This is Zarbakht Bilal. Thanks for joining me! I’m always available for solving your queries. In case of any help, feel free to contact at kyxy220@gmail.com
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Sometimes, Moon is all we have!
Not every morning is that perfect: folded linens, pillows fluffed up, and laundry hung up for air drying in the sunshine kind of morning; rather, it is dirty laundry on your bathroom floor, a blanket twisted, and pillows scattered on the bed.
I have always been peculiar about my morning routine and daily chores. Still, since my baby turned one, I sometimes intentionally let him sleep through his leaked diaper because I know that I can wash my sheets and blanket first thing in the morning, but he won’t get his sweet sleep back. No matter how bothersome those tiny clothes peeping through my laundry basket are, I sometimes let them sit overnight. I might not cook anything at all if I don’t feel like doing anything or stand in the kitchen the entire day on my productive day, and trust me, both of these days are equally important to keep my sanity intact.
These are the little things that make us realize that it’s okay to be imperfect. Life is a perfect balance between perfection and imperfections, and if any of them exceeds a specific limit, the quality of our lives is affected.
This is a reminder that it’s okay to take a break and slow down to one thing at a time. You might conquer the world one day and hibernate like a turtle for the next whole week, and that is perfectly fine.
I used to blog daily before my marriage, no matter if I had an exam the other day. I always had my posts scheduled and featured images ready. My husband sometimes complains about how I gave up on writing, which aches my heart. However, I am taking my time, soaking up the challenges of early motherhood for now, as conquering the world can wait.
Sometimes, the moon and a purring cat on the window sill is all that you have to get through the dark, creeping night. Sometimes, the only blanket that can comfort you on a stormy night is your bare skin. We don’t always get a shoulder to cry on or an individual to lean on so what’s the rush? It’s just you, yourself, by your side so just slow down and take a deep breath! Take your time and do what works the best for you.
There’s no harm in doing what you love before embarking on what actually needs to be done. You can always take out time for yourself no matter how hard your life is treating you.
We need to normalize taking a break because we live in a world where hustle is glamorized to the extent that not doing anything makes you feel like a guilty culprit.
Today, when I started writing this blog, I also turned on a time-lapse recording, and when I watched it later, it just recorded an empty couch with my laptop with occasional flashes of me. Do you know why? I barely made it to two lines when my baby barged into the room to get his diaper changed. I realized the towel was too damp to use, so I had to get a fresh one from the store. Meanwhile, the washing machine dinged, and I went out to hang the clothes. On my way back, I kneaded the pizza dough for tonight, played with my baby because he was being clingy, and after five hours of wondering if I’d be able to complete writing this or shut my laptop down after saving this as a draft, like always, I finally made it!
Yay to this slow, but steady achievement!
Motherhood: A journey of healing and exploration.
The concept of Motherhood isn’t essentially about sacrificing yourself for your baby. Taking care of yourself in the first place isn’t selfishness, rather it is the most important thing to do if you analyse things from the futuristic perspective. Taking care of yourself is the first thing that you could actually do for your baby and most importantly, for your own well-being.
Motherhood comes differently to all the mothers and I believe that any form of motherhood is beautiful because a mother knows exactly what is best for her and her child. On the very first visit to my doctor, postpartum, she tried to convince me that I have to sacrifice myself for the baby, considering now that I am a mother. However, I totally disagreed with this very typical point of view.
I believe that a mother already endures too much to bring a baby into this world and absolutely no one has a right to make any comments on how she should raise her infant. Having the courage to give up on your perfect body and let it turn into a canvas of stretch marks with every passing day, seeing your body loose it’s firmness and delicacy, loosing those beautiful strands of hair, seeing those Cinderella feet inflating day by day until one day you wake up with feet of an Ogre. Moreover, missing out on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook just because you don’t feel like posting yourself and memories from the past year, showing how beautiful you were before pregnancy, adding to your misery. Looking yourself up in the mirror and not being able to vibe with your true self.
Being unable to fit into your favourite clothes, not being able to put on that most cherished sparkly diamond ring that your husband gave you on your first wedding anniversary because your fingers have grown in their circumference. Losing that beautiful belly to what looks like an accumulation of jiggly jelly that aches and bounces whenever you laugh and walk, losing your perfectly straight posture because of the weight that you carried for nine months and the stitches that hinder you from sitting straight too early. Having leg and arm cramps at night, episodes of anxiety, crying for no reason, loss of confidence at times, pessimism, depression and baby blues but still putting up a smile because people expect you to act normal as soon as you get the baby out of your belly and even get irritated if you act lazy or come up to them as problematic individual because you cannot afford any problems or ailments now that the baby is out of your body.
