SOLENNE

To you who made a different deal with existence,

There is something deeply compelling about you who hesitates and still moves forward.

You are an unedited version of me. You are someone who carries embarrassment instead of waiting for it to dissolve. Someone who walks alongside awkwardness.

You are not smooth. You are not resolved.

Each of your steps feels slightly misaligned, as if your body is arriving a fraction after the intention. Your foot lifts, pauses, tilts, then lands. Hesitant yet continuous.

And I wonder, in those seconds between movement, do you question yourself? Do you ask whether you should be here, whether it is worth being seen like this?

Yet you continue.

To me, you look like a version of something I lost. You are honest without trying to be. You embody what I struggle against, and you survive it in a way I don't understand.

And I envy that. I envy the way you remain visible while unsure. I envy the way your discomfort does not erase you.

A living contradiction of what I fear. An exhibition of imperfection.

How you walk, uneven and uncertain, How you allow yourself to be seen. How you allow yourself to be just human.

By watching you exist, I realized that my flaw was never an obstacle to existence. It just is Existence.

Here goes the scene.

I’m laughing with everyone else, perfectly in sync every laugh layers the next. The sound comes out right, the timing effortless.

Then it snaps.

It feels like a camera slowly moving closer, and my smile begins to fade as I catch myself through the lens. I try to shake it off, to outrun the confusion of what I’m supposed to feel.

I forget why this moment matters. I look arround.

Even now, in the middle of a room full of people, I can feel that distance where everyone seems inside the moment while I am orbiting it.

I’m no longer inside myself. I’m watching it.

Then I hear my name. I snap back and return. I laugh again, shaking my head as if nothing happened, as if I was just carried by the moment. The camera pulls away.

No one notices the difference.

No one sees that I am not a happy person.

But isn’t this what I wanted to begin with?

I remember how often I was told to smile, to look alive, to straighten my back, to stop staring into nothing. That I was a child, and children are supposed to be expressive. Happy.

How could I, as a child, tell them otherwise?

I wanted to be like other children.

But how can I become something I cannot inhabit?

How can I express an emotion that does not settle inside me?

Didn’t I start paying attention because of that?

I watched people the way their faces moved, the way laughter rose and fell. And then I learned to match it.

I practiced so much that, at some point, it stopped being a choice. It became something that never really turns off.

Even in my dreams, I smile for someone to see even if that someone is me. Sometimes, I perform it for others to envy it, because that’s all I could feel when I observed and measured them.

I question whether what I’m feeling is real or just something I’ve repeated enough times to believe.

Sometimes it slips.

My smile fades before I can hold it in place, and for a second, it’s just… empty.

But I catch it. A quiet reminder of what’s expected.

I adjust. I align. I exist within it without ever fully entering it.

Over time, I found contentment.

The kind I reached when I stoppped trying to reach happiness, and learn how to perform it instead.

Loudly for others,

There came a moment when I began to feel unfamiliar to myself. Displaced within my own existence stranded in a room I’ve lived in for years but unable to remember where I put anything.

I still feel deeply, perhaps too deeply. But everything built in me has shifted.

I used to understand myself. My sadness had a structure. My thoughts followed patterns I could anticipate. There was a strange comfort in that predictability I knew how to exist within it. Now, I don’t.

Now, I can't read myself. My reactions surprise me. My emotions feel layered. I feel where I used to be numb, and feel nothing where I expect everything.

I had no time to find closure with my old self.

So I face this unfamiliarity with rejection.

And out of disconnection, Things that should matter feel distant. Things that should hurt, sometimes don’t.

I have become unpredictable to myself.

I see hostility in the way I look at who I am now. I find my new self lacking, excessive, or simply wrong.

Sometimes, I believe my past self is still here, quieter. I feel her in the expectations I fail to meet, in the reactions I no longer have.

With this lack of acknowledgment, I am now continuous and altered. I am unstable, inconsistent and someone I cannot rely on.

or perhaps I choose not to.

Becoming a self I don’t speak to, a self I don’t bother being coherent with.

The bus was loud, crowded with other people’s lives. Laughter too sharp for the hour. Conversations overlapping. The engine grinding beneath the music in my ears.

My head kept dipping forward. Sleep clung to me making everything blur at the edges.

