Give me strength to face those who mock your name.

A leader in our usrah group once talked about how our aqidah are like sleeping lions. Gentle and harmless in their dreamland, yet deadly and irrational when angered. Give me strength to control my aqidah, give me strength to face such situations calmly and rationally so that I can give justice to my name and to the way of life that I have chosen.

Some kind of black hole in the pit of my stomach, draining away all my strength, all my emotion. I'm left colourless by the end of the day. Thin, stretched so thin, as I try to build paper thin substitutes to replace everything that's missing. Fake interest, fake laughter, fake anger- all are fragile lies that even I find hard to believe.

There might have been some hope, at first, that somebody would see through the paper curtains. Somebody would see the shadow play, notice it for what it was, and poke a finger through the paper to reveal the puppets on sticks and strings. I don't think anyone could have seen the puppet master, though. The dalang would remain further back in the true darkness, in a void where only monsters live.

Sometimes I wish I could leave a note, and be done with everything. It's the guilt that makes me think so darkly, yet ironically, it's also guilt that pulls me back into reality.

I used to imagine 'The After'. Now I just see black. Or a hazy, murky version of it. Or something. Or maybe even nothing. A state of total blindness with no perception of form, light, or even absence of light.

Ah. Why do I even try to explain it, anyway? It's all meaningless, in the end.

***

(This time it started off on a very dark note...funny, I'm supposed to be writing about childhood books. Anyway, this is too dark, it scares me a little...to see my thoughts out in the open like this. It's part speculative imagination though, so it isn't to be taken seriously or anything like that. I wanted to try completely disassociating myself as the author and the subject, but in the end it grew to be too dark and it's making me feel uncomfortable. That's why it ended poorly. Sorry.)

***

Ah. That was meaningless too.