Rascal Flatts: A Discovery.

Discovery. That's what it feels like.


After listening to these songs, I actually felt like they were so close to the heart. Like for real. Don't know why I wrote this entry, but I really felt like. Just felt like sharing my favorite parts from each song.

I'm Moving On

At last I can see life has been patiently waiting for me
And I know there's no guarantees, but I'm not alone
There comes a time in everyone's life
When all you can see are the years passing by
And I have made up my mind that those days are gone

What Hurts the Most

I can take the rain on the roof of this empty house
That don’t bother me
I can take a few tears now and then and just let them out
I’m not afraid to cry every once in a while
Even though going on with you gone still upsets me
There are days every now and again I pretend I’m ok
But that’s not what gets me

What hurts the most
Was being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away
And never knowing
What could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was tryin’ to do

These days.

Yeah, life throws you CURVES,
But you learn to swerve,
Me, I swung and I missed,
And the next thing ya know, I'm reminiscing...
Dreaming old dreams, wishing old wishes,
Like you would be back again.


God Bless the Broken Road.

I set out on a narrow way many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you

[Chorus:]

Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like Northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

I think about the years I spent just passing through
I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you
But you just smile and take my hand
You've been there you understand
It's all part of a grander plan that is coming true

[Chorus]

Now I'm just rolling home
Into my lover's arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you.

Okay, the ENTIRE song! :)


Stand.

Cause when push comes to shove
You taste what you're made of
You might bend, till you break
Cause its all you can take
On your knees you look up
Decide you've had enough
You get mad you get strong
Wipe your hands shake it off
Then you Stand, Then you stand
Life's like a novel
With the end ripped out
The edge of a canyon
With only one way down
Take what you're given before its gone
Start holding on, keep holding on

Every time you get up
And get back in the race
One more small piece of you
Starts to fall into place

On My Way...

What a Saturday morning. Seriously. My day started off with receiving two smses from my childhood friends, both of them from Saudi. One who knew me from diapers till dupattas, Iqraa. The other who knew me from my elementary school fiascoes till now. Even though I was pretty much half asleep, I smiled to myself. These were the little things that could make you feel triumphant about being "wanted", being "missed", being "remembered", being "important". Sometimes that's all you need to feel better and recharge yourself for yet another day of your highly erratic life. It seems just like yesterday when we got over with LMS and now we have another module coming up, the Cardiovascular System this time, just a week's time left. This year FLEW. April's almost ending, come May, June and then tadaaa, July's here and I head back home, Saudi that is. I will miss Islamabad, lol. Although I'm going for just 3 weeks, it's going to be hard leaving my college friends behind for a while. I will miss people making fun of everything I say and do. Lol. Usman's inside jokes, Sahla's hopelessness about me, Emmal's radical feminism, Sehr's happy hour, Hassan's chips and Rajeel's higly interesting stories. And last but not the least, some loser's highly inane jokes about me. You know you who are and also how much I hate you. Anyways, so I'm supposed to do a lot today. Study, study, study, then probably sort through my stuff and then get in touch with a few people, maybe. I rejoined Facebook. I think it was hard to stay away from gooey drama. But I guess I shouldn't "let my enemies drown me" and try becoming thick-skinned. The other day I was going through my 8th grade autograph diary and I came across such bizarre autographs. lol. All my friends advising me to "grow up" and become less of a nerd. I haven't changed maybe, because I get the same remarks even now. But I don't feel bad, I'm glad I didn't change that much. Changing in front of your eyes is very scary. Initially it starts off with just a tinge of change here and there, you just smile at it with confusion and overlook it. Then a vicious cycle starts off. One thing changes, another, then yet another. A string of changes encircles you, tightening its grip around you so strongly. It chains you to yourself, you can't even break away or even try to. You do things you never thought you'd do, you want to do things that seemed so off the hook to you in the past and all you want to do is to close your eyes as you experience the jolts of change shaking your wits out of you. It's like trying to contain sand in your fist. No matter how hard you try, the sand seeps out through your fingers. It falls down to accompany the other particles of sand to become just another grain in the sand. The pride of being a high and mighty dune just fades away with the strong storms that ransack the desert.

