Cassandra’s Eyes
This is not a poem//This is a memoir in disguise

“You have probably guessed it by now; I do not know what to do with myself. Sometimes it is too much and sometimes it is not enough,” you write.

By Rubina Nusrat Puspa

homesickness is a disease

You do not know how to write this without seemingly bursting into tears. There’s a pent-up sense of longing— longing for something that you can no longer physically acquire, at least not right now. Not when you are not capable of providing for yourself. You are not a minor but when you live in the kind of place that you do, no matter how old you are, you have to live like a minor until you are married off. 
This piece of writing comes from a place of rage, hurt, envy, and a desire for something that is beyond reach.

You had plans. You had solid, foolproof plans that you would not allow anyone to disrupt. Standing where you are right now, everything you had— your dreams, hopes, and aspirations— seems so ambitious. 
You are afraid that the dreams you are carrying at the moment, maybe you will look back at them and label them as ambitious too. You were on a phone call with a school friend a few minutes ago. 
You barely keep touch in with them these days. Mostly because you have nothing in common anymore—just your past. 
But when you do, it is too much.
The ache to go back becomes too much. 
The urge to grab hold of them through a screen is too much.
You miss the place you used to call home and you hate what they represent. 
It is time to move on.

Talking to your friend you realize, you are all adults now— some with jobs, some married, and some pursuing their Bachelor’s. After the phone call, the silence was deafening; the heaviness on your chest threatened to swallow you whole.

You wanted to call her back and ask her to stay with you until the tiredness settled in and you eventually pass out. 
You needed to pass out. Needed to feel anything but this needy.
You ask for too much, you realize. You ask for something that is so inconceivable, it is ludicrous.

how to unlove yourself

When you look at yourself in the mirror, the thoughts you have are unfathomably degrading. Tracing your fingers across the uneven skin of your face, the curves and dips encompassing your stomach, the coarseness of your thighs and hands, “I am tired of living in my skin,” you whisper to yourself. 

Soon enough, you are engulfed by your inner chastisement. 

They preach the term self-love everywhere you go now. But regardless of how many times you scroll through all the social media posts and blog articles, you cannot stop the self-deprecation.
It is what it is.

You have an illness that makes it hard to get out of bed. 
One can interpret it in two ways— laziness or depression.
You will not say that you are depressed. It’s too big a word. The repercussions are huge. You are afraid.
“I am a happy child. I had a good childhood. I have a set of parents who are happily married. I have friends,” you start chanting in your head.
You always automatically become defensive as a way to explain to yourself that there is nothing wrong with you.
There is nothing wrong at all.
You are fine.

i am hulk

If you google the color of envy, it says that envy is represented through the color green. With that, you think of Hulk immediately. Hulk whose personality is childish, angry, and destructive. Hulk who almost always turns everything that is on his way to dust. 

Hulk with whom you could relate.
You are made more of greed, hatred, and anger than of flesh and blood.
You think, one day, you will change. You have to. There is no way around it.
You think life cannot go on this way while it is dripping with the sticky goo of cynicism. 
So, you promise yourself, “Tomorrow is a new day, a blank page. I will start living a different life from tomorrow.”
It never happens. 
All the optimism eventually drains out of you.

please look after mom

Please don’t write anything sad.
But what goes on through your head?

“My eyes brim with tears as my fingers shakily hover over the keyboard. 
I hate when the house is silent. I hate when my mom goes to sleep before me. I miss the bangs and clangs coming from the kitchen. I want to be selfish. I want to ask for things one after the other. I want to act like a child; give me this, give me that, and give it to me right now. I want to throw a tantrum. I want to hug my mom— I can't remember the last time I did that. I want to tell her what’s on my mind. I want to be held in someone’s arms without having to let go. I want to sleep next to someone everyday. I want to talk about my day no matter how repetitive or mediocre it gets. 

I want time, I want time, I want time. I want time to stop going by so fast. I am growing old, so are my friends, and so is my family. I can barely capture it on film. I want time to stop going by so fast. 
I want—”

Wipe, wipe, wipe. 
You wipe it all off with a tissue paper. 
You cannot be left alone with yourself. 

“I want to talk to you,” you think.
“I wish I could talk to you.”

You read a book called Please Look After Mom recently, and you could not stop thinking about it. You had to do something, anything, although you weren’t sure what. 
You had the urge to cry. Cry for your mom because the book made you realize how much you take her for granted— how much you mistreat her.

One day you were on your way to the hospital with your mom— for you, of course, your mom would never take a step into the hospital for herself. You remember staring at her hands, hands that you have never held since you grew up. You kept thinking about the book throughout the entire journey; the line, “Either a mother and daughter know each other very well or they are strangers,” constantly running through your head.

talents or the lack thereof

You have put too much pressure on yourself. 

You do not have many talents— if any at all. Writing is the only thing you do well once in a blue moon. That is why you tend to put too much pressure on yourself. You put yourself through a ringer until your head starts throbbing and the nerves in your hands start aching.

Nothing is more intimidating than a blank page.
“The things that can come out of it,” you think. “The potential and the disappointment.”
You sometimes loathe the fact that you are an English major. You tell your friend, “It hurts.” 

You want to be automatically good at it— good at writing. You have always wanted to be a writer, after all. There are times when you find it hard to put words to a paper— times when you are so out of motivation that you do not know what to do. You whine to your friend, “I cannot do this.” Your friend tells you, “I’m here if you need any help.” But you do not want any help. You want to do this by yourself. This is the one thing you believed you were good at. You cannot lose it too.

You keep failing to meet your expectations and eventually start hating every word that flows out of you.
“Maybe I am not meant to be a writer after all,” you think to yourself.

You want to give up.

goodbyes and everything in between

You are beyond grateful for teachers with soft eyes and kind hearts.
You hate to leave them behind
 or see them go.
When you think about it too much, you hate that we grow—
Grow to want something bigger, something more. 
What was once enough feels no longer satisfying— the urge to reach out for more rings in our ears like drums.

So, you understand. 

It is hard to accept, but you understand
And you let them go.



AUTHOR

© Rubina Nusrat Puspa









Rubina Nusrat Puspa is currently an undergraduate Media and Cultural Studies student at Brac University. She is an aspiring writer with an everlasting fondness for literature and an amplifying desire to put her work out into the world. She feels her calling towards pieces that reflect her true essence to her readers, and seeing as she grew up in Saudi Arabia, most of her work is cocooned in escapism and nostalgia.