I was looking at the sky, it was so blue and beautiful, the sun was warm enough for you to stay outside as long as you want. A normal day for everyone, a pain free day for me.

I realized a dark spot very far on top of mountains, I could see it was coming closer and getting bigger, suddenly it covered all over the sky and started to rain. I saw it was coming, I knew it is going to be cold, but I did nothing, I just stayed there and wait for it to happen.

It was the time of my life full of strangeness! finally I had no pain. My love life was also not quite right. The entire time we have been together, he had never told me that he loved me. I used to the idea that some men can’t say it. But one day it changed and he said it! That was the day I finally realized he didn’t love me anymore. I knew him, I knew he was lying. what could I do about it? I just needed time to understand and digest it. I felt I was not enough for him. I forgot about myself, I forgot about myself for a long time, I was just living and nothing more. I didn’t see the problem, I just thought I have to fix this. I thought maybe I need more money, so like a crazy person I put my savings into the trading without having any prior knowledge. And I had a guy who supposed to help me to learn. So naive I was to believe on everything he said. That is who I was, so gullible to trust him. Any way on that very day when my ex-boyfriend finally admitted he didn’t love me anymore, I lost everything I had ever earned, even worse I was under debts. This time I truly failed myself.

It was on that moment when it hit me, I was sitting in my room and not thinking about anything, I could hear my own heart biting, it was really fast, but not so much tears. I knew It is going to pass. I knew it was nothing compare to what I had experienced before. Although, It was a though life afterwards, not enough money to rent a good place, and had to work harder to pay my debts. I never surrendered, I stayed strong and did what I could do. Finally in 6 months I was debts free, again I felt the freedom. Still not so much hope for future after all these incidents. There was not so much time to recover from one issue, something else was coming up and who knows what will be the next. It looks like you are in a circle of punishment for every mistake that you have ever done in your life. Doesn’t matter why, I remember the feeling of going down and down, drowning, not able to breath. It was over finally when I embraced it, when I acknowledged myself, this is who I am and I am enough.

Now I can say I am ready for a new chapter in my life.

When you can’t find what you are afraid of just to put yourself outside of your comfort zone. What is the exact limit which being afraid start from? How can you find the box you need to think outside of?

If there is a limit for my though, where is it exactly? I don’t want to be smarter or wiser, I just want to be braver and go further.

Being afraid of something is the place and time you start to give yourself hope, that is the limit. what if I stop giving myself hope, what if I go further and deeper in my fear!

When I was in the operation room waiting to get unconscious, I was able to see everything in my surrounding. The room itself was big with large ceiling, light green colored tiles on the wall and all those large robotic equipment around and above me. there were wires connected to me. A nurse brought a big table, she removed the cover and I could see a lot of knives and scissors in different shapes and sizes. I started to feel it finally. My mind was so loud talking to me “this is it, this is what you were asking about, what will happen if there is nothing afterward. there is a slight chance today that you never wake up.” I felt empty and unfulfilled. I felt deeply alone. not the first time that I had these feelings.

when I was very young 2 or 3 years old. I remember being with my parents and siblings in our basement hiding from the Iraqi bombers. We could hear them when they were flying above us. It may have taken just couple minutes, but I felt it like years. I can remember it so vividly like it was yesterday. My mom hold me so tight, my head was on her chest, I could feel my mother’s fear, I could hear her heart was beating fast. When I was with my mom I always felt safe, in her arm was the safest place in the world, however in that very moment, I knew something is not right I felt her fear and I started to be afraid, I realized she can not protect me. I felt the nothingness of not being safe, no matter who is with you when you are dying you feel alone.

On the day of operation, I felt that again. My mind went further and deeper this time, looking for some meaning, something beyond my logical mind. “I will disappear, my name will disappear, my memories will disappear, I will become nothing, no one will ever remember me….”

I knew I had to find something to convince my wild mind that it is okay to disappear.

I started to search in my old memories, I remembered her, I could see her face smiling back at me. She (my 6 years old niece) was so special for me, I was there the day she was born, I hold her in my arms, she looked at me I was someone else. I became whole new person, someone who cares someone who loves. she was so cute, beautiful amazing human, so little and so big, so curious and so patient. Her heart was so pure. I didn’t want her to get hurt. I always wanted to be with her. I have always imagined when she become older, I would bring her here and show her how big the world is and how much she can learn. And yet I buried her for ever. I buried myself with her. I wish I could offer my life to bring back hers.

In that very moment, I didn’t feel afraid anymore, I could see her smiling at me, we are made of particles and energy and we are not going to disappear. even if we become dust in the space, we will be together and united, as we have been united before. I felt peace!

I was not afraid of “nothingness ” anymore. I was ready to embrace it.

I am writing my story for many reasons. I am not living in the past, I am just reviewing it. Writing make me feel empowered and strong again. There is a beauty in whatever that have happened to me and I want to share it.

