But sweetly like a lovers kiss -

Thirty odd seconds of utter bliss...

That leave a life changed forever?

Like a bond so old you cannot sever.

The one with roots inside my heart

In light, in sunshine, in times of dark.

There's a method to my madness -

A feeling - a happiness, a sadness.

Of things that could be, but can't be -

Of 'if' and 'but' and 'maybe'.

I think, that in every single day now I want more time...
more time to think all my thoughts, 
to say all my words, to write them down, to read them all, 
maybe even say them all out loud...? 
And then I want to dream of all the things I had been thinking about, and make the good ones happen for real, and make fixes for the bad ones.
And when I am done with all the thinking and dreaming and doing, 
I want to think about all the things I made happen.
And also imagine I would do them all over the same way if I got another chance to.

~ JaneBravo

Ordinary is Real.

Is it the choice that leads you to the circumstance, or is it the circumstance that leads you to the choice?
You choose something and you end up somewhere - you end up somewhere where you have to choose something. What comes first? The chicken and the egg scenario of life.

If I have learned one thing in my life, it is to always make time to say things, especially if they are true.
So, here goes nothing... or here goes something...

I used to think no one can make me laugh like from inside, like make my soul laugh - and also that no one can make my spirit cry... But I have learned that it can happen. Some people move you. They get inside your head, they love you, they hurt you, they understand you, or they mess you up. 

There is a difference between being alone, and being lonely. Alone is still some sense of 'complete', loneliness - incomplete. And the two circumstances together - confusing. 

I'm in a daze with life, and I know the time is so limited here. 

I felt some comfort in knowing that nothing more can hurt me. That everything that could possibly hurt a person has been done to me, and I have survived it with dignity. But there continue to be hurts along the way... And I continue to survive them, with dignity. 

I don't know what is the 'right way to live' or the 'wrong way to live'.
Right... Wrong... That is different, for different people - it is all so relative.
Everything is. Truth is relative too. My truth is nothing like your truth. It is our own core belief. What belongs to us, what we belong to. I think, only compassion is universal, and respect. Love is not unconditonal - but compassion and respect are. And that is the most important thing I have learned in my life. 

I am just like you, and I am nothing like you. And that makes us exactly the same. 
We are both so real, and both
so ordinary. 

~ Jane Bravo

Love, Terms & Conditions Apply.

Some people are supposed to love me unconditionally. But they never have, and I think they never will.

Maybe because their people did not love them unconditionally and so they never learned how to love that way?
I do love these people without getting anything from them - because that is me, because that feels right, and good, and because that helps me sleep most nights. But sometimes it takes all the energy out of me to keep loving them and getting nothing and then I can't love anything for a little while; till I can.

~ Jane Bravo

Real Love Letters are rarely ever sent...

Nights in white satin, never reaching the end,



Letters I've written, never meaning to send.


Beauty I'd always missed with these eyes before.


Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore.


Gazing at people, some hand in hand,


Just what I'm going through they can't understand.


Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,


Just what you want to be, you will be in the end.

[The Moody Brothers]

Oh I love you.
~ JB

The Right Kind of Wrongs

Why is it - that Life seems to test just us ordinary people...
It happens everyday. Don't you think?


Someone asks you to tell a little lie. No harm done, right? 
You'll tell it.
Something gives you a chance to make that extra buck without anyone finding out. Hey, it's not like you're taking it from someone else's pocket, hmmm? 
You make the extra buck. 


You find yourself in a spot where only cheating someone can make it better for you. 
You'll cheat right away, no one will ever know, right?


The human mind in so complicated and so simple. We can easily convince our self that something wrong is right. 
The right kinda wrong - and all the other nice ways to say it... we can bring all the logic, we can do all the mathematics, we can find all the right reasons, and we can get so used to it - get so used to killing our conscious. 
We evolve into a person who can justify absolutely any wrong done - because it works for us, for our life, our goals, our dreams.