Where I Stood.

I'm so in love with this song. I remember Maira telling me to youtube it one fine Friday evening, when I was feeling very blue and low. Funny how sometimes listening to songs that echo your thoughts and feelings makes you feel better instead of sinking you deeper into wells of misery. This song pushed and pulled me into a whirlpool of such weird emotions. I don't know. I felt like my mind was spinning in a washing machine. It was so true, but I didn't want to see a song reflecting my feelings. I didn't want them to be so public. But I guess, everyone feels this way at one point in time...Especially the first stanza. Okay, Sidra, shut up and study your physiology lessons for tomorrow.

Where I Stood

I don't know what I've done
Or if I like what I've begun
But something told me to run
And honey you know me it's all or none

There were sounds in my head
Little voices whispering
That I should go and this should end
Oh and I found myself listening

'Cos I dont know who I am, who I am without you
All I know is that I should
And I don't know if I could stand another hand upon you
All I know is that I should
'Cos she will love you more than I could
She who dares to stand where I stood

See I thought love was black and white
That it was wrong or it was right
But you ain't leaving without a fight
And I think I am just as torn inside

'Cos I dont know who I am, who I am without you
All I know is that I should
And I don't know if I could stand another hand upon you
All I know is that I should
'Cos she will love you more than I could
She who dares to stand where I stood

And I won't be far from where you are if ever you should call
You meant more to me than anyone I ever loved at all
But you taught me how to trust myself and so I say to you
This is what I have to do

'Cos I dont know who I am, who I am without you
All I know is that I should
And I don't know if I could stand another hand upon you
All I know is that I should
'Cos she will love you more than I could
She who dares to stand where I stood
Oh, she who dares to stand where I stood

Crumbling.

Once upon a time there lived a girl who thought she could conquer the whole world and sleep peacefully at night after making each and every person smile on the face of this earth. She thought she was some bigshot healer, the ultimate source of pride for her parents, an inspiration for her friends and peers, a big teachers' pet, a girl with an iconic academic and social status back in her high school and then one day she fell. She fell so badly that even she didn't know what was up with her. She just knew that she was whizzing through the air, hurtling and back-flipping into an abysmal pit of time and space. Now she just stared at herself in the mirror and heard tiny cracks in the back of her mind as she stared back at an individual so foreign to her. She tried to come up with excuses and justifications for her change, but she found none. People told her that she was just growing up, but she knew better. She was falling into a trap, a laid out conspiracy. She was jinxed. She had been caught by the evil eye. She had so many questions in her mind, but with no answers. She cried, but she never knew the reason behind her tears. The girl, who once thought that her connection with God was so strong that she'd be able to whiz through thick and thin without a single obstacle, was now crumbling into pieces. One, two, three, four, five...million, billion, trillion...gazillion..She lost count gradually. At that point, she felt like a big joke. A big retard, who was a source of pure entertainment to those around her. She wanted to close her eyes and open them just to see that everything and everyone was normal. She often asked God and then herself about what was wrong. But she could never put a finger to her problem. She'd try talking it off with her friends, but then she'd feel like the epicenter of a disaster. She just wanted to break away. The same girl who wanted to befriend everyone, who wanted to connect to people at a special level beyond normal myopic human scope, suddenly wanted to build very high walls around herself. She often sat down to think what was the reason that she was disintegrating so badly? Was it a person? An event? A feeling? An experience? What was it exactly? To her it seemed to be everything and yet nothing. She tried asking God. But God wanted her to find out on her own, I guess. As she made her way through the gooey gel of time, she tried to keep herself from stumbling, from falling and breaking into infinitesimal pieces in front of an audience. She missed herself immensely. Her inconquerable soul, her unerasable smile, her naive self. She wanted to run, but she didn't know where to. So she decided to pack her broken self up in a bandage of self-pity and pretend to be very strong and so very brave and prayed with all might that may God help her maintain her modesty in the strong winds of change that she was being harassed by. As she types, she still prays, hopes and wishes that if only she could...

Crack.

