Adieu my sweet friend on your final journey……

My earliest memory of Lubna was when her mother passed away in high school in the mid-80s. I walked into Lubna’s grandparents' house and this lovely girl with blond curly hair in a thick plait running down her back like Rapunzel greeted me. She had wide innocent yet knowing eyes and a tender smile, despite the tragic circumstances. Her voice was soft and composed as I hugged her awkwardly not knowing what to say to someone who had lost their mother.

It was my first funeral. I uttered the traditional Libyan words of condolences that my father taught me. The words felt clipped because I did not really know how to show emotions, I was afraid to show emotions. Yet Lubna kept my hand in hers and sat next to me quietly. Almost like it was her comforting me and not the other way around.

Until her last moment among us in this dimension, she was the same sweet, caring girl and woman.

In the last decade of her life we became very close as we worked together and though younger than me, she could not help herself to mother me. This was in her nature, she would remind me to drink my water, to eat, to leave the office and go home, to stop being a workaholic and to take care of my health. Lubna always checked if I was well and even in the middle of the pandemic she offered to bring supplies to my house when I was stuck abroad in 2020 so that my father would not risk his life!  I am sure all her friends have similar stories, those of a woman with a heart as big as the world and a contagious smile. She was a no-nonsense person and she loved to travel and loved shoes and handbags – she called them her soft spot. She was so elegant and had immense guts.

I was waiting for the world to recover from the pandemic so that I can see her seize her dream and move to a country where she believed she could live a quiet life of service and enjoyment. She longed for peace, predictability, quiet and rest, and I was going to visit and sit on the balcony with her and eat from her famous summer salad and gossip and talk about things not related to war but to love and life. She was tired of ugly.

I texted her last month for our usual social distancing meet up on the beach front park, but she told me: “no I can’t do it this week, I am going to Egypt, let’s meet when I am back!”.  I was surprised, the covid numbers where drastic in Egypt why risk it unless one has a business meeting? and even those now used online conference apps. She explained it was a vacation, that she was excited about, she had become tired of the usual Istanbul destination and now that we had direct flights to Cairo again she wanted to seize the opportunity to reconnect with a place she loved. I was skeptical because in my opinion Turkey had handled the pandemic better, was more organized and frankly had better capabilities in its health sector. But I couldn’t be the boring spoilsport and tell her not to go…. Although that was exactly what I was screaming inside my head. So I told myself Lubna was always careful, knew how to take care of herself and knew what  she was doing.

On the last day of her vacation, I asked her if she was back already and she said “no tomorrow I am supposed to fly back, but I have some bad news Intissar… my PCR test came back positive and so I will need to quarantine in Cairo until I get better!”.

I did not know that it would be the last time I hear her voice. I sent messages every day to cheer her up. Then she stopped reading the messages as the blue WhatsApp ticks did not show up. Her phone’s battery either died or it was switched off. I did not know, but I was angry at the hospital, the doctors and the isolation ward. Lubna was in an induced sedation to help her lungs recover, but I was frustrated that the staff would not allow or arrange for family members to peak at their loved ones on Facetime or WhatsApp just to be able to see them. I was worried that being alone and unable to move would take its toll on her. Yes Lubna was a fighter, but you still needed something to fight for. How can we show her that she had so much to return to? That  so many people loved her if we could not get her to hear us? Covid be damned! The sense of doom gripped my heart.

I have not pieced together her last hours, but I want to believe that she went peacefully into the quiet, beautiful and better place she always sought and that one day I hope we will be united in Heaven to sit down and chat over a summer salad and laugh at the past.

Even in her death, she continued to be of service.  So many people who did not speak with each other for years have reached out to one another for comfort. Tributes from all over Libya and the world are filling out her Facebook  page in the hundreds. The soft-spoken girl had touched so many hearts.

I cried when I heard she had moved on, I have not cried for a long, long, long time;  I have a problem in crying. That was her last gift to me, one of healing, of release of suppressed emotions and trauma, one where I could acknowledge that I missed her very much and will miss her forever. I can’t believe that I won’t be able to call her anymore, nor that my phone will light up with her thoughtful messages, but I know that for her death not to go in vain, I have to act on the lessons learnt: “There is no shame in taking care of yourself, in making yourself a priority, in seeking your happiness and peace of mind. There is no need for me to be heroic, it is ok to remove the shield around my heart to enjoy life. It is ok to be heartbroken, it means you lived and tried”.

I wanted Lubna to experience the peace and happiness she wanted, I pray she is in peace now with her loved ones who had preceded her. Yet I find myself hoping that she still will have the  the time to look my way and be with me when I do the things I want with her in mind sort of like a bucket list. She left us too soon, I did not realize how much I loved this wonderful friend, until she was gone. That’s another lesson, don’t’ hold back in in expressing your love to others, ego be damned, if they don’t respond it is on them but you would have shared your heart and planted a seed.

