While tidying up my cupboard, I found a few quotes I wrote many years ago from some books I read. I translated them from Arabic into English. I hope the translations make sense to you.

"I started to doubt that I have the right to live. I adapted to being just a viewer. My body doubts my existence. I don’t know whether someone can understand this feeling but I’m sure that my unmarried friends would do."

"Although I fill my day with talking and moving, I can’t tell anyone what’s inside me. I feel as if a curse is controlling my life."

"Suppressing feelings turns people into rude and jealous ones. When you’re full of balanced emotions and love, you don’t be rude to others."

"They want to protect her by keeping her in a cage, but she wants her freedom, running away from this cage."

"I can’t stop thinking, what if I was born in Europe, the States or even in Latin America? How different would my life look? I’d be free to live the way I want and I’d own my body. My body and life wouldn’t be controlled by the idea of honor."

"I’m surprised with the sadness that comes over me whenever I’m on my own. Where does it hide? Why does it take over when I’m alone? How can I get rid of it? It’s always able to slip into me. No matter how cheerful I look, it manages to get deep inside, leaving scars while the surface looks totally fine."

"Faith is relieving. Those who believe in something, can live peacefully and pass by all the obstacles with satisfaction. They do because they trust what they believe in. They know that their belief will never give up on them. When something bigger than our ability to deal with happens to us, believing in something would help us. We let that thing make decisions for us and even if ultimately we consider their decision unfair, our hearts would accept it, knowing that they would never do something bad to us."

"Am I afraid of death? Of course, I am. Who isn’t? I’m always wondering how it’s going to happen to me and when. Would I die peacefully in my bed or sick with a chronic disease? Would I die in an accident or suffocate in the bathroom? Would death come to me without any precedent?"

"What’s the point of all the inventions if they couldn’t yet invent a device to pause the time? A way to pause time to reflect and take it all in before resuming our journey."

"What’s the point of finding what you’ve been looking for your whole life when it’s too late?"

"She didn’t tell him that her heart was broken and that fixing a broken heart is more difficult than fixing a broken glass."

"Death doesn’t arrive when we want to die. It doesn’t come just because we hate our lives. You’ll suffer the loneliness of being old in the darkness. When death comes, there’ll be no one at your funeral."

"I wish her voice would be sold as tablets in pharmacies. I need it to keep going. I need to take it three times a day. First in the morning, the second before going to the bed and the third when depression comes over me."

"A year has already passed, when will your toughness melt?"

"How scary it is to meet up with death face to face, then it waves to you saying, “See you later!”."

"Being optimistic in such circumstances is a kind of rudeness."

"People who are gone, leave spaces in our lives as well. Spaces that no one else can fill. The space (emptiness?) that a father leaves, can’t be replaced with that of a husband. The space that a friend makes can’t be filled by another friend. People are like colors. When you lose the red color, the green can relieve some pain of the absence of the red color, but it will never be the same as red."