The weather's so amazing! It's windy and it's raining! It's so so cool. :) I have college tomorrow and I'm so dead and beat, but I still don't feel like sleeping. I wanted to sleep to the sound of rain falling outside my window, but it just stopped. sighs. Today was such a surreal day, I had three SGDs, which I couldn't study for at all. I was out at a family dinner yesternite and by the time I came back I was too tired to do anything, however I did try to jab at embryology. Anywaysss, today was just weird- came to know things that would NEVER cross my mind under normal circumstances. But anyways, I am going to try to ignore it. Blah, blah, blah. I need to go sleep.

Those Chips in Me.

As I am sitting here on a Saturday morning, munching on Chips Ohoy early in the morning, I am smiling to myself for a reason so unknown. Maybe sometimes you smile because you don't know what else to do about what you're being subjected to. Crying seems to be to cliche. Plus why overburden your lacrimal glands when you know that your tears won't even dampen the cause of the problem to the least bit. So we started off with the cardiovascular system in college. The physiology part is so freaking extensive, but insh'Allah, I plan to ace this module. It's funny that I'm studying the human heart, something that nobody has fully understood to-date. They say the heart has four chambers, I beg to differ. It has a chamber within a chamber, each chamber with several twists and turns, a maze within a maze, and so many diversions. If the heart were such a simple thing, more than half of this world's problems would cease to exist. But then again, this is just what I think. I have been thinking a lot these days. Funny how sometimes you take "mental vacations" to such demented areas of life that you feel so very detached from your past, presence and future. Like the chocolate chips sprinkled across dough in making chocolate chip cookies, you feel like your pieces are dispersed across the seven seas, each fragment resting on embers in a different land. *snap, snap, snap* Sidra, get yourself back. You're drifting off a little too much these days. Get a grip on yourself, what are you doing to yourself? Why are you letting it affect you? Haha, these are things that I have to keep telling myself. See, I told you, growing up wasn't just a physical process- it wasn't limited to the obliteration of your epiphyseal growth plate in your bones or the onset of hormone secretion. There was a lot to it. Coming from Saudi to now Pakistan, I feel like I have just come out of an egg shell with one of my legs still very much caught in the gooey yolk and the pieces of the broken shell clinging to my hair. Maybe I'm going through a 'culture shock' or maybe I'm just being irrational by choice or maybe I'm just expecting too much light out of fireflies. I am doing things that I used to run away from. I am feeling something that I thought was just so low and cheap and "so-not-Sidra Chaudhry-type". From a super-focused-Paki woman, I'm turning into just another girl, who goes weak in the knees at the sight of a shooting star, who wants to wear the stars as a tiara, who goes goo-goo eyed at the mere thought of honey, flowers and butterflies. What's happening to me? Lol. Gah, so random. According to a friend, I've become bipolar. But who isn't bipolar? :P Everyone fluctuates through highs and lows, but maybe my frequency's a little fishy. Sighs. I'm being flipped like a paratha on a hot skillet.


Is this what you call pain?
If yes, then I want to ask you,
why it chose just me?
Did it fail to see you?
Or did you divert it to me?
The twinkle in your eyes,
sparkles at my cries.
The smile on your lips,
my dainty wings it clips.
But just to make you happy,
I'm ready to befriend misery.

Jabs.

I know there's something wrong with me. I just know it. I tried jabbing at some urdu poetry today. I swear, this version of Sidra Chaudhry is so very foreign to me. I managed to write a stanza and a short 'poem' you can say and afterwards when I actually read it, I felt like washing my hands with soap like a ten million times or so. I couldn't believe I had written what I had written. lol. I'm putting it up here just for the heck of it. I know it's as lame as some verses off a truck or rickshaw's rear end, but here it goes anyways.

THE stanza:

Aadhi se zyada zindgi, kabhi kabhi,
lagnay lagti hai baymaani se,
jis tarha sooraj ki talaash mein koi,
bhaag raha ho saraab kay peechay.

