the pains of being pure at heart.

Making the tea my mother used to make me.

Cinnamon, clover heards, lemon, and some honey

It smells like 2020: Quarantine, fetching the bolt cutters, and asking for closures.

I miss my mother’s cooking, I ask her for her recipes and save the vocals she sends me. It doesn’t taste the same.

I stare at the rat-sized ball of hair on the bathroom floor. I think to myself I should get an appointment with my hairdresser, you know, for a haircut. I forget by the time I’m out of the shower. My hair is long but thinning out, which defeats the point. I’m rubbing my dead skin away and watching pale flesh turn flush. I’m aggressive with my self-care.

I swallow my tongue and let resentment build up. My heart bellows inside til I’m short of breath, til I feel like I’m drowning, and I miss my mom.

I realize I search for friendships in every setting. I want to be liked. I want to be convenient. And once again, to my surprise (not really) my boundaries end up being overstepped. "انا نقولك سيدي و نتا عرف قدري" but people barely ever hold their end of the bargain. At some point, it stops being people’s fault and starts being mine. My self-victimization starts to disgust me and I slap myself on the wrist.

08.09.2025: “At some point, your disappointments are on you. You think every person you meet has the best intentions when that only happens 1% of the time. The rest will snuff you out when they smell kindness/weakness.”

“It is not always up to you to lighten the mood. You always complain about giving out your energy and investing too much, then getting disillusioned. You can’t expect a different outcome if the output is the same.”

Can’t be fucked to hold people accountable for the boundaries they cross. My shell is so easily penetrable, so easily malleable. Everything gets to me. I take everything to heart, absorb it, internalize it, and let it dictate my life. My feelings turn into a fireball that burns me inside out, and it’s only now that my accusatory index is pointing at its owner.

All I did the past few months was dig out my childhood. All the instances that made me who I am today.

“My sin” is that I have been mean to myself ever since that kid in primary school bullied me for my teeth, something that I hadn’t noticed, something I wasn’t supposed to notice because I was at an age where mirrors are your last priority. “My sin” is that after he said what he said, you could see my smile abruptly become awkward in pictures. “My sin” is that I have been awkward ever since, and I have had a hard time taking spontaneous pictures ever since. I’ve been studying my face ever since. I’ve had my eyes on every crevice of my face and body ever since, and spent approximately 20 years flogging myself. I often wonder what type of person I could’ve been if that FUCKER hadn’t changed my brain chemistry at such an early age. In some way, I do believe he ruined my life because of how self-conscious I became,”

You would never see me smile with my mouth open after he said that.

I had to spend the rest of my life insecure, feeling ugly and unliked, and act like I had to compensate for it, compensate for my existence. I alienated myself. I “weirded out” everyone else.

Shameika said I had potential. My Shameika was my brother, and I’d offer him my heart, my liver, and both my kidneys on a pearl-endowed platter.

On my first day of school, ever, the girl behind me in line told me, unprovoked (I didn’t know that fucking bitch?!), I was going to enter Jahannam, and I had to spend the next decade thinking she had some prophetic vision when she saw me. I thought I was some doomed being, forsaken by Allah, and there was no point trying.

Me, when my only bully was my brother, but at least he taught me how to walk. Also, I look like I bite people in this pic <3

A certain summer trip, I was swimming with this girl, then she said, “t’es belle comme la poubelle,” and her mom didn’t believe me, “My daughter wouldn’t even know how to say that!” Bitch.

Another summer trip, I don’t know if it was the same year. This kid I befriended professed his love to me, and I was outraged. He wrote it on the sand, at dusk, sooooo romantic. And even at that very tiny age, I felt unworthy.

Another summer trip, I meet this French girl whose name I forgot but whose address I still remember. We play together, we race, and at one point, holding hands, I intertwine my fingers with hers, “Nooooon on fait ça avec les petits amis,” she lectured while smiling. I still remember the feeling in my stomach and cheeks. I don’t think my letters ever got to her.

We used to stay at the same spot every summer for a whole month, same bungalow every year.

This one time, we were a whole group of The Winx Club-obsessed girls. We had our bloom, the leader, we had Stella, and obviously, I was Musa. This girl’s father, I think Stella, brought us The Winx Club Kinder Eggs. The number of eggs was disproportionate to the number of kids that night. And I ended up with no egg. I was too shy to fight off the other kids when they rushed to grab one. The bloom of our band coincidentally ended up with a bloom doll that her baby brother tossed out the window while calling her a bitch, the Algerian version. That was my first time hearing that word, and I didn’t understand why her jaw was on the floor. I didn’t know what that word meant.

I really wanted one of those eggs and a Winx doll. I dreamed about it for years and bit off my nails for not giving myself what I wanted, for just staying in the background when everyone went to grab one.

Last year, I went online to buy one, to heal that part of me because it stayed a looming desire, and I wanted to satisfy it finally. They were UGLY. desire satisfied. NEXT.

---

I’m 26 now. Learning to unlearn. I look at mirrors less. I look inwards less. I figure it’s useless to be so introspective when living among people who are ever so “outrospective.” I brush the golden curls of my inner child, and I tell her she has a beautiful smile. Everyone’s just jealous of how cool she is and how she can rock the hell out of an air guitar.