But if you think about it - and no, you don't need to admit this to anyone - but admit it to your self - and it will change you. 


Anything wrong you do, no matter how small, no matter how hidden - cuts out a little bit of the child in you, kills a little bit of kindness in you, hardens a little bit of the heart in you. And at the end of it all, you will have taken all the shortcuts, told all the lies, gotten all the gains. But will you like who you become along the way? Will you not miss the innocence that only a truth can bring, the sweetness only earning something can bring, the satisfaction only doing the right thing can give you?


It makes no difference to me, or my life in the long run... but the little things you will do - will make the biggest difference in your Life and who You eventually become.


It's never too late to change your mind, or your heart.
Do it while you can still feel.


~ Jane Bravo

My translation of a thousands of desires, each one I could die for...

...hazaaron khwahishen aisi ke har khwahish pe dum nikle
bahot nikle mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle...

Thousands of desires, each one I could die for. Many of them I have fulfilled, but I still yearn for more. I died at the hands of a lover (my killer), why should he be afraid? No one will hold him responsible for my fate. Or for these bloody tears which will continuously flow through my eyes all of my life. Haven't we all heard of Adam disgraced out of Heaven? It is with more humiliation that I am leaving the streets of my lover. You killed me, but no one will know, unless I accidentally let my hair slip out of my scarf. Because things slip out sometimes, and we can not hide the truth from all people for all of time. Though the truth is complicated, and no one will believe it. 
And if ever someone wants to write you a letter, tell them to ask me to write it to you. 
I've been carrying my pen with me everywhere now, because there is still so much I have to say to you, so much I left unsaid.
When it was all over, I sang many whiskey lullabies to myself, until my whole universe was floating inside one big intoxication. I expected you to help me when I was weak, when I was in such a bad state; but then I realized: you are perhaps more injured than I. 
Love is so cruel? 
Life and death feel the same in love, there is nothing different, because we stay alive by looking for the traitor for whom we are willing to die. You should try to put a hand on your heart and pull the arrow out... fast. But remember, with this arrow your heart will come out too... and with your heart gone, your life will be no more. 
So, control yourself when you want to scream to the world and announce your secrets: traitors are not supposed be lovers. Just like the preacher and the addict have different doors, but I can see him enter the bar just as I leave it. 

Thousands of desires, each one I could die for. Many of them I have fulfilled, but I still yearn for more.


Dear readers,


This is my translation of the beautiful poetry of Ghalib. 
I doubt I have been able to do proper poetic justice... the words are best understood in the language they were written in. The first two lines are perhaps the most profound and famous in literary circles around the world - they capture the essence of man's desires, and how desire, like passion, all-consuming, and has no end. 


I look forward to reading your comments.


- JB

Step away from the line, and no body gets hurt.

Ever notice how often all of our most passionate actions and feelings in Life are divided and defined by a small, almost non-descript, very-stupid, hardly-distinguishable "thin" line?

It annoys me.

I detest it.

For me, the thin line represents where all the dots connect and lead to. It is where the chaos begins.

The thin line defines the actual choice I have to make.

I hate the definition. But the definition is important.

I hate making a choice. There is something depressingly dramatic about choosing between the side I have to take and the side I can't take.

I hate goodbyes too. But, that is another topic altogether...

The thin line is the divider. The "other" side.

One side a positive end, the other its negative extreme.

Who made up Life's thin lines anyway?

I hate the thin line more than I hate being alone on a rainy day. Some people will agree with me, there is nothing worse than being alone on a rainy day. Others will say I chose to be alone by my own accord, so no one is to blame but me. These people are like the thin line. They annoy me as much as the thin line.

Take for example, exhibit A: the Heaven and Hell 'set'...

One little step over that thin line takes you up, up, and away - leading to eternal bliss and what not... yeah, right. Go over the thin line in the opposite direction, and it's all fall down in to a raging volcano of eternal damnation Humpty Dumpty style. I suppose it's true then? There is an Angel and a Demon in all of us - and there's just a thin line dividing the two too.

