My Heart Isn't Big Enough

There is so much to say.

I have travelled halfway across the world and back, tramped my way over mountains and walked along an ocean and a sea. But no matter where I go, whether its in an Emirates airplane or in our Suzuki, it changes nothing on the inside. I take my frame of my mind, and my well-worn memories along with me. And so, I might as well have stepped into the next room instead.

Everything I see, the dog peeking out at me from the window of the parked car, the seals being gently buffeted by the waves of the Pacific, the couple checking out clothes in Junaid Jamshed, I see with these tired eyes, with my memories and thoughts ranged in neat rows behind them, nodding at the way it all fits together, nodding at my fate to always be on the outside looking in.

I come back home, and there is nothing to say. I look at the sky and how it changes colour as the seasons roll by. The white wispy clouds that gently smudge the man in the moon, carrying their load across the country, crossing the border, leaving the tail end for Karachi to quench its thirst with. My friends tell me they can't stand the memories this city stirs up.

How do you think I've survived here all this time?

And there is nothing to say, but the wind blows and I remember the words to a song I used to listen to on re-re-repeat. It dredges up a pain I thought I'd forgotten how to feel. I look down on the city and the million hearts in it, recycling their body's blood day in and day out, crashing themselves against one other, fighting over success and failure, love and money, their hearts blind to the One who sees all.

Then I realize I'm one of them too.

The years go by and a little wisdom comes with each one. It comes from staring out at an empty rooftop, and the blinking windows of cramped apartment buildings wordlessly watching me walk round and round in tight, confused circles. It comes from too many hours of silence, when the generator drowns out any answers the world might have left to give, until finally a small voice within me finds the courage to make sense of what's tearing my heart apart. 

There is nothing left to say because freedom is a myth and the choices we make are never really our own.

We learn to live with them, because what we want in the end is not our heart's desire, but whatever will help us sleep easier at night.