I will miss Lubna every day of my life. Rest in Peace sweet angel. Thank you for having allowed me to walk with you for part of the journey.

Intissar

Photocredit: from her public social media profile.

A Year of Adjustments

Last summer I wrote an introspective post and concluded that the “forced break of Covid 19 has given many of us a grip back on our mad life”!

It’s been a glorious year of self-development, of closures and bold plans, of acceptance, decluttering, lifestyle changes, rediscovering oneself and healing. The journey is not finished but it is so good to be alive and beat the odds … But how did it start?

As I said in my post last year, I have been thinking about it for a while. So it’s not new; but as my burnout started to manifest itself more and more between 2018/2019 and some weight increase creeped up on me changing the model look  to a  tired matronly appearance… I was unable to recognize myself! I also realized it was not as easy to bounce back to good health as I used to do before. With hindsight, I understand that I may have been too harsh on myself and exaggerated how bad I perceived myself in my search of perfection, as no one ever commented negatively except that I was rounder on the edges. But weight gain to me was associated with loss of youth and loss of mobility as ancient sports injuries and accidents flared up. No sports for two years, dehydration, weight gain due to too much food during travel, eating too much chocolate to ease PTSD anxiety from the civil war workaholism.. .  I had truly entered a vicious cycle and needed to break it up.

There I was at the Duty free area at Pearson Toronto airport last March looking to purchase a magazine for the flight,  when my gaze fell on the cover of a book :  “The Self Care Solution: a year of becoming happier, healthier, and fitter – one moment at a time”  by Jennifer Ashton . The title is very smart. A year is not too long to invest to reach all these goals right ? I needed baby steps as a radical change was not going to happen for me. What did Dr Ashton do ? Basically chose to try something new for one month each month. Like drink more water, stop sugar intake, exercise more, walk more, sleep earlier etc. Just one month! That’s bearable right ? no commitments, no pressure, if you don’t like it then no shame. It was a relief! Why did I not think of it before? For me it was either/or .

So I decided there and then to improve my hydration by increasing water intake from one glass of 200ml  water per week to 1.5 liters as a goal per day. Not easy.  I downloaded an app which should remind me at regular intervals to drink water and once I did I would click to log it. Watching my intake rise over time felt like an immense achievement. I finally got into a good routine, but if I skip a day of listening to the prompt then I would lose the momentum again. A year  later and I still have not yet formed the habit of drinking water. If I don’t use the app, I do become dehydrated. So correcting a bad habit needs more time but now I know how it feels to be well hydrated and strive towards that.

My second challenge was to sleep better and earlier. With the advent of the lockdown and loss of framework, I spent weeks binging on Netflix and social media to know about the latest battles in Libya. Sometimes awake for 3 days in a row, worrying ….I felt that I was not breathing properly during sleep.. I never woke rested. So again, I downloaded an app, which promised to analyze my sleep patterns and I discovered that I was snoring, and that I was never fully in deep sleep. I needed to rethink my schedule.

For 4 months when I was living alone in Turkey, I managed to get into a good routine, my skin cleared, it became easier to lose weight. I still snored but the quality of sleep was better. Instead of 4 hrs I slept 6 hrs . Now I am back to my bad habits as I am home in Libya and to my family responsibilities. So I need to think about what can I improve on my routine, to sleep better with other people in the house. How to prioritize my health and my family. Difficult balance but will work it out.

The third challenge was regaining my fitness and especially my six pack 👀. It was there but I could not see it anymore. I have a competitive streak but was afraid to jump back into sports and make the injuries worse. Plus the gyms were closed. So I called my coach and asked her if she would do 101 training in my house 3 times per week at 9 am in the morning. I asked her if we could do the exercises with alternative motions that would be like physiotherapy to restore mobility.  We began in June. It was  slow and painful but the day I was able to kneel down properly again was a celebration. Coach D was getting married so she stopped working with me after two months and I did not know what to do so continued to dance to Bollywood music instead. My theory was that if I was  moving this is good.

