Emotions

I have this plant I keep giving water almost every week. I never forget, each time I see it, I water it. it became a habit, automatic. today I was somewhere else entirely. I had fallen into my head, and I needed anything to pull me out of my own head. And when I saw the plant today, it was empty. dry in a way I hadn’t seen before. maybe for the first time since I got it. I had been watering it recently. I know I had. but I hadn’t looked at it, not really, in a long time. not stopped to notice it the way I used to. the plant didn’t remind me of itself. it reminded me of everyone. all the ones who are gone now, I started to trace how they left, and every line I followed led back to the same place. I had been present enough to maintain things, present enough to keep the habit, but somewhere along the way I had gone fully inside myself, into that sealed interior where nothing outside can reach me. and in that withdrawal, I let things die slowly. not from cruelty but from absence. maybe you’re still doing the motions, still watering the plants, still showing up in some technical sense. but you’re not there, and people feel that, even when you don’t. and then you come back one day and find the room already empty, the distance already permanent, and nothing you can say accounts for the time you were gone. I was the one that shot on everything I loved. over many moments of not looking, not stopping, not being willing to step outside myself long enough to appreciate what was still alive in front of me. I don’t know what to do with that yet. but I know I keep coming back to the plant. like maybe if I look at it long enough now, something counts.

Humans are full of love. full of empathy at their core. they were born to love, not to hate. the state of hate costs a man more than loving ever could, loving prospers, hate drains. you can feel this in the texture of any given day. the meaning you pull from it, the power you feel inside it, it traces back almost always to the love you’re carrying. for a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a lover. a man is full of those emotions.

I miss Abdalwahab.

He used to be the only colorful thing in my grey days. and this Eid I felt his absence, not constantly, but every time your heart tries and search / looking for something familiar and finds nothing there. I was surrounded by people and I’m, and none of it touched the specific place he occupies. that is what frightens me about this kind of missing. it isn’t general loneliness. it is targeted, I can’t search for something, the ache for a particular person that no number of other people can fill the space the left, because they are not a type, they are a person, and there is only one of them.

This is a piece I have always wanted to write. not when I was inside it, not when the feeling was too loud and too close, when emotions clouded reasoning, but now, when enough distance has settled that I can finally lay it down without it burning my hands.

I’ve come to realize that not everything we “feel” belongs to the same category. Some emotions are momentary, they rise, peak, and then fade. Others are more persistent. They linger beneath the surface and shape our experience over time. The difference between an emotion and a state has become very clear to me.

Take emptiness, for example. Emptiness is often described as a feeling, but it behaves more like a state. When you feel hollow inside, it isn’t just a passing wave like anger or excitement. It’s a sense that something is missing. You can distract yourself from it, you can silence it temporarily, but it doesn’t fully disappear. It waits. If you’ve ever truly felt emptiness, you know it has continuity. look and investigate inside every time and you will feel it. It’s not a spark, it does not vanish easily.

I have observed many stories. friendships. partnerships. families. I have even lived inside some of them. And I noticed something. Relationships rarely die from one dramatic moment. They die from a hidden cancer.

It grows quietly. invisibly. accumulating over years. no one sees it. no one feels it. until one day, it is strong enough to turn love into resentment, and resentment into distance. I gave this cancer a name in February 2022. I called them small black dots. One black dot is harmless. almost invisible.