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When I was eight, and it was time to sleep, I would lay down over the sheets, on my stomach, and look to the right. The wall was.
8:30 pm.
He was eight.
Eight years old when, in bed, I would imagine the world without me, the world, the whole world, living, my mother, my friends. Without me. My room, the galaxy. Without me.
Did not exist. Never existed. He was not. Not.
He was eight, he saw a world without him, it made him very sad, so he cried, and cried. His mother.
My mother would come in, Fouad, habibi, what's wrong, I'm dead, what's wrong.
He's dead.
Why are you crying habibi. Why. Habibi.
I was eight years old, my mother would come in and find me crying in bed. I cried because I would imagine I was dead, and the world was without me. The world. Without me.
Living.
But me, I was gone. Just me. Unbearable. Sad. Empty. Empty. How can the world keep going. How can people keep breathing without me. Disposable? Unnecessary?
How, God. How. How. How. How. How.
Habibi! What's wrong! Fouad!
Eight years old. Now thrity one.
Habibi!
mama mama mama mama mama mama.
Shou fi?
mama..
I don't want to die.
posted by Fouad at 10:55 PM
16 Comments:
i used to cry when i was a kid everytime i would imagine the world without my mom. i still do :)
Yeah I did that too..
now you've brought this classic back:
"Mamaaa, ooo - (anyway the wind blows)
I don't want to die
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all" (Freddy Mercury)
if that makes any difference, we can't imagine blogworld without you fouad! :)
The classic of all classics.. how did I not think of it while I was writing this.. I don't know.
I was so obsessed with death until only a couple of years ago. I used to dry run the image of myself and my loved ones being dead. the picture and the sadness used to be so real and vivid that i had to stop myself from doing it because it was making me so tired.
and rouba is right fouad, you're immortal at least here in blogland :)
Related subject:
There's a samurai exercise: imagining/thinking you are already dead. Overcomes fear going into battle etc...
Or similar: you are already dead, enjoy because everything you experience (annoyances included) is extra icing on the cake.
In some way the world you talked about is going on without you , you who are in a different parallel world... You're not dead yet but you are a sweet memory who makes people smile and then you go and visit for few weeks. you become angry because you can't change things in 10 days and you come back living in your fancy parallel world, dead man walking??? a body who left his soul behind??
at least this is what happens to me!!
...
A world without me, doesn't exist.
At least for me.
It won't feel the same,
at leasst not for me.
While it will in reality continues in its usual routine,
life is never there, when I'm not there.
when i was young i experienced the exact opposite..
i used to imagine/think that everybody, everything is just a stage/set for me/my life and when i'm else where they don't exist. (i,e when i leave a room, they'll stop moving) i even remember trying to catch people/situations off guard and see do they realy talk/move/breath when i'm away..
thinking about it now, in contrast to what you used to think of, i seem to be a selfcentred kid ..
hmmm.. what would frued make out of that?
anyway, as always faoud, GREAT POST GREAT READ
I was preoccupied as a child that the world would end in nuclear catastrophe before I reached adulthood... I think it wasn't so much a fear of death itself, but rather being cut off from some terribly interesting future (narcissistic injury), some aspiration of a romantic life I couldn't wait to reach. This was the Reagan 80's, when the words "Star Wars" carried a deep kind of foreboding. Later, I felt stunned that somehow I was still alive. (I think I still feel that way). My mother often talks about her upcoming "final journey" as a kind of mysterious travelogue; in a Sufi-esque way, it does indeed feel mystical. A kind of spinning/returning into the larger cosmos. Now this comment is turning into a blog itself... :)
SaudiEve,
Not uncommon, called solipsism.
From Merriam-Webster:
So·lip·sism
Pronunciation: 'sO-l&p-"si-z&m, 'sä-
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin solus alone + ipse self:
A theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing
Piaget saw childhood egocentrism as a normal developmental stage preceding the transition to objectivity, a shift he felt was facilitated especially by social interactions...
"The day when the child begins to wonder whether the moon might not be able to follow both him and the person walking the other way"
Fouad, you see how your blog inspires!
:)
I say the moon follows everybody. I guess I'll never grow up :)
what made you recall those moments?
The fact that many fellow bloggers were talking about death. That's all..
Fouad,
I don't know how you feel about dharma. It seems to me your dharma, as a physician and philospher, seems to be healing and spreading compassion. I hear it when I read your words, and I see it in your photos. Hope all is well, and here is some inspiration from our "demi-God" Einstein:
How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...
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