life

Life After Death, by Damien Echols

Book Reviews

“If you walk up to a man on the street and punch him in the face, you go to prison for assault. Do the same thing to a man in prison and you get demoted.” (Echols, 244)

“Time is marked with an hourglass filled with snow instead of sand.” (331)

“I am excited today, and happy. Not for any particular reason, other than the fact that good things are coming. Good things are always coming; sometimes we just forget it.” (340)

All my life I’ve heard people say “Why would God allow this to happen?” I think it’s because while we can see only the tragedy, God sees only the beauty. While we see misery, Divinity sees us lurching and shambling one step closer to the light. I truly do believe that one day we’ll shine as brightly as the archangels themselves.” (342)

I’m writing an open letter to Echols in my next post, but I couldn’t leave this one open ended without a little explanation. The quotes above are too breathtakingly beautiful for that.

I’ve just finished reading Echols’ biography Life After Death (2012) and despite the strong probability of me saying this about other books, I feel this one has somehow managed to simultaneously take my breath away and change my outlook on life. These quotes referenced above made me stop in my tracks simply at the sheer beauty of Echols’ mind, and his ability to open up after the ordeal he endured for nearly two decades. His view of the world, which I expected to be so tarnished by his 18 years locked in a cell and awaiting execution on Death Row, is utterly perfect in its simplicity and naivety.

We all have role models and inspirations in our life. Damien Echols: you are mine. You are the epitome of strength and resilience, and I wish you could see for yourself the effect your words have had on me, and my life.

Thank you for sharing your experience with the world, and with me.

Anisah

 

Out With a Bang: Farewell 2015!

Life Updates

2015 has been the toughest hurdle to jump over; everything was thrown at me with so little time to prepare for it and I can’t bring myself to accept that I’ve survived it. (Just about)

The year began with hospitalisation and a new health condition: pancreatitis. Over the course of 7 months this developed into Sphincter of Oddi Dysfunction. (SOD) Now, my doctors are so baffled by my health conditions, they’ve put me under the care of another surgeon. So that’s put me under the care of two surgeons, a gastroenterologist, a pancreatic specialist and a laparoscopic surgeon over three years. I really do get around. Thankfully, by God’s grace, I am pain free and have been since being discharged from hospital at the end of November. I’m hoping it’ll stay that way, too.

I also said goodbye to people I thought I couldn’t live without. I embraced new friendships and was reminded what love felt like. Ultimately, I loved and I lost. 87% sure that’s a song lyric.

I exceeded every expectation I, and many others, had of my success both academically and personally. I was nominated for four blog awards in the space of one year, with 12,600 views and 7,200 people clicking onto my blog around the globe. Oh, and now 2 blogs to my name. I managed to bag myself a 2:1 in my first year at university despite being hospitalised 11 times during the year. Flippin’ crazy.

Finally, I am blissfully and disgustingly happy. Being surrounded by wonderful parents who’ve supported me since forever has been the only thing to keep me going: their invaluable advice and commitment to my happiness has been something I’ll never take for granted. For the rest of my time on this planet, I’ll never be able to thank them enough for everything they’ve sacrificed and done for me. I love you both incomprehensible amounts and hope I’ve done you proud so far. The friends who’ve stuck by me during my best and worst hours are all godsends I’ll be forever grateful for, too.  I stumbled across a job which I’ve fallen utterly in love with: my manager is the nicest (and sassiest) human being I’ve ever had the pleasure of working for and the people I work with give me nothing but joy every day. Everything has fallen into place.

I’m incredibly lucky to be alive, as healthy as I can be and to have everyone I love around me. Thank you to everyone who joined me on the journey I took this year and to everyone who stuck by me. I’ve learnt the hard way that those who are destined to be in your life will always be a part of it, and you, and will find a way back to you no matter what. Those who never had the intention of sticking around, or who walked away – well, they’re a lesson learnt for the future.

Here’s to a great 2016. And never looking back.

Anisah x

– Sue Zhao

Quotes

“I regretted not being kinder while we still had time. That was all. I wish I had told him he was worth the Earth and the stars and that I loved him. I wish I had reminded him of it every day and night. That’s the thing. You always forget to remind people when you think you’ll have them forever.”

Racism: in 2015, in Life, in General

Current Affairs

It’s sad to even contemplate that racism is still rife, and I’m noticing it now more than ever.