What of, exhibit B: Fondness and Contempt?

A mere sliver of absence over the thin dividing line makes us fonder. While a tiny pinch of familiarity in the other direction over to the other side breeds contempt. Flip sides and you have turned something you were so fond of to something you are oh-so-forgetful about. It's all in your mind? No, it's all in the line.

Then we have everyone's favourite one, exhibit C: the Love and Hate 'combo'. 

They say fools rush in... in Love.

I say, fools rush in - in Love and in Hate. With exactly the same speed. Most of the time it's deathly 500 miles per hour in the wrong lane. Passion is the root cause, the accidents it instigates at 500 miles per hour in the wrong lane... and Passion, like us, is defined by the line - which way do you cross it?

It's Passion, you know, pumping the heart to Love harder, and then Passion again feeding fat to grudges making them bigger. One man's love, can be another man's hate.

What am I saying? I almost don't know. But there is no such thing as almost - ever wonder why?

The thin line is very thin - but it defines one thing from the other - hence, there is no such thing as almost. You can't be almost dead, for example. You either are dead, or you are alive.


Life[place thin line here]Death.

-JB

As good as it gets...

A friend of mine dedicated her status update to her husband today.
In a few words she managed to capture a universe of feelings and emotions. It read,

My husband has made me laugh. Wiped my tears. Hugged me tight. Watched me succeed. Seen me fail. Cheered me on. Kept me going. He is a promise from God, that I will always have a friend.

Real relationships are not anything like the fictional romance we see on TV and read about in steamy novels. Real love is like your favourite worn-out t-shirt... A piece of clothing you own, like something you know like the back of your hand, you can find it, recognize it in the dark just by feeling it, just by a touch. You miss it when it's not with you. It may have been for years, but the years feel like a lifetime... some relationships remain unchanged by time - from the day they begin till the end of life as we know it. These are the relationships that feel like your favourite old t-shirt. One where there are parts of the fabric more used than the other, and patches that are worn out with time and daily use; a little canvas almost, where every stain is a memory captured, every mark is a moment engraved in your mind. And just like some of our strongest, most-treasured relationships, the surface of the fabric may have loosened over time... still, although it has loosened, that flexibility somehow maintains a special, unique comfort, a very binding security within the fibers of that very fabric's core. It is such relationships that bring a warmth to our hearts that no other can bring.

-JB

Borderline.

...I think I just want to show - that every body hurts, and anyone can break sometimes...
I know a girl who is hurting right now. And all the hurt is changing her - and it's making her stronger, in the way she hates to become stronger - but she has always been very strong - and she has survived many avalanches, and floods, and earthquakes, and tsunamis - so she will survive this one too. There is so much confusion - so many things from the past and the present merging together. Just right now - she is feeling so tired... feeling dizzy with all the hurt and the names she's been called... It's making her sick inside... and it hurts right now... but, she will be OK - because she needs to be OK for herself, she needs to be brave, and strong - because she loves herself, even when the whole world doesn't love her.
Even if there is no one who understands her - she understands her - and she loves herself unconditionally.
She didn't sleep well last night - and her head is hurting so much... feels like it's going to explode inside.
She feels so tired, so tired - she can't even find another word for tired.
Life is so good to her, but it is so hard with her - there is a price to pay for every thing.
She has to work so hard in everyway - and when she gets sad, things just don't go well - everything begins to fall apart. Like everything today. But she will fix all the things that are falling apart - because she has dealt with so many hurts, she has healed herself so many times. She will get out of this hurt - like a phoenix that burns and then grows again from its own ashes.
She is not a victim. She is a survivor.
She will survive - the only way she knows how - when the worst way is the best way... where there are epic greys and never any black and white.

Be strong, my dear... everything will be OK in the end; if it's not OK, it's not the end.

-JB