The next challenge was to do a full health check up and sort things out. I was relieved to find out that some things were reversible with lifestyle changes and that if I dedicated my time to physiotherapy and healing my injuries, I could even learn to ski again.  I had started using a cane since my vacations to Rome and Tokyo in  2019 👎. I called it my sexy cane and used it as a fashion accessory sort of like the old mafia bosses and sheikhs. But nothing screams old like a walking aid that is not used in hiking situations. I stopped using the cane in autumn of 2020. The day I was able to cross my legs again and get up on my own from a sitting position on the floor and do a plank was the day I was proverbially reborn. I had forgotten all these things which are natural to people. I discovered that I had numerous food intolerances and allergies which were the main cause of what had happened to me since 2016 and which kept getting worse. Here again I initially used a food app but  it was too time consuming, seeing a nutritionist was healthier and more useful. Learning to eat gluten free and remove sugar, meat, bread etc…. and seeing the weight diminish, the hair stop falling, the skin becoming supple like it was a few years ago, the neuralgia decrease and the edema go away was a source of joy.  Seeing myself lose fat and gain muscle felt like regaining the pre civil war Intissar. I was not obese, but I was not comfortable in my own skin anymore.  I tried reintroducing the forbidden foods in April 2020, but all my intolerances and pain flared up. It seems I may need to change my diet for a long time if not for life. This is a bit sad as I love beautiful, rich , tasty food and meat and pasta and bread and cheese and Nutella 💖but I will need to learn alternative tastes. 

Here we are in May 2021. I only lost 8 kg during this journey but the difference is massive. I struggle with the forbidden foods at times and binged for a couple of weeks but when I saw the damage I had to readjust. My physiotherapist is not near me so I need to find someone else who could help me continue to improve my posture.

My other challenge was to reconnect with friends who were not from the inner sanctum;  to go back to the kinder person  I was before the bitterness of war. So every week I would call someone and catch up with their news. It was sweet and cathartic. I used the time to seek closure whether in person or to forgive those who wronged me. I was also open to establish if I was the one who had  wronged them. I tried to work on my grief about my mother but I still have not been able to access that part properly so we shall revisit soon. 

I thought I needed to find a partner now that I had the time, but I discovered that I was not interested because I would rather be fiercely fit 💪 Talking to someone who was not interested in activities and travel and sports and culture and life was just not interesting. I discovered that the  old geezers wanted a young chick and the young men wanted also a young chick. I was not really a spring chicken anymore. I tried meeting  people from my generation online  and was shocked to find how old they looked on the outside. Sorry but I am superficial ! So I caught myself thinking : “OMG I cannot be that OLD” . Is this how I am perceived ? I am not sure about that. So anyway dating is not on the menu, but my six pack is.

Another set of decisions/ resolutions I had made at the beginning of the pandemic:

Not to buy new clothes, shoes, make up, hard copy books, accessories, bags ,  electronics,  jewelry, magazines, stationary etc…..until I finished all the beauty products, read the books and magazine , used all the stationery, worn out the shoes/clothes/bags/electronics etc..As for jewelry I did not need any.  I was curious how much I will save and could I go back to being a minimalist ?

I also thought of recording my experience with the beauty products I was using until they ended. Most were purchased on a whim because I was bored in duty free shops between London, Tokyo, New York, Washington, Paris, Malta, Rome, Toronto, Chicago, Istanbul, Beirut and Madrid etc….. I was going to document how they felt and did they work. It made me feel like a potential social media influencer.😎

Over a year later this is the result :

Jewelry : 1 ring

Bags: 1 cheap sport’s bag

Magazines : 7

Books : 5 hard copies only ( but tons of e-books).

Shoes : one pair only

Beauty products : 2 lipsticks, one eyeliner, one mascara  and deodorants to replace those that I finished.

Clothes : 3 tracksuits and 1 dress and 1 anorak .

Accessories : one pair of gloves to replace the one that I lost. 2 prescription glasses as I lost/broke the old ones during the year.

Only the ring and magazines were unnecessary. I am proud of myself, even though I was unemployed and spending from my savings on health treatment for 4 months I still managed to save money. I read somewhere that you always needed to keep emergency money equivalent to 6 months of salary in your savings to wait out in comfort until you find a suitable job. I am super grateful.

I begun the decluttering journey since 2018, it is still ongoing. I hope to finish in 2021. Donating and or selling everything that is not needed. I discovered my stash of ancient postage stamps and coins and money, one day I will sit down to arrange them. Maybe I have an unknown fortune? That’s for 2022.

I have only started to look for employment in February this year… and I hope my plans pan out. But work life balance is going to be one of my priorities now.👌 No more suicide missions to complete deadlines that no one has really asked from you. My mother’s death has shown me that life is ephemeral and  Covid19 has demonstrated also  that everything can stop and be taken from you. Your life in the span of a second can start to revolve around 100 square meters of your home and nothing else. And if you are an IDP you don’t even have that luxury.

I am going to try the social influencer thingy … as in posting the products I finished this past year next, if you want to see them check my Instagram..... 

It has been a year of adjustments !