THE poem:

Sard ahoo'n kay samandar mein,

doobtay doobtay aik umer beet gayi hai,

aik uss pal ki yaadoo'n mein jesay,

saari zindagi theher si gayi hai.

apni hee awaaz lagnay lagi hai parayi,

kuch aisey hee mazak, zindgi ker gayi hai.

ab tu andheroo'n aur ujaaloo'n mein tafreek he kahan,

ab tu lagta hai sab shameei'n aik saath utar gayi hai.

unhein saayoo'n kay peechay bhaagtay guzri zindgi,

ab tu jesay sab saayoo'n ko hawa apnay saath ura le gayi hai.

neem kay patoo'n ki manind karwi karwi wohi baatein yaad ati hain ab,

ab tu sirf unki tooti huwi yaadein zinda reh gayi hai,

baith ker aik konay mein iss jahaan kay mein sochti hoon kabhi,

ab kya kerna inn arzoo'on ka, jo kirchiyan ban ker rooh mein chub gayi hain.

daur zindgi ki thaamnay ki nakaam justuju mein,

ab ankhoo'n se sab khoon-alood khwahishaat hee beh gayi hain.

So ewwwww, right? :)
I know.

Erase.

I heard "My Immortal" by Evanescence yesterday after almost a year. Brought back so many memories of the times when some freshman had sung this song on the talent show back in high school. Well anyways, I am having very surreal days these days. I feel like 'Sidra Chaudhry' from 6-D all over again- same emotions bubbling up and down, same stupid and silly gestures and actions...same everything, but different everyone. sighs. Sometimes I feel like telling myself, "Man, Sidra, get a grip on yourself. Step out of this time capsule you're stuck in!" But I'm one thick-skinned person, so I never listen..even to myself at times. Changing tracks, I touched a cadaver for the first time in my life today. It felt so cold and so weird. I'm struggling upstream to do the upper limb..hate it with a passion so strong that I can't find words big enough to describe my hatred. lol. ummm, besides that not much is up really. I don't even know why I'm still typing away nonsense. I think it's because I've written so many poems that my blog has become so boring and very uptight, wanted to break the monotony. Yesterday, Rajeel, Hassan, Sehr, Sahla, Emmal, Mahrukh and I went for a walk from college to the I-8 Markaz. It was so cool. lol. Fun, really. But I was so beat when I came back home, I just hit the sack immediately and didn't feel like coming out of bed at all. The political scenario in Pakistan is bad. I'm not following the news much, but after the attack on the Sri Lankan team and Sharif brothers fiascos, a lot of unrest has been observed in various parts of our great nation. There's supposed to be a nationwide protest tomorrow, but still my college chose to stay open. I really don't feel like going, I'd rather sit and home and try to study. But I have to go because I promised my favorite pathan aka Sahla that I'd come. I just tried to read up the forearm and I'm struggling to retain all the information. Today was a crazy day. Hassan, Rajeel, Sehr, and Usman bugged me a lot. I hate you all. lol. Naa, I don't. You people are my sahelas and sahelis. =)
Anyways, I'm going to end. This is getting extremely sad.

PS- I'm not as sad as it seems. =)

Is it not?

