By Sheikh Mohammad Fahim

A relationship is thought to have 2 sides but what the majority don’t realize is that there are not 2 but 3 sides of the story. His perspective, her perspective and the truth. What we don’t realize is that we, as emotional human beings, are programmed to make decisions with emotions and see what we want or expect to see. If evidence of someone’s disloyalty is found, you are left with two decisions, each governed by emotions. Believing in his/her words and blindly being reigned over by love while disregarding evidence or finding out hints out of everything he/she says and trying to put 2 and 2, sometimes, even if it doesn’t go together. If the latter is what you experience, you are tortured by everything and everyone word he/she says. You’re never satisfied until you find their infidelity and never happy once you do.
Looking at something without emotion, purely filled with logic is something only the most sadistic human beings can accomplish, something I try my best to accomplish. Yet, when a friend tells me they have been cutting to feel something other than heartbreak, I am filled with emotions and try to console them.
I’ve realized, over time, that there is actually no remedy to curing someone from cutting themselves. You can never actually generalize their issues and put them as one, the details are always too vivid to categorize as one.
However as I am writing about it, I’m forced to generalize them in some sense or the other. Some cut to get much needed attention, some cut just for extra attention, some to express love, some out of self loath. The last category is the most frightening of them all. This category cuts themselves to feel something, anything, other than what they are feeling at that specific time. Even pain is welcomed when your heart is clouded by the abyss as every single part of your body becomes a prisoner to your ever-darkening jet black heart.
Everyone in the world wants to be relevant and loved, maybe some just wants more attention. I do not know what other cravings someone might have but I know for sure that everyone needs attention.
Deny it all you want but at the end of the day as you lay on your bed, hosting the demons in your head, you know that you want, no, need attention. Be it from your loved ones or from the masses, everyone wants to be accepted and only when they have been rejected do they start thinking that they don’t need people’s approval. However, there are exceptions. Some people genuinely don’t like attention at all, which did not come from years of neglect and others.
Everyone needs to feel relevant.
The sideway cuts on her/his arms are just a reminder to others that they need to supply them with these basic human needs. That they are in such a position that mere words just cannot describe the agony that they feel and the injustice their love ones are doing to them by not giving them enough attention.
No one wants to die.
No one. Life just becomes meaningless when you are not met with these basic human needs. Perhaps the only thing that remains is just the inducing the absence of life. However, being entirely fixated on that idea of not living is a problem as a whole. You won’t be working towards getting your needs met, you’ll just look for the solution to a problem that you can prevent from happening in the first place.
When you’re at that point you start to lose focus of everything except how, when and where.
At that stage, you are guided towards your death by a white light which feels so comfortable, so happy and incredibly final. Blinded by the comfort of this light, many people have chosen their paths and have departed as thus.However, the pain they felt is not gone. Only transferred. The pain is shifted to their friends, family and people who admired them for qualities that they themselves didn’t know existed in them. It’s frightening just how much of a person you appreciate when they are gone and yet never take the time to appreciate them when they are there to be appreciated.
The comfortable light might be blinding you to the fact that there exists another light at the end of the tunnel, not as comforting and yet not as final as the former. This is a darker shade of white, a lighter shade of grey, just darker lights.
The blinding light now turns into a nagging voice, a raging relief, urging you to take its help to reach serenity and happiness.
“The darker lights will help you attain what you seek but it will take a lot of time. I offer a faster route to happiness and peace.”, the nagging voice says.
At that moment you are left with two choices. Listen to the voice or walk towards darker lights.
The first step to fixing a problem is accepting the fact that there is one and when you’re in that tunnel, conflicted over which side to trust, remember that you do have a problem.
A problem which requires your attention. You can either choose to walk towards darker lights and be met with other difficulties which all finally leads to true happiness and peace or you can choose to listen to the voice and cheat your way through, getting temporary rewards. However, you will be missing the many things that the former choice had the opportunity to offer.
You’ll be missing out on the experience that only the former choice can deliver.Simply put, do you walk towards a difficult solution, which gives you permanent rewards, or the easy solution, which gives you temporary reward?At the end of the day, it is your decision but if you are going to be walking towards darker lights, you better start walking fast for many obstacles are just waiting for you to overcome on your journey to happiness and peace.
Somewhere along the way, you’ll actually realize that the reward was not at the destination. The journey was the real reward.
Make the decision with confidence and never look back. Be it listening to the voices or walking towards darker lights.