Tis the season to be.

I lay in bed wide awake in the wee hours of the night. You can tell it’s a cold night by the goreish sounds the wind makes. It reminds me of Ramadan in Pakistan. Waking up at sehri as mum screams at me, every sound seems to be hazy. You could hear the Naats on the loudspeakers from each and every mosque within the vicinity. As haunting as that sound is, it manages to comfort me. That's what the wind here sounds like sometimes. Maybe it's my mind playing tricks on me, feeling the need to familiarize it associates any sound with the sounds of home. Yet somehow Pakistan hasn't felt like home in over half a decade. It’s a sad dilemma when you are torn between wanting to be a part of your culture but then realizing how much you resent it in the long run. Logically it feels things are clicking in place but there’s a sadness, a sense of betrayal on my part. Somehow it feels I retaliated all that our kind is suppose to believe in. I've never feared other beings, which is probably why I've managed to survive this long. However I fear what I have the ability of becoming. 

 

There’s something perpetually saddening about the holiday season. Whether it’s our mind registering the fact it’s a symbol for families everywhere uniting or its simply the cold that urges you to huddle together infront of the fire place with the scent of winter spice warming your soul. I never cared for Christmas before London. Five years it would seem can change the way you look at the holiday season altogether. Walking through the streets from Piccadilly Circus to Bond Street, the beautiful display of lights, the hussle busstle of Christmas shoppers as they rush past you unable to walk through the masses, with more bags than their own body mass. The vibe of the holiday season there is something I have never experienced anywhere before. You take a moment to stop and observe in the middle of Oxford Circus and you can feel a wave of warmth within making you smile. Everything about the center from the small cafes to the big chains ooze Christmas spirit. The cold air doesn't seem to bite even if the temperature gauze says otherwise. Happy spent shoppers everywhere. I never realized how much I'd miss that.

 

Oklahoma is a different story. Its quiet. Too quiet. Some people display an elaborate array of lights and decorations reinforcing and desperately overcompensating the Christmas spirit this town lacks.  Apart from that it feels sad and bare. Heartbreakingly sad. I'm not quite sure how I am to get accustomed to this but apparently in time, I will.