When I carried five kilos of onions and another five kilos of potatoes from the markaz back to my house, I actually felt what it was like to carry the burden of a lifetime with you. As the polythene bag handles bored into my skin and when my fingers were sore due to the cold wind and the heavy bags, I felt like no other. It wasn't just the weight of onions and potatoes, it was so much more, but I just couldn't put a name to it. As I walked down the streets, I felt like I was walking in a gel..so slow, struggling to walk faster, walk smoother...As the sun started to go down and the entire sector became a tadbit darker, it felt like everything was just leaving me so alone little by little. The cold winds adamant to pull the dupatta off my head, the heavy bags of groceries, the weight of a million effervescent thoughts colliding in my head, the dust-laden streets which seemed to lead me to a place I was supposed to accept as home. I see a huge pile of dry leaves right ahead and I have the sudden urge to throw off my groceries in the middle of the street and jump into the heap...to keep stomping every little leaf until my lungs would collapse and my breath would fail to come to normal...I wanted to grind each leaf to a gazillion fragments, picture each leaf as a major source of pain in my life, hammer it out of my life, excise the tumor. But unfortunately, I couldn't do that, I could just gaze at the dry leaves, which rustled against the dusty road, and pretend as if they didn't exist. I shuffled the grocery bags around, trying to calm my screaming muscles, but I failed miserably. Who said pain was only physical? My aching deltoids were nothing compared to the massive aches that I was encountering deep inside. I don't even know whether it was my heart or my mind that was aching. But there was pain. I just knew it. As I said earlier, I just couldn't put a finger on it. I tried to divert my mind. I concentrated on the sound of my own footsteps on the road. The silence around made it so much easier to do that. Each "thud" felt like a little betrayal to me. I was walking as if I knew where I was headed, but I didn't. I was pretending all this time. Everything was so wrong, so alien, so strange. When I reached home, I climbed the stairs, dumped the groceries in the kitchen, then I literally dragged myself to my bedroom. I was sick and tired and super-saturated. I threw myself on my bed. I lay there for ten minutes staring at the ceiling. The fan stared back at me and I wondered whether it ever got fed up of witnessing everything from up there, at such a distance. Things blurred, so I just closed my eyes. That was the best I could do. I once read, you can close your eyes to things you don't want to see, but you can't close your heart to things you don't want to feel. Funny how quotes can so aptly describe your condition, but do nothing to improve it. I reached out to my side drawer and pulled out my scrapbook. Its incomplete-ness bugged me. I had planned so much- to fill it up, I had collected leaves, pressed flowers, cut out templates, and piled up accessories to fill up the empty pages. But save the first few pages, the rest of the book was staring back at me with a blankness so penetrating, that it made my hands tremble. I flipped through the first page- graduation, the love, the drama, the tears, the farewells, my parents, my friends, the pain of parting ways..second page, summer fun, eating at china grill on July 20, a day of revelations. Once happy events seemed to have a little fragment of pain attached to them in some way or the other. Pain was so inevitable. Fearing needles, blood tests, and driving out of the fear of pain was pointless. Pain still got to you. It had its own ways. It could sneak up behind your back, enter through a small nick in your soul, grow inside, pulsate, put you in a fix, make you want to cry all your body fluids out. I passed my hand over the shells that I had collected from RT beach before leaving Saudi for college...Each shell, a little bump under my fingers, felt so cool and so tranquil. They had been relocated with me. I had deprived them of their abode- the warm beachy sands of Arabia. I was cruel. I had picked them up from the depths of the sands, stored them in a used plastic cup, washed them again and again until I was sure there wasn't a single algae stuck to them. I had subjected them to so much. Stuck on a page in my scrapbook now amidst glitter-laden and smiley faces, the shell looked so out of place...like me. I closed the book shut. Everything seemed to be going through a little tragedy.

A million moons could do no good,

to lighten up my world,

what to talk about those dainty stars.

One by one each candle collapsed,

failing to show me the way,

it was me and darkness, for eternity.

Feb 1, 2009

Whatchamacallit. :)