I barely registered the stop.

As he stepped in.

Nothing quieted.

But the music in my headphones shifted. My spine straightened before I meant it to.

The noise did not disappear and the air remained heavy.

I followed him with my eyes as he moved and sat. Without realizing it, the sleep that had been pulling at me dissolved.

I could still hear the creaking, still feel the windows tremble and yet it was as if the ride rearranged itself arround him. Everything added up. Even traffic became desirable, a few more minutes to look at him

He is quiet, contained within his own space. He doesn’t ask for my attention, and yet it is entirely his. In that quiet curiosity, the boredom of the ride dissolved.

this continued to happen everytime we took the bus together, The bus has not changed. My feelings toward it have not changed. It has simply become a backdrop. Because he is there.

Sometimes he falls asleep before we reach the third stop.

His head tilts slightly backward. The tension leaves his shoulders and His hand loosens around his bag.

In Those moments I allow myself to look without restraint. There is something disarming about the way rest claims him.

Now that i think about it we have never sat on the same side, sometimes we don’t take the same bus and sometimes I avoid it altogether.

Distance feeds anticipation. Anticiaption creates tension. And tension sustains the emotion.

An emotion I will never touch.

Because if I speak to him, he would become real. He would have a voice probably an ordinary one. He’d have a major that does not match the one I imagined. Mannerisms, gestures, details that would fracture the precise story my mind constructed.

The texture would disappear and my secret will fade.

So I stay in my lane.

When we reach his stop, and as doors open and step down. I’ll watch his reflection in the window instead of him

Perhaps he would look for me

Or perhaps I only need to believe that.

The doors will slide shut again

And I won’t turn to see where he is going.

The bus will move.

We were not incapable of love.

but incapable of the kind that asks to abandon yourself.

What we shared was a form of compatible avoidance

two people equally free,

or equally afraid of commitment,

finding each other without pretending otherwise.

I needed someone who would listen,

because no one survives without being invested in

without someone who receives our words

and allows them to exist.

You needed someone who would not anchor you,

not judge who you are,

afraid that desire might one day turn into debt.

to us classical love felt like prison.

Why should love require leaving yourself behind?

Why should two people sacrifice who they were

only to grow resentful of what they lost?

only to perform happiness.

So instead of vows and promises,

we chose coexistence.

A modern form of emotional escapism, perhaps

but an honest one.

We would love each other

instead of committing to ten others.

We would want each other

without the burden of responsibility.

We would long for each other

like objects held in another’s hands

cherished, replaceable,

capable of being left to gather dust on a shelf.

To others, we would seem instinctively wrong.

Unethical, Incoherent or Hollow.

And yet  also envied.

Because we did not belong to each other.

We returned to each other.

Not to grow. Not to promise.

But to remain

What Emerges in the Absence of Expectations

Who is a man when the world stops asking him to perform violence? Stripped of memory, title, and ideology.

-A Subjective Reading-

The story follows a prince and a general who quickly becomes amnesic. What I observed was not innocence, but relief. He does not become good in a moral sense he becomes unburdened. And in that absence of obligation, tenderness does not feel accidental, but latent, as if it had always existed beneath the armor.

What stood out to me is how cruelty is treated not as something spontaneous, but as something cultivated. Roles that prioritize loyalty over empathy, systems that reduce people to abstractions these are what shaped him. When he held power, he was trained to think in terms of land, enemies, and acceptable losses. Once that structure collapses, he is suddenly allowed to think in terms of presence, care, and survival on a human scale.

This contrast could seem romanticized, but I found it quietly devastating. The tension crystallizes in the moment he helps refine a military strategy precise enough to secure victory against soldiers belonging to his former nation (Even if they were mobilized by a corrupt authority and were never his personal army, they remain his people). What gives this moment its weight is that, as the audience, I am aware that in another life he would have calculated the same strategy to preserve them.

The story does not frame this as betrayal, but as displacement. His sense of home has shifted. With memory erased, loyalty is no longer tethered to a flag or a bloodline, but to the space where he is allowed to exist without armor. Protection does not disappear it relocates. Violence is not undone; it is redirected. The character does not become good. He becomes situated.