Living in the countryside, I understood the compromise I was going to have to make everyday; 90% of the citizens in my town are over the age of 40 and definitely not accustomed to seeing brown faces, let’s say. The pushing past me on the roads, pushing in front of me on public transport and the weird looks every single day is something I’ve just had to ignore if I wanted a peaceful life. To a variable extent, I have ignored it and made the most of my wonderful new home and the great views on my doorstep. Every now and then I’ll get a little sassy if someone is explicitly racist but so far, I haven’t had a showdown.

Recently, and interestingly more so after the Paris Attacks of 2015, racism has suddenly escalated to a frighteningly all time high; threats of violence, Trump’s Nazi-like approach to Muslims living in the USA, attacks on the Muslim community etc are never front page news but viral on the internet with people doing nothing about it other than re-posting and sharing the articles. We’re treated like third class citizens primarily due to the ideologies of less than 1% of the Muslim population, because a large majority of ignorant people in the world choose pick what they believe to be true rather than looking at facts and statistics. In other words, they’re blinded by their own racist views to even contemplate the possibility that, hey would you look at that, maybe every single brown person on this planet isn’t a terrorist.

The most frustrating aspect of this is how much I’ve noticed these discriminatory attitudes and been a victim of them at work. I thought working in London would be a walk in the park, with cultural and educated people coming into the store each day but annoyingly, it’s quite the opposite. Customers literally throw clothes at me if they don’t want or need them, even someone I work with racially insulted me and my grandparents, simply because of my skin colour, claiming we’re “stealing all [their] jobs.” It appalls me that these attitudes still exist and are something Muslims must grow accustomed to. No matter how much I have accomplished and achieved in my 19 years on this planet, one look at my skin colour has me judged as inferior to an ignorant and uneducated citizen.

I think it’s high time Muslims, and other ethnic minorities targeted by racism, should stand their ground against discrimination. There’s no excuse for it, and there never was; it was blindly ignored as no one wanted to be the minority standing up against the majority.

This is our country as much as yours. Yes, some of us are not the same colour as you. Yes, some of us are more educated and successful than you.

Get over it.

A x

“Work Smarter, Not Harder.”

Original Writing

Sigh.

I was on Facebook not too long ago and came across someone saying this. Multiple times. And I began to get increasingly frustrated with its context.

In this age of crash dieting, juice diets and fitness fads, there’s a slight issue which continues to crop up on my social media accounts and hits a nerve. Recently, I was told about a new “way to lose weight.” I’m not going to name the company but their suggested method of losing weight is to take their “capsules” which supposedly contain “30 kinds of fruits, berries and vegetables” that you take daily. Instead of eating food during the day, they advise you to drink their milkshakes which are also “plant based and a healthy alternative to food.”

In other words, you pop two pills and drink milkshakes all day so the weight will drop.

I have never tried diet pills and I most certainly don’t intend to, so I cannot personally admit or deny their effectiveness. However, I have read reports by scientists, health experts and a personal trainer who have all agreed that this system does NOT work. You are essentially starving your body of necessary food groups such as fat and carbohydrates in order to shed a couple of pounds. The worse aspect; the pounds aren’t actually shed at all, but put back on once you eat normally.

In 2014 I developed an eating disorder. I stopped eating completely, lost so much weight that the doctors became concerned and recommended a complete lifestyle change.I also required therapy to work through and come to terms with what I was suffering with – I’ve underlined the word because going through something as damaging as an eating disorder never really leaves you. It remains in the back of your mind as a constant reminder of what once was: in some ways, it still haunts me. When I look at pictures of myself on holiday, I grimace at the bones sticking out. It’s one of the worst things anyone can go through.

That is why I’m so against diet pills and more specifically, the idea of someone starving themselves to lose weight. Furthermore, over the last year or so, I’ve managed to turn my life around despite all the health conditions I’ve run into along the way. Like most people, I work my absolute hardest to be a healthy weight and a healthy person in general. They do say that if you’re not soaked in sweat, you’re not doing it right! There’s simply no easy way to lose weight.

The company I referred to above work as promoters for their products; their employees talk about the benefits of their products and how becoming a part of their team is the best thing you can do. Ultimately, they’re working from home (ideal, right?) by selling products to desperate women predominantly. They also get paid a HELL of a lot for conning customers. This is where I saw the titled remark of working smarter rather than harder, and thus is the point of my article.

Duping customers is not in my nature and certainly won’t open as many doors as my current job has. Starving my body will not make me as healthy as doing exercise and eating healthy will.

A x