Being unable to leave the house and enjoy life as you used to do, not being able to love your partner and enjoy his company and impatience to return back to your old self super fast but not being able to anytime soon. If all these aren’t the sacrifices that every mother makes for her new born, what else should we expect HER to do to prove her loyalty and commitment as a mother?
Sacrifice doesn’t essentially mean to give up on yourself in order to prioritise your baby. Rather, you can love and take care of your baby by choosing what’s best for both of you. You shouldn’t always go beyond your limit to prove your motherly love, rather you can do it the easy way too.
It’s okay to take those selfish naps in the day time while handing over your baby to the ones you could trust your baby with. It’s okay to introduce your baby to the bottle while you’re recovering postpartum. It’s okay to go out for a spiritual retreat as your baby stays at home with his/her grandmother. It’s okay to go out with your friends and have some fun. It’s okay if you don’t shed those extra pounds right after the delivery or even months after because you should determine the period of your physical and mental recovery and no one should have any say in this matter whatsoever. It’s okay if you eat some extra carbs without thinking twice about shedding your weight. Don’t bother the clumsy room and cluttered wardrobes because of the fear that people will judge your management skills. Instead, mind your own health and let people deal with their mental ailments themselves as that isn’t your responsibility.
Many women struggle to enjoy the early phase of motherhood, feel overwhelmed, distracted, anxious and lost. This might be because of so many sudden changes that a woman is going through in this new phase of her life and deteriorated health conditions, but that is also perfectly okay! It doesn’t mean that you love your baby any less. In fact, every mother love her child alike. You will figure it out with time and once things start making sense, you will start enjoying this new era of motherhood as well. Don’t push yourself through it and don’t be hard on yourself, it all gets better in the end.
It’s okay if you are unable to produce sufficient milk to satisfy your baby’s hunger, it’s okay to either exclusively formula or breast feed your baby. It’s okay to indulge in what interests you when the baby sleeps. It’s okay to let your baby cry for a while as you take your time to get up from the bed because every inch of your body aches with pains from injections, epidural, cannulas, internal and external stitches, uterine contractions and physical weaknesses from breastfeeding.
Its okay to try new things and choose yourself first because it is then you can raise your child well and enjoy the wholesome journey when you prioritise yourself and heal naturally, slowly and gradually, altogether. It’s okay if you don’t look like the same diva that you used to be, for quite sometimes, it’s okay to be clumsy without being apologetic, its okay to be forgetful and distracted just because there’s so much going on inside your body that you can’t always explain to others. It’s okay if you stay up some extra hours at night for some “me-time” after putting your little one to sleep because you also have a life of your own and there is so much that you want to do throughout the day but couldn’t because of such a drastic change in your routine.
It’s okay if you can’t control your expressions and look like an angry or depressed wench just because you can’t always smile to please people when you’re physically and emotionally strained. It’s okay if you’re wearing ugly clothes and not those fancy-shmancy attires anymore because your comfort is what matters the most. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! Don’t let anyone force you to go beyond your new-mama-comfort-zone because in the end, people are going to judge you anyway. Your delayed recovery will also become a topic without any regard for your extreme sacrifices for the baby. Every mother loves her baby differently, so don’t let anybody tell you how to cherish your own baby.
Take your time, heal, process, explore and make your comeback when you feel like it and not because people expect you to do so!
Where shall the broken hearts go: A poetry of unrequited love.
Where shall the broken hearts go
Who have been told to let go
Of the agony and destruction
Caused by shallow souls that met
On the subways and crossroads.
Shadows on the moonlit walls
They say you would forget it all
What they never told however
They too possess the aching souls
Like tea stains on a diary page
Love once done can never fade
The shrapnels from a hand grenade
If taken out gives only pain
The bodies consumed
On a winter night
What empty mouths called
“A lover’s bite”
The warmth of finger tips
As the heavens unite
The unity a nightmare
Was love actually there?
The unrequited tales of love
Stories that never ended still breathe
Leaving broken hearts behind
Captive inside the dusty mantle piece
Used to of love,
Now don’t know what to do.
Their sun went dark
And all the moons and starlight
There are many reasons to die
Yet love kills you while you’re alive
Because last time it never meant see you later
But a forever goodbye
Years from then
Heart still remembers
What mind does not
Flame still smoulders
But the fire’s gone
Broken hearts bleed through the cracks of past
Into the forbidden temple
Where scars stay forever
Love, forever gone.
