A Soul and a Room

Artwork: What makes you think you are different from the universe, dear soul? by Deema

Running from within. Running towards absolutely no destination. The world pauses as you enter a room, one you were present in throughout your life. Now the door has shut, and you don’t run anymore. You don’t realize you were running your whole life until you stop, don’t you? You breathe. One, two, three. You begin to look intently. Now this room has transformed into walls of mirror. And you look at your reflections, while breaking from sweat, so exhausted and terrified. There is no way out, merely a way in. You gaze at your body and see it attached to a soul filled with abandonments and numbness, accompanied with deeply rooted trials and tribulations. You begin to ponder over the fact that you never really approached it or even touched it. You now discover you’re no longer a body. And you never were. You are a soul, pulling and dragging suitcases filled with heavier bodies than the one you live in. Fighting the unsettling tides your mind projects — bodies unlike yours, which were shaping you up until the mirrors were drawn. Breathe. One, two, three. You look back to what you were running from. Only this time, you see yourself running from within. To unequivocally, no destination.

It took a loss and a shift. Reprogramming the entirety of what makes you, you. Your life fell apart: infrastructures and skylines. You see it all come to pieces and all you can do is step away, so you don’t go down deeper along. You reflect, a full introspect of life. The boundaries you failed to set, the hollowness and the disruptions, which have been put away for so long, tricking yourself into an all-is-well mindset. So you begin to learn a destruction was ought to occur for you to shift the frame of mind you were wearing. You look once more at your body, and notice a lack of connection. That the soul and the body never aligned. You begin to wipe away the sweat, and subtly sit surrounded by the mirrors.

Breathe. One, two, three. You pull out a never ending string from your ears. You pull until your fingers grow numb, and yet, you keep pulling. When you realize pulling it all at once is as overwhelming as coming to terms with introducing yourself once again, dear soul. You pick up every bit of the strings, piece by piece, and you think, you connect, you reflect. You open the suitcases of the bodies, and as heavy as they are, you begin to pick them up. Disconnecting and dissolving them with every ounce of being present within you. Learning that the root of all the strings extends from this moment to your childhood, adolescence, and to your coming of age.

You begin to understand and analyze the reasons of why you’re feeling the way you feel. Why you react the way you do. Why you love the way you love. How it all orchestrated itself, from nothing to something, scene by scene and thought by thought. You become acquainted with the feeling of being completely naked to your soul, and to your body. Coming to terms with shedding your destroyed skylines was what’s meant to happen for you to be raw. To look at yourself putting all the effort to let go of what once was.

You realize the person you are becoming is not just an evolved version of the sheded self, but a reincarnated being, stemming from the one you shut off your whole life. And it does not feel overwhelming anymore. Your sense, sensibility and acceptance is reaching to their fullest potential to shift the perception of life and self. Shedding paradigms and behaviors. Breaking into little pieces, only learning to pick yourself back up and reassemble it into how you are meant to be present in this world. The presentation your inner self and soul desired after the abandonment of two decades.

You realize that healing and growing is your journey in this life, after all. You lay inside this room and get sucked into a vortex of ease and serenity. You notice your behaviors are no longer familiar. You look back at your old self and no longer recognize her. And every action is accompanied with intent. You notice you are aware of the sky’s motive. Breathe. One, two three. To choose to detach yourself from everything you are yet to encounter. You learn where to place yourself, and to empathize with boundaries. Of course, healing is not linear like the walls of this room. In nature, all beings occur in fluctuations. The universe is composed of verses, amplitudes and frequencies, what makes you think you are so different from the universe, dear soul?

Letting go is as much a skill as it is an art. Forgiveness is not about the person more than it is about your peace and tranquility. Your thoughts, words and sentences come to fruition as you speak them. That karma is with you as it is against you. You are responsible for far more than you ever thought. Your presence is as bending as a black hole in space-time. And your purpose is not to be searched for externally. The truth is, you hold multitudes within yourself and this is only the beginning. Although, you are nothing without your boundaries, but the universe is boundless and you travel within the little sacred circle of your own creation; Where you create the door and not wait for the room to let you out. That the world is rooting for you and the only voice you’re looking for this time is yours, dear soul. Breathe. One, two, three.

---

A Soul and a Room is Haifa Albusaili’s debut piece. She channels words to articulate the pictures her mind paints. She also tweaks code lines here and there and spends immoderate time looking through a telescope. Haifa writes from Riyadh. Follow her on Twitter for more of her work.