This does not absolve violence, nor does it soften its consequences. But it does reveal how easily gentleness is buried beneath obligation and how quickly it can surface when the weight of expectation is removed

This is where his relationship with the female lead (a general of the enemy he helped ) resonates so strongly with me. Without fully realizing it, he offers her what he himself was denied: permission to rest, to choose herself, to release the impossible burden of saving everyone.

I remember how back then love was simple. It showed up without warning. It filled my days and stayed with me at night. It made small things like going to school feel huge and exciting, and even the pain of not being noticed felt precious. Missing someone hurt, but the hurt felt warm, like proof that what I felt was real.

Nowadays I wish I had loved more back then. More than one person. I wish I had let my heart open wider instead of pouring everything into just one place. I didn’t know that this ability had an expiration date, or that it could change shape so quietly.

Because now, everything goes through a filter.

I don’t fall the same way anymore. Feelings don’t crash into me; they arrive cautiously. Attraction passes through thought, memory, self-protection. I can notice someone, find them beautiful, feel a spark, and still go on with my day as if nothing happened.

It’s not that I can’t love anymore.

It’s that I can’t love blindly anymore.

What I miss is the version of me who didn’t hesitate, who didn’t measure the cost, who let love be loud and overwhelming. Back then, even pain felt worth it. It meant I was fully there.

Now I’m safer. More composed.

But sometimes I miss being undone.

I think my father loved me just enough to remember that love once existed. Enough to give me candy to soothe a hurt, or to celebrate me. Enough to hold me when I was still light in his arms. He loved me enough to believe he no longer needed to prove it, that the early years were evidence enough for a lifetime.

He loved the idea of loving me, but not deeply enough to leave me memories I could hold onto. By the time my mind began recording, he must have thought his work was done. So I grew up beneath a silence he didn’t notice, believing I was unloved, when maybe I just don’t remember being loved.

And now, I have no choice but to hide it.

I was never handed the language.

If love exists in me, it has no alphabet.

No way to shape itself into touch, or words.

To show it would feel like a betrayal

a betrayal of the self that learned to live without,

that knows some things are only ever felt in their absence.

So my file is empty.

And I am its keeper,

holding a silence so complete

After the sunset was already behind us, and as we carried grains of sand with us into the car, I realized that what excited me most was the way there and the way back. I loved being enclosed with you, trapped in a small, quiet space, listening to our breaths. I loved the conspiracy of our mingled breath fogging the glass, which I opened just enough to let my saturated feelings escape the private weather we created. I felt your glances stealing their way to me and pretended not to notice.

I thought of the ride, and as much as I loved the tightness in my chest, the terrifying knowledge that all roads end saddened me.

I would step out of the car, close the door, and the morning air would hit me. You would stay behind the wheel that you held tightly, staring longingly, encased in the warmth we had just shared. I would walk away, only turning back when I heard the engine start and the wheels moving, feeling the knot inside me tighten because neither of us was brave enough to cross the line that separated us. And silently, in the vulnerability of that shiver, I blamed you more for not holding me back, for letting me walk into the chill alone.

For a suspended second, I became a compass needle swinging back to you. My entire body ached to rush to your window, but my fear of my own desperation held me back, and my knees only knew how to stand near you. You are tall enough not to hear my heart racing, and It never helped that every time you walked beside me, you took the right side, joking that your left profile was better.

In fact, everything about you was just better, and I loved better:

From your clean nail beds to the slender fingertips tapping tables in wait; from your deliberate reach for things that are not me, to the way you cross your legs and lean back. I watch the pace of your walk, how it slows to match mine. Your eyes hold the world with genuine interest, then lower to find me when I stand close. I love witnessing the shift within them, the dilation, the hesitation and the glancing away.

I like that you like me.

I like the idea of you knowing that I like you.

I just wish you knew what I liked besides you.

I wish you knew how much I hate the beach at night. I wish you knew why I stare into the dark surf that mirrors the void your silence creates, the void of you never asking what we are, and you never staying long enough for me to understand what we could be. And since I don’t know how far we are into each other, I’ll just keep walking back to my apartment,

calming my heartbeat by texting you that I arrived safely,

then waiting for you to do the same.

Cette lecture se distingue par son approche singulière.

Elle propose une interprétation de Messages à la jeunesse d’Ellen G. White à travers une perspective musulmane contemporaine.

