Hold my face in the curves of your hands and tell me

Somebody, please hold my face in the curves of your hands and tell me it will be fine.

Somebody, please hold my heart and tell me it will be fine, that it will end soon — this life and its endless miseries, the weight of its burdens, the scars of its struggles, the constant trials that stretch my soul thin. Tell me the aching will fade, the sleepless nights that twist inside my chest like knives will end.

Tell me there’s a way out, that I won’t keep sinking deeper into this black hole of despair, that the pain of unhealed wounds will find peace, and the overwhelming heaviness of it all will finally lift. Please remind me that there is light beyond this suffocating darkness, that I can rise from these shadows.

Tell me that, somehow, it will all come to an end — the disappointments, the tears, the constant battles.

Please, please, tell me there won’t be another hell waiting for me when I gather the courage to escape this one. Tell me that the pain I’ve carried won’t follow me, that the chains that bind my heart will finally break. Please tell me life doesn’t have to be a do-or-die game.

Please tell me I can simply exist and breathe on certain days without having to do something to justify being alive. Please tell me I don’t have to constantly live in fear of losing the people I love, just because I follow my own values or disagree with theirs. Somebody, please tell me life is not meant to be survived, heartbreak-to-heartbreak. Please tell me this past won’t haunt me for eternity.

Somebody, please place both hands on my head and tell me it’s okay to cry.

Somebody, please humanize me. Somebody, please love me. Somebody, please love me for my existence, my soul, my values, my perspectives, and my heart. Somebody, please love me beyond body, beyond gender, beyond any social status.

— Sadia Hakim 

Read about my claustrophobia write-up here.