all i w-a-n-t need for Christmas

the title should look like this: all i want  need for Christmas

i'm raising the white flag... giving up, on so many things, including getting this post title appear as i want!!!

yesterday i was watching the sunset, from our famous window, and i started panting all of a sudden, i wanted to scream at the sun "STOP... don't set... yet... i'm not ready" i didn't actually yell, i just kept taking photos of the clouds with shades of gray and salmon pink pretending that everything is under control and that all is "cool" while NOTHING was...

as i listened to the clicking sound of my camera to distract my attention i got even more nervous... it sounded like a clock... the more photos i took the more clicks i heard the more clock ticking there was...

Christmas Eve of the year 2013 arrived so suddenly for me i almost had a panic attack. being the control-freak-perfectionist-pintrest-addict-mama i am, i couldn't accept the fact that "it's here"... khalas... it's Christmas Eve already...

EVERYTHING is a mess... my brain is a mess and i can't trace my thoughts... my heart is a mess and i no longer recognize my feelings and i'm unable to give each one a proper universal name... my sorrow is a mess and my tears drop here and there while i want to have an "organized" grief and "well distributed" tears... even the space i live in is a mess (unclean apartment, untidy rooms, no food, no matching outfits for all 4 of us, no celebration plans.... so much is missing) i need the sun to give me just a little more time so i could "fill in the blanks" with proper and relevant ideas, emotions, reactions, tangible stuff and pinned down Christmas-related dates and places an activities...

but it was too late to do all of that in just a few minutes or even hours... i had no plan B, i usually do, even though i hate plan B's, i'm a perfectionist and i can only have a plan A and it HAS to go well, but yeah with two kids under the age of five i "learned" how to make plans other than A.... keep a plan B, C all the way to plan Z within reach... just in case... but this time i did not plan AT ALL, what a shame... this shame tastes different, it's Christmas Shame... Rihamic Christmas Shame... the new disease that i seem to have developed this year... RCS

similar to every other sudden incident, you need to know a few standard safety procedures to tell you what to do in case of a fire, an earthquake, an attack by aliens... or in case of an RCS

a peak through the window into our home could've given you a glimpse of what's it like inside my head&heart... i had the choice to either keep pretending and just say that it's not Christmas Eve, borrow the first stage of grief "denial", anyhow in Egypt we celebrate Christmas on January 7th so Christmas Eve is still two weeks away... OR... look my RCS in the face and start fighting back... i chose the latter

i'm new to my RCS so i didn't know whether just shaking it off would work or i need serious fighting, like armor and weapons and all of that so at first i tried to scare my RCS away gently but this didn't work... so it was time for some serious fighting and if it's "shame" then according to Daring Greatly book/manual the first anti-shame tool is LIGHT... i need more LIGHT to come into my head, heart, and home... 

Tip/Armor Number One: The first (and maybe only) anti-RCS weapon is Light, apply it to the 3 H's (head/heart/home)

once i was able to allow some light to come in through a few cracks i could see clearly that things are not THAT bad... it's enough that we're all healthy, we have an actual home with actual walls and a ceiling... how about starting there, anywhere, there's always a point i can start from and not just tell myself that everything will be ok... no... i should practice saying: "everything IS ok... already"... everything is ok, everything is acceptable, is good enough, is sufficient enough, is perfect enough... 

so the sunset was over and it was dark... there was no time to use the vacuum cleaner, no time to cook dinner or prepare any dessert, no time to sort out all the depressing thoughts about refugees and no time to categorize feelings about how bitter Christmas tastes with the war in Syria... i had to get started, i had to decide that i was ready for Christmas eve... decide to enjoy it... just the way things are... prepare Him room (maybe tidy the living room up a little, just this room)... when there's room my ears will be sensitive enough to hear the knock at the door... i'll be so imperfectly ready with whatever room is available in my 3 H's... so i opened the door wide enough (as wide as i could at that point) and THE light came in and took care of a few things inside... i didn't witness any miracle yesterday night, it was a Christmas Eve like never before (in a bad sense) i was missing my family's traditions in Damascus... the longing was too bad to bear this year... the cold, the smell in the air, the lights, the ordinary yearly Christmas stupid stuff we did... just counting a few things makes my heart ache... i never imagined that in addition to destroying the present and the future of a country and a people, war can also sneak into your past and rob parts of your warmest memories... 

regardless of this bad state of my 3 H's i was able to prepare Him room, a very small one but it was big enough... i was able to be still, for a very short while, but it was long enough... it was a very humble room but in His eyes it was perfect enough... because if somebody can know and understand what i'm going through then it's the very Child who was born last night for THIS VERY REASON... Hebrews 2 : 18 says: "Because he himself was born a refugee away from his home, he is able to help those who are refugees"... (you can look up the original verse if this new Syrian version looks unfamiliar to you)

on the less philosophical/depressing level ... i mean domestically speaking... this is how our feast, eventually, looked like (the menu mainly featured pop corn, french fries and nuts, a fruit salad and a bar of chocolate cut in pieces!!)

... and the tree (the lights on the floor will twinkle on the tree at some point, but for now enjoy the neck exercise and tilt your head to the left... see? the tree is strait)

...and the kids (the Bible doesn't say there were THREE wise men... there could've been only two... with their own kind and degree of wisdom)

all of these photos are so imperfectly perfect that i found them worthy of my signature.

so there's nothing that i really want for Christmas this year, not because i have it all, i don't, but i'm trying to apply the Arabic proverb: "If what you want is not, then want what is" (does it make any sense at all in English? i'm trying to play on the verb to "be" to make it sound like the Arabic version... i guess you got the point) maybe i don't want anything this Christmas but there's so much that i NEED this Christmas... it's not "i" as in "me, myself and Riham" but a different kind of "i"... i'm speaking on behalf of a multitude of people who stand on different points along the "suffering spectrum"... i need peace in my country (Syria needs peace), i need a shelter for the homeless (displaced Syrians need a shelter), i need a normal childhood (Syrian children need a normal childhood), i need a place to call home (Syrian refugees need a place to call home)...

some people think that this still counts as self-centerdness when i keep saying Syria and Syrians... but aren't we the number 1 topic in news headline this Christmas? haven't we won the 1st place for so many categories recently? (worst humanitarian crisis in decades, largest death toll of children in such a short time, biggest displacement of civilians in so and so, worst educational and health conditions of a nation in the area.... )

so if by raising awareness about the Syrian crisis this Christmas i'm being self-centered then why not look at it in a different way and say that i'm being "cool" and following the latest "fashion" and staying up to date by speaking about the most "hot issue" globally... THE SYRIAN CRISIS... the "i"... 

this Christmas... "i" need it ALL... that's ALL "i" need for Christmas...