F*ck Me Eyes

Notes on Becoming, Chapter 1

This is my first paid post, and it feels hard to go through with it. My readers, I invite you to use a free trial that should be available to you if you’d like to read. <3

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A quick prelude;

My journey on Substack has been an deeply important to me. As a 2000s baby who grew up on the big old internet, I have scoured every end of this digital world to find something like Substack. I had an account prior to With Love, Amal, where I posted occasionally, but my lethal combination of anxiety and depression and perfectionism always led me to deleting things after some time. With Love, Amal was a practice of solitude: I decided it was for me, and if needed, I would simply speak to the ether - it was important to learn how to be okay with nothing but my voice echoing back at me forever.

What I didn’t expect was for my voice to echo back towards me in so many different languages, from so many different reflections.

This extra letter a week will be sent to “reflection” - you. The biggest lesson being on Substack has taught me is that there isn’t much that separates us, except this screen, and when we read each others work, when we learn from each others words, arts, and ideas, we are just reflecting some kind of divine - back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Written January 29, 2025¹, and scheduled to arrive to you on February 10, 2025 after three rounds of edits.

Trigger warning: mentions of self-harm and sexual abuse.

Dear reflection,

This is the second birthday - ever - that I’ve woken up without my mother’s overly excited, off-beat melody of Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. She will call later, and sing to me, of course, but I spent this morning feeling… off. The last 29 days have been wasted in perpetual thought, and illness, and imagination. My January has been spent alone, and for a good chunk of it, I have found it to be a nice respite from the outside world. Still, I struggle with a vein of homesickness, a feeling I assume is heightened by the fact that I have no one to care for me in this unrelenting Influenza A attack.

I want to go home, my mind whines, but I’m unsure what exactly she wants. I think she means I want to be taken care of. I want someone to cook me the soup, to clean the tissues off my bed.

I turn 25 today. I have decided, in the weeks I’ve spent moping around my apartment, and working, and sniffling, and cleaning, that I would like to be homesick no longer. My dream for this year is to be my own home: to recognize my body and mind as the only things that will forever be by my side: and to be happy - content - with that thought.

As I edit this piece on February 8th, 2025, I come to you with re-opened wounds that I had so delicately sewn back together ages ago. My skin once again feels foreign to me, my body a few steps further from truly becoming the safe haven I dream it. So, I will stitch in some new realizations as I work through this piece, because they are relevant to the topic.

I have relearned myself time and time again, though the most difficult period was after I’d realized the depth of a form of abuse I’d endured, once I was finally freed of my perpetrator, almost four years ago.

I have been open about my struggles with sexual manipulation and coercion. My poetry contains a thread of sensuality, shame, and pain, especially the pieces I’ve written in years prior. However, in this recent year specifically, I have found my focus in writing and art has changed: as I healed from the torment, I released it, and no longer viewed love as hatred or sex as murder. But sometimes - occasionally - there are hauntings. What I worry about most, what really brings me down on my bad days, is that I will never break the cycle of falling into depressive episodes and triggers. That I am doomed to take two steps forward, then three steps back.

But, hey. I’m a writer. The pain always makes for a good story. It is easier to write about pain - more synonyms.

So, listen, reflection, I’ve been going through a lot. On top of the heaviness of this month, there is a person I’d been carefully distancing myself from who has re-emerged onto my timeline. The internet is funny this way; in its algorithmic nature, it often brings exactly what you don’t want to see to the top of your feed. The shock causes you to pause, to study, and then, in it’s magical code or AI or careful study of your psyche, keeps them coming.

A beautiful thing, this space, these apps, this phone. And such a disgusting, broken, triggering thing it can be, as well.

Despite the public humiliation this person is currently enduring, a man will emerge through the fog of ‘cancellation’ swiftly. It will not damage his reputation too bad, he will retain a protective following, and despite all, the depth of the pain he has inflicted - on what seems to be several people, now - will live on forever in different bodies, in changing ways. I have kept my silence, due to a myriad of reasons, but mainly on behalf of the ever-so-delicate thread I walk, as a Middle Eastern woman, living in the heart of Amman, Jordan. I will retain that silence best I can, and try to write out just enough of my pain to get an overarching theme across.

There is a start I noticed when I came across the screenshots and read the way he texts, or when I heard, later, the way he still speaks. Since that pause of my lungs, I’ve slowly fallen downward. I’d thought I’d moved past the hold he had on me, but the little mannerisms… the curious ways in which he bends grammar… it all still affects me. They call this PTSD, a worksheet test I’ve aced time and time again in my various visits to crisp white offices, with a lone plant sitting in the corner. It bothers me, this small fact. This little nub of fear. You see, the cleverness of an abuser is often overlooked. Early on, it’s endearing, but soon you will see it slowly shift, this quality, until it turns into a disgusting, broken thing that you cannot fully understand, often because those around you aren’t able to put their finger on it, either.

He is clever. He is funny. He is so interesting. Well spoken, they sometimes say. Your friends may tell you otherwise in the aftermath, but that is how it all began, anyway: as a trick, a play on words: a high IQ, what a natural debater, what a charismatic fellow, what popular man. Often you are alone in the idea that they are bad: so alone that your reflection will alter into a scary, evil thing, and you will wonder: Is it me who is the monster?

Seeing his movements for the first time in four years, even through a screen, watching the way in which he lays out his case and bends ideas to his liking, I felt as though my mind melted, and I lost my words; I felt myself drifting back into the sleep of insecurity, uncertainty, and distrust in myself…

A drug: a fog: a deep, deep color of red.

A feeling: as though I lose agency over my body, slowly, carefully, and

I try to latch on, to hold onto all I’ve done to make what is mine,

mine

again.

Sometimes, just like water, all of it just flows from my fingers, into a puddle by my feet, and I am no longer me, but a ghost of someone else, from long ago, full of fear, pain, and shame. I am frozen in place, and the world is coming at me, full speed, and unrelenting.