-Zarbakht Bilal.
A winter tale.
Crisp winter breeze in the morning making love with the golden fallen leaves as I watch them from the foggy window, while the kettle on the stove whistles passionately.
It’s the love that makes the dead fallen leaves rise high, yet giving them another chance to breathe before they take their final plunge of sleep, into the dewy grass.
An Ode to Evening.
And evening, trust me it belongs to all of us differently. Evening is not a timeframe but an emotion that we all feel in our own way.
Clinking champagne glasses, crimson ball gown with pearls and tassels, burning cigarettes, bubble bath, kissing in the golden hour, waiting in an empty restaurant, smoking weed, burning desires, chasing sunsets, tuning in the favourite song and dancing by the bleeding dawn.
For some it’s a rebirth, Others, mere death.
-An Ode to Evening.
When it all ends.
Remember that morning when you woke up and looked yourself up in the mirror. Your hair scattered in the air and eyes plump from crying the whole night?
How did the void sound to you? When you knew there won’t be a text from the one you talked to for a million hours of your life. Tell me that morning your forlorn eyes and shattered soul stood stagnant right in front of that same mirror that witnessed it all since the beginning. Did the mirror tell you anything? Was it aware of the end? There were no answers to your questions and the air that morning was dead.
How did the sound of loneliness felt to you?
-When it all ends.
The Art of Lying and Misconceptions.
Like a pouring night of December, first love can never be forgotten, he told me with a glimmer in his eyes.
Did he lie to me back then?
Or did my delusional mind fail to comprehend the naked truth shining bright in that moment of dancing ecstasy;
He was just being honest.
-The Art of Lying and Misconceptions.
Capsules of Memories.
We all have our struggle! A series of unfortunate events and thriving hard to survive them is how we describe life nowadays. Busy in getting our gigs done and devoting our lives to a single cause, that is where we tend to forget is that life is the name of breathing, and living every moment to its fullest. It is a worthwhile experience, not a frame of time in which we contain ourselves like a little chirping bird inside the wooden cage.
Running televisions in our lounges and constant buzzing phones in our hands keep us distracted in this happening world and we all become a part of this change. However, as the time passes, we all come to realize that if we wont stop to appreciate what we have and cherish it for a while, it would slip down our fingers like the sand in an hour glass.
The tea cup on the kitchen counter is still hot and the tiny swirls of heat that dance upon the surface, against the sunlight peeping in from the window, I can feel the warmth of my husband. I can still hear his laughter roaring in the empty kitchen and his vision holding the same tea cup and thanking me for making a wrap for him because we ran out of bread in the morning. The memory belongs to him in this very moment. However, as the day would pass the memory would vanish and I would no longer remember it as the cup would be washed out and stand still and cold in the dishes rack.
Back in the days when we all were once cherishing our childhood, remember how all of the siblings used to gather inside the living room dancing and prancing around our parents like the little chickens around their mother and how hard we tried just to put a smile on our parents’ face. I still remember the cozy drawing room with a crackling fireplace where all of us used to gather and make memories, the time when we all had time for each other. The days where we actually wanted to be with each other and yearned for the genuine warmth.
I went to my university the other day and whilst I sat down on the same table in the hallway where I spent 4 years of my life, I barely felt any connection with the place because that was the moment of realization. That was the instant where I actually realized that it is not the place or a thing that we cherish but the person who is associated with them. The table where I was filling my clearance form alone, was the same table where I used to sit and wait for my bestfriend in the morning, do projects and assignments with our classfellows, eat lunch in the noon while skipping classes and sharing lots of secrets and laughter in our free time. The fact that I could not see the same faces in the same ambiance made me feel unsettled because that place no longer belongs to us, rather, now is the time for new people to make memories there. In that very moment, I wished for the time to rewind back to that summer afternoon where we all were so happy, and together back in our days and when this place belonged to us.
Lost inside the capsule of our struggle, we forget that the people around us are the real push why we are moving forward. Parents are struggling so that their kids could have a better, brighter future, husbands are struggling so that they could get the whole world for their wives and the wives are struggling to start a new family, but what if the people we are struggling for disappear one day? A day would come when one or both parents would disappear in the photoframes and polaroids, when our partner would leave us lost and lonely, when the children would step out of their parents’ homes to start their new family. Would the struggle be same then? The home we long to return back to at the end of the day, would it be same without the people that live in it? As a matter of fact, it is the choice of genuine over temporary. We are lost amid the fancy facade of temporary people that blinds us to an extent that we are unable to see the warm, golden halo of the people that we actually need to keep in our lives.