Il ne s’agit pas d’une comparaison théologique ni d’un débat interreligieux,

mais d’une traduction intérieure : celle d’une lectrice musulmane qui relit les conseils moraux, spirituels et éthiques d’une autrice chrétienne en les confrontant à sa propre foi, à sa culture et à son époque.

En voulant en savoir davantage sur le christianisme, j’ai compris qu’il n’y a rien de mal à connaître une autre religion.

Au contraire, connaître la foi des autres, c’est mieux comprendre la sienne : savoir pourquoi l’on croit, et en quoi l’on croit.

Son livre, malgré ses références à la Trinité et à Jésus comme Fils de Dieu — des croyances que je ne partage pas —contient des appels sincères à la bonté, à la pureté du cœur et à la résistance face au mal.

Toute sagesse appartient à Dieu, et j’ai lu son œuvre pour écouter comment une autre âme parle à et de Dieu.

La foi et la relation avec le Divin

Ellen G. White invite la jeunesse à donner son cœur à Jésus, à marcher sous son regard.

Dans l’islam, la foi se vit aussi dans cette proximité :التوكل la confiance totale en Dieu, الاحسان l’adorer comme si on Le voyait.

Elle voit le Christ comme médiateur ; moi, je vois la prière comme lien direct entre l’âme et son Créateur.

Elle écrit avec l’ardeur de celle qui craint d’oublier Dieu, cette peur, cette vigilance m’est familière, cette conscience du divin aussi.

La maîtrise de soi et la lutte intérieure

Ellen parle souvent de tentation, de corruption, et de la nécessité de se discipliner, que le corps soit soumis à l’esprit.

En la lisant, je pense au jihâd an-nafsجهاد النفس , le combat intérieur.

Mais là où elle semble craindre la faute comme une tension, la mienne est apaisante :

l’islam nous enseigne l’équilibre entre la crainte et l’espérance.

Elle résiste à la chute ; nous, nous revenons sans cesse à Dieu.

La jeunesse et la responsabilité spirituelle

Elle s’adresse aux jeunes comme à des êtres en devenir,

leur parle avec une autorité maternelle, parfois sévère, les avertissant de ne pas se perdre dans les vanités du monde.

Dans l’islam, la jeunesse est vue comme une confiance à préserver avant qu’elle ne s’éteigne.

Les deux traditions appellent à la responsabilité ;

mais là où Ellen s’exprime par l’interdit,

l’islam s’exprime par le dhikr se souvenir de Dieu jusqu’à ce que le cœur s’apaise.

Le salut et la miséricorde

Ellen White vit sa foi dans la crainte de la perdition.

Dans son livre, il y a cette urgence : être prêt, être pur, ne pas décevoir Dieu.

Elle traverse une foi passionnée, mais tourmentée.

L’islam, lui, parle d’un Dieu dont la miséricorde précède la colère,

d’un salut offert à celui qui revient.

Son désir d’être digne du regard divin est le même que le nôtre, seule l’expression diffère.

Son Dieu l’attend au bout du chemin ; le mien marche avec moi, même quand je chute.

Conclusion

Sa rigueur a une intensité que je respecte.

Tout croyant comprendra ses appels à la pureté.

Et sans le vouloir, elle m’a ramenée vers Dieu à ma manière

non en me convertissant à sa croyance,

mais en m’aidant à aimer plus profondément la mienne.

"A splinter lodged deep beneath your skin you don’t feel it in the heat of the moment because your body walls it in. Years pass, you forget it’s there. But sometimes, when your thumb brushes your finger, you feel its presence in your body that has grown used to it."

If you think about it now, you might believe you’ve outgrown the pain. But it’s always there, waiting for something to trigger it.

There’s this haunting question that roams in my head: What if I grow up having suppressed so much that I forget how to feel? What if, without meaning, I treat my children the way I was treated? What if my pain becomes an inheritance?

I wasn’t raised to say words of affection or show love in any matter-of-fact way. I wasn’t raised to love or to know how to love. With the lack of such an impactful emotion, instead of learning how to give it, I only learned how to hide it. Maybe I’d justify it by telling myself I was strong and that since I survived, maybe resilience is forged in pain that a bit of suffering is a curriculum every child must complete.