My BP would be so under control if it wasn't for Facebook. I tell you, technology can be really ugly. Today was such a busy, busy Saturday. I woke up at 8:30 on a WEEKEND! After literally pushing breakfast down my esophagus, I decided to do myself a favor and start studying. Alhamdullilah, I managed to study a lot today, my head feels..giddy? =/ lol. Anyways, the SPECIAL part of the day was when I got a call from Saudi, from one of my favorite people- NAJWA. :) I seriously wanted to FLY all the way to RT and give her a bear hug for remembering me and calling me up just to check on how I was doing. Najwa, if you're reading this, I love you so much. We talked about our third grade issues, about old teachers, about the good old days and whenever her laughter would erupt through the phone, I'd feel like I was sitting next to her on the yellow benches that we used to sit on during recess back in school. It's incredible how a ten-twenty minute international call can make you smile through out your entire day, until your jaws start hurting from the exercise. Oh by the way, I broke a glass today. I know this sounds so abrupt and random, but currently I'm too sleepy to be making sense of anything. I did the most bizarre things today for real. I picked up so many grocery bags up and down until I felt my legs were going to revolt against me any minute. I watched news today after such a long time. I talked to my dad and my brother after a whole week or two. I bitched about people with my dad. I got into an argument with my brother over skype. I saw pictures of my Saudi home, my kitchen, my lounge, my dining room. I underlined more than half of my embryology book. I wrote down a whole nonsensical poem in 20 minutes in response to a classmate's note to cheer her up. I sacrificed a big box of cheesy-cheese flavored pringles by giving them to my kiddo cousin, who adorned the carpet with bits and pieces of them. I tripped over a box of detergent, TWICE. I read my wall-to-walls with old friends. I sat down and talk to myself a little bit. When I got the chance, I shed a few tears. Then I wiped them and felt better. I jumped on my bed until I was sure I was going to break the bed or myself into pieces. I went out on the terrace and looked down at the street, there was nothing interesting, just a grumpy guard who stared back. I stepped into a puddle of water on my freshly cleaned terrace and got myself wet. I opened up old emails and read them. They all brought a smile across my face and glint of moisture to my eye. But I decided to thank God for the wonderful times and the wonderful people He had put in my life.

I had a mad, mad day.

Paki Landings.

Nov 18, 2008: During PIA flight to Lahore. 1:55 A.M Saudi time.

Sometimes you have to leave behind so much that even your memory falters to remember each and everything you have left behind…I think that’s what I am encountering at the moment…I thought my departure would be teary and depressing, but contrarily it wasn’t…Currently I am sitting with absolutely nothing to do…I have tried to busy myself in sorting out my wallet, but gave up when I mixed up Saudi and Pakistani currency…then I searched around to find something amusing and yes, I did find a lot of amusing “stuff”..including a lot of ignorant people, ugly and obnoxious children, desi men hitting on air hostesses, and single aunties who were busy attending their cell phones, while we were air-borne, in spite of the crew’s warning, rather than shutting their fugly kids up, who were literally fighting over seats and seat belts. One word, ANNOYING. If people can’t handle their kids, they shouldn’t have kids or they should leave them at home especially when traveling. I mean, as if the stale cabin air, the difference in cabin pressure, jet lag, leg cramps, nausea and homesickness aren’t enough issues to deal with! Just a few moments ago a lady left her few months old infant on the seat (without a seat belt) and went to the loo. What kind of an irresponsible attitude’s that? If the kid had fallen and injured himself, who’d she sue? The PIA staff? Then she comes back and orders this male flight attendant to boil water for her baby to make him a bottle. Ah..THE baby was such a freak, he always cried at the peak hours of my sleep and the mother failed to soothe him. Her attitude surprised me, I felt that two-three hours into the flight and she’d order the pilot to put the plane on auto and change her stupid baby’s diaper! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate kids, I just hate some kids and their weird parents! Especially those who wreck havoc around! After a meal of biryani by PIA, I don’t feel drowsy at all…the after taste of that food was enough to keep one awake for around forty-eight hours. There are no TV screens for each passenger, no headphones, and a very uninteresting map of the world on a small screen in front, which showed the location of the craft after every five minutes. BORING. I just noticed that in PIA, flight attendants fish for reasons to talk to passengers. It’s either because they are really dedicated towards their job or they are bored out of their minds. Sighs. Okay, the kids sitting on my right, on the aisle beside mine fought AGAIN. The dumb guy fought with his sister and is now bawling like a cow on a merry-go-round. The mother failed to do anything as usual and as expected. The flight attendant had to intervene to stop the stupid kids from killing each other. Wish we could drop these kids somewhere on the way…We are currently flying over the Gulf of Oman, so probably somewhere along the way we should push the kids through the windows…that is if the windows opened. The seat belt signs are going on and off a little too often, I’m guessing it’s the pilot’s son, who he forgot to arrange a babysitter for, who’s playing around with colorful buttons in the cockpit. I feel like sharing this doubt of mine with the aunty sitting on the right, I have this nasty urge to freak her out of her mind….

[to be continued, if I manage to find the air sickness bag behind which I had jotted all this down :)]