People inhabit us like a blooming garden and they are also capable of leaving us like an ancient abandoned library that is full of magical words waiting to be rediscovered. People come and leave, one person might be our whole world in a moment and in the other moment he would be gone and that is when we think that we are on the brink of downfall and the world is collapsing, yet again we find someone who makes us believe in ourselves once again. That is where the struggle starts again, the struggle to keep that person in your life for as long as you can.
Focus on who you are with, rather than what you are doing because most of the times, amid what we are doing, we lose the people who we started our journey with. Inhabit your life with people and not struggles because the struggle is eternal but the genuine souls scattered around will fade away with time. In the end we could say that life actually is not a struggle for things, but a struggle for people. Make yourself vulnerable to time and memories, cherish the company that you have and you would see how every moment would become a walk to remember, because it is only if you stop and look for a while that the life would give you an opportunity to love what you have and keep it safe in your heart, forever.
Life: A beautiful semblance of experience and memories.
Life surprises you, doesn’t it? A moment ago you were thinking about something and now you want something legit pole opposite. A beautiful semblance of experiences and memories, life is all about changing preferences and evolving priorities and this is totally fine.
A month ago, the only mission of this girl was to avail a foreign scholarship and fly past the globe to wander in the wet evening streets of Edinburgh and write poems about how ethereal that place is. However, here I am, sitting beside my whining husband who is struggling to sleep right now because of his headache. As I look at him at the moment, I hardly believe that he ever existed anywhere in my WHOLE universe before. This feeling is where I realised that giving up on certain things doesn’t mean that you’re off track or that you lost your chance, however, changes are always beautiful if cherished in the right way.
There are a million moments when I reflect back on how my life has changed after marriage and the only answer that rings the bells is evolution of priorities. A lot of people and things that meant so much to me once have stepped down a bit and my new home and it’s inhabitants have become my prime focus. It doesn’t mean that my sisters, family and friends mean any less to me, however we can put it this way that the first thing on my mind as I wake up is to get my husband to go to office, make him a fancy shmacy breakfast- which unfortunately I can’t because he is on diet-and call my mom later after.
As anxious and depressed as people get after losing something for another thing, I find it equally ecstatic because why not? The mighty mechanism of time removed something or someone from your life to replace it with the better and we all do, at some point realise that whatever changes came into our lives earlier were the master plan and if it wasn’t for that one change, you wouldn’t have been here. There is no use being afraid of the changes that life throws at you, rather embrace them learn, evolve and grow because life demands an evolution with every passion moment, doesn’t it? A moment ago you were thinking about making something different to eat but right now, you’re a complete sleepy head who wants to sleep and nothing else.
Writers block was one other thing that I was facing throughout this time and it kind of sucked. I did panic in the start since writing was a major habit and not being able to do something that actually inspires you to live a healthy and positive life could be really bothersome. To be honest, I completely let it be and just waited for the right moment to guide my inner voice and here I am. Life eventually comes back to its zero point which is commonly known as our normal routine but it takes time. Meanwhile what we can do is to give some space to yourself and let things simmer slowly and gradually.
Things can go completely offbeat and that’s okay because life isn’t about settling, rather it is a continuous transition. Those who learn to dance with the rhythm of this transition will fade into the realm of prosperity, however those who resist and don’t change themselves according to the new requirements are left behind into the darkest pits of loneliness and destitute.
Coolest self-care ideas for these Winters!
As winters have settled in, don’t let the gray clouds bring gloominess to the sunshine in your life. Follow these self-care ideas or make a check-list of your own choice and sparkle up these winters with a coziness. As my exams are going on, I’ll be soon writing about something winter-ish to give you more cozy ideas for this season. Stay warm and click the post below to enjoy the original read.
Happy Winters! ❤
“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”
―
Jingle Bells Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way! HO-HO-HO! It almost Christmas and I know you guys are as excited as I am! Winters, despite being beautiful and a wonderful experience for everyone needs extreme individual care to enjoy the best out of it. And for that, today I am back with some coolest ideas for treating yourself this winters! Brace up yourself darls and let the magic begin!
1. Winter Indoor Slippers:
These fluffy and soft slippers definitely warm up your winter with adorable tiny unicorn embracing your feet. Putting them on and having a cup of tea may be all you need in…
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