Why don’t you love us? Why can’t you say it?

It eroded slowly over the years until there was nothing left to give. Love was something I had to earn through obedience, through silence, through making myself small to fit their expectations, through making myself translucent so they could see me just enough to love me. For some time, I tried. I bent, I folded, I fought to be worthy. I waited for it so long that I no longer wanted it.

I wonder why we are not close, why we are not comfortable around each other. How can that be? Am I not supposed to feel safest around them?

If I think about it but not too long, I remember my 11-year-old self, who only wanted some peace by herself. But that was bad. I was told not to stay in my room, that we were family. Yet whenever I tried to sit with them, I was met with reproach: my voice too loud, my words too much. I was met with scolding. Why did I wash the dishes late? Why did I let the glass slip? If I tried to explain, I was scolded again. So I just stayed silent, My 11-year-old self was too young to understand, so her best way was to sit far. And here we are now, wondering why we chose distance.

I’m sick of holding back my colours of being whitewashed for their comfort. I'm sick of softening my edges so as not to hurt their perspective. Every time I argued, they didn’t fight my ideas. They fought me. They crushed my persona, minimised me, and belittled me. Hatred as harsh as it is, or perhaps the lack of affection as soothing as that sounds in my own ears was built like limestone, layer by layer, until the weight of it became too heavy to ignore.

My space is my way to survive, to keep hope alive for what remains of myself that is still intact. I write it, hoping I won’t forget, hoping I am not broken.

The crys and the pain

i wanted to tell you

I love you

I wanted to tell you in dispair

That this is unfair

Elle négligeait la réalité ; quand on la grondait, ça lui suffisait.

Elle avait une présence physique : tant qu'elle se voyait dans le miroir, ça lui suffisait.

Elle n’avait pas besoin qu’on la remarque. Si on n’avait pas besoin d’elle, elle était libre.

Libre, parce qu’elle avait le choix, chaque matin, entre ses deux chaussures mordues par le temps. Elle optait pour la moins abîmée

et laissait l’autre pour les journées spéciales.

Journée spéciale où on l’envoie à la pêcherie, près de la mer, pour ramener du poisson frais.

Elle aimait la mer, ce qui faisait d’elle une dame avec du goût.

La mer, aveuglante et éblouissante.

Elle ôte ses petites chaussures et plonge ses pieds dans l’eau.

Il lui arrive parfois de s’oublier. Mais elle rejette toujours la faute sur les pêcheurs.

Sentir mon cœur battre la cadence,

Ma muse me fait sentir des turbulences

Je m’agrippe avant de tomber,

Mes pas lourds, je vais vaciller.

Mon modèle,

À qui je serai toujours fidèle,

Marchez sur ses pas, aimez sa pureté,

Même dans l’obscurité,

Je peux le voir scintiller

Il fait déjà sombre,

Mais il ne tarde pas à se faire l’ombre.

Savoir qu’il est près de moi,

Mon corps refuse de se détacher de sa foi.

Non, je veux plus m’accrocher,

Dans mes pensées, je suis piégé.

Mon cœur est percé,

Mais il est l’unique qui peut m’apaiser.

Haut les mains !

J’admire cet humain,

Dans tous les paysages que je vois,

Je ne distingue que sa voix.

Dieu protège cet ange venu du ciel,

À moi l’abeille, il est mon précieux miel,

Jour et nuit,

Épaules étroites, tête prête à exploser, cœur serré. Comme une boussole détraquée, je cherche mes repères individuels, individuellement.

L’espoir m’épuise. L’espoir est nocturne, un tunnel sans fin, réflétant mes doutes. Il me laisse sur le seuil d’une porte fermée dès mon arrivée. Agonisante, cette porte m’enferme dans ce malheur qui est le mien. J’agite mes pensées, je soigne mes blessures avec des mots blessants pour me durcir.

Je tombe, je me fonds avec la terre froide, quand soudain, de nulle part, surgit cette douceur qui remplit mes pensées. Elle chuchote un bonheur fragile, un bonheur que je ne partagerai avec personne. Il est à moi seule. Enfin, j’en profite. Après ce chemin escarpé, vient une route parsemée de sel. Je ne peux danser avec mes jambes, mais pourtant, je danse avec mes mots.