Since I can remember, I have always been characterized as highly sensitive person. My senses are stronger, my feelings are deeper. I don’t see it as a weakness. As a matter of fact I am one of the strongest person I know. I had encountered many deaths in my life, grandpa, grandma, aunts, uncles even a friend in secondary school. Basically every couple of years I have lost someone. I almost got used to it. But loosing my sister and my nieces were different. I felt like I lost a piece of myself. I have tried so hard to find and embrace that piece of me, so far no success. I tried meditation, sports, spiritual courses, nothing helped. In this journey to find myself I have faced things, I have never thought can happen to me. A year after that summer, something else happened, not to my loved ones but to me. I got very sick so much so that I underwent an operation on November 2017 in a hospital in Cracow, Poland far away from home and family. unfortunately the situation was much worse than I or my doctor thought. He had to make decision for saving my life during the operation. I was bleeding so intensively and there was not so much time left. So he removed my uterus and saved my life. I survived that day, however, apparently hysterectomy for a woman in my age is very dangerous. consequently I started to have internal bleeding in the next day, therefor second operation became essential. I still remember the excruciating pain I had after both operations, no pain killer eased my pain, just because I was using them a lot in the last three months. They were injecting me different types of painkiller for hours until I felt nauseated. I wish that was the end of it, however, the next day after second operation I started to faint, and seeing vertigo. It got worse with the pain in my chest, evidently I was dying. Someone save my life or so many people did . I owe my life to them and to science as well. Tomography proved that I had post operation pneumonia. I was giving myself hope and saying to myself that all this thing in future will be a joke and I can tell it to my friend and we will laugh about it. This, too shall pass. tomorrow, it will be yesterday, next month it will be last month and next year I will not even remember it, soon it will be history.

After all, I realized that I need to pay more attention to my health. I failed myself because I didn’t take care of me properly. Since then I characterized myself as one of my loved ones. I finally made peace with myself or I though so until the next summer, something else was cooking up against me. Everything I did to make things right blow up in my face and I failed again.

( In this story I left out many details, I will definitely write them in the final version of my journal.)

Empathy what I needed or just a little bit of compassion could be enough. When I was all by myself sitting near the gate waiting for my flight. People were walking towards me and just passing by. People were sitting near me and they were busy with their own business. Obviously I was not fine and my face were covered in tears. Nobody noticed or nobody cared to notice. In the plain, I was surrounded with my people from my home country, sometimes they were looking at me but no one said a word. I felt so alone and miserable. I was maybe in wrong place with wrong people, otherwise someone would have shown me some kindness.

Nothing could help me anyway. I got home and went through more upsetting situations, three funerals. Funeral of Susan and her daughter were in the next day And Arezo after two weeks. For her it was more complicated, since her parents were in the hospital in very critical condition, we should keep it as a secret. I had to be brave and strong for my sister, she endeavored a lot of pain and had 15 operations. Every single moment of that month was torture and pain. Once I lost control over my emotions and cried out loud, It was one of those day after visiting my sister in hospital, she was constantly asking me where is my daughter, I was behind the glass, smiling and lying to her face that she is okay and getting medical care in children hospital. When I got home whatever I kept buried inside came back to surface, I cried and cried and surprisingly I felt better, crying does help, that was the reason why I stopped myself from crying. I didn’t want to feel better. The good time was gone and you never going to have those joyful moment with your loved ones any more. I could understand the meaning of this quota: “The worst day of loving someone is the day you loose them”.

Compassion was all I needed not from others but from myself. I should have forgave myself but I knew I was the one to blame. I heard a story from a husband and a father who lost his family in the 11 September indecent, he was shocked by the news, because at the time his family was dying, he was enjoying himself not knowing anything about what is happening to his family. He was questioning life, how meaningless it is and why he felt nothing.

In my case, I felt something a day before it happened. I had that dream couple of hours after accident without knowing about it, I felt something that I can not explain and I will never be able to explain. It made me wonder and wonder. So much so, when I got back home, I started to do research about it. let’s face it I am a scientist. I only believe in what I have evidence and clear proof for it. I needed to know that it wasn’t just a coincidence. In science we repeat the experiment to collect more data. That was not the case for me. So I should collect data in other ways. Finding other people who had the same experience. I got something out of it at the end which I will share it with you in my upcoming stories.

Although I was struggling with these thoughts, I was the one still needed to be strong, my family needed me, my sister the most. No time for me to heal or get at least some rest. Immediately after I got back, piles of work were waiting for me. Sympathy was the only thing I got for just first couple of days, and then nobody cared. How people around me specially my boyfriend, my boss and my supervisor were treating me subconsciously were destroying me. Work was the most important things for my boss. My boyfriend, he was piece of art, let me tell you the story how he made me happy or he thought so. I had my birthday coming up in couple of weeks after I returned. He told me that in polish culture you should organize your own birthday party. I didn’t want party and I didn’t feel like celebrating. He was insisting and asking what I wanted for my birthday, so I just wanted him to stop so I said surprise me. And he did surprise me by throwing me a party at the institute with all the experiment group with my supervisor and people I really didn’t feel comfortable with.

I had to put up fake smile and thanks everyone. 20 minutes and it was over. But before everyone left the room he told me sarcastically in front of everyone, “ you should take responsibility for your own birthday party as any grownup does”. I felt so humiliated. I though it might be because of difference in our cultures. I am from Iran and in my culture when someone looses a family member, she is grieving for forty days, friends are the ones who try to make her happy by visiting her. She also wears black clothes all the time, so it is customary after that 40 days, one of friends or relatives bring a new colorful piece of clothes for her and make her happy again. But we are all human being, when you loose your loved one doesn’t matter where are you from, you are grieving may be in different way. I didn’t want to live any more, the only thing kept me standing was my responsibility toward my sister. I had to be there for her, talk to her any chance I could get, more or less every single night, listen to her and give her hope. I didn’t have anyone to give me hope. I was the only one who was there for me. But as the things happened to me in the next years, I realized that it wasn’t enough.

If you liked my story and have feedback, there is a place for comments down the page, thanks in advance, I really like to hear what do you think about my story!

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