Chaos

To have no judgement of myself.

To have no judgement of other people.

I want to have a variety of friends.

I want to have people that listen to and contemplate what I have to say.

I want to be religious,

And be myself,

And hold on to the opinions I have. At the same time.

I want to be admirable.

I want to be surrounded by people with the same mindset as me.

I get very angry when I see people who possess terrible thoughts.

I am scared, very scared,

That it will be hard to find people in the environments I am or will be a part of that will not possess these terrible thoughts.

I am scared that my arguments will not be seen as smart,

Or will get me ridiculed.

Even though I dislike the people, I care about how they view me, because how they view me has a large impact on my image. Because there are a lot of them.

I know I will not change my opinions.

But I am scared.

Of the people.

I have lost my individuality.

It used the be the only thing keeping me happy.

And now, I’ve lost it.

And now I feel like I have to build my entire being back up from the ground.

This has lead me to be less open-minded.

To stop assuming the best in people.

To feel repelled by even remote religiosity.

To automatically be skeptical of someone from a certain demographic.

To stop wanting the best for people other than myself.

Like, truly wanting the best for people (except for the 5 people in my life that I truly know and love very much because I know them. I have not stopped wanting the best for them).

Because I am skeptical of them.

I used to be more carefree.

I used to express my strong opinions out of love.

Strong love.

For people I didn’t [even] know like that.

I didn’t have to hold out to know specific opinions of theirs in order to decide if I could love them.

And now I feel like I express them because I feel like I have to protect myself.

And just myself.

From other opinions!

“From opinions, for God’s sake!” I sometimes say to myself.

But they are opinions that are dangerous and disrespectful. They could harm the people around them,

So I should be angry,

But how do I separate my anger from my personal life, from my life outside of social media, from my worry.

Because that anger turns into immense, immense worry,

About the fact that there are too many terrible people in this world, their terribleness subtle, their terribleness casual. (Outright, obvious terribleness is never what I’m worried about.) And I need to maneuver through a world with them in it.

And I dwell in that worry.

I make no time for me. I have lost the energy and motivation and passion to pursue goals and live my life, in separation from my knowledge of the terribleness.

I have lost my ability to live in a benefit-of-the-doubt way.

I was much happier before.

Because of this constant terribleness, I feel like I have to repetitively express my opinions (more so to myself than to them) to combat it.

I have to keep expressing my opinions (to myself) as if each expression is a brick,

Each brick helps build a wall around me,

Protecting me,

The sides of the bricks that are facing me bearing “You’re right”s etched into them.

Telling me I need not worry, what I stand for is good and I need to be confident in what I say. I need to. I need to get my confidence back.

Now I express my opinions to ensure myself that I am right.

Screw that (right?).

Wait. Maybe I need to take into account every idiot’s take and ponder over how I can shape my words into a way that perfectly invalidates theirs. Maybe I need to feel like glass is being thrown against the walls of my skull, like its shards are being blended together with the flesh of my brain.

My brain is a blender. No thought leaves it confident. Whole. Or on its own.

No, screw that. Maybe the world is too complex for that. Maybe gray areas should not be the entire area. Black and white should still be prominent. I do not need to cater to the people I am opposing more than I need to cater to the people I am defending.

Right? Am I right? Is this poem good enough (is this even a poem?)? Will people understand it properly?

(As you can see, my opinion-bricks never actually “protect me”.)

[Edit: 11/11/2020

It has been over a year and a half since I wrote this. This was (mostly) about the cisgender, heterosexual Muslim community around me and my opinions on the LGBT+ community. Alhamdulillah, I have overcome my fears and my anxiety. I remember that these thoughts were what made it difficult for me to function and go through life normally. They really affected me. I thought I would never overcome them. Alhamdulillah.]