growing. changing. loving.

i’m about to give you an anthology of me. the pain, the beauty and the reality. everything that has given me something to write about. 

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a glimpse into who i am.

**I reduced my body to aesthetics,

Forgot the work it does to keep me alive,

With every beat,

And every breath,

I declared it a failure, for not looking like theirs

Not able to see the miracle,

that was me.

 

Embers, Embers, Embers

Painted across my entire body,

But most of all,

In my hands.

Just waiting for any opportunity

To ignite.

 

And I’m a little insecure,

And I think just a little too much,

But what I fail to remember is,

I am a collection of miracles

Bound together by sunlight.

 

 

You can’t see me while I carefully choose my every word, every phrase for this piece, just so you hear me the way I need you too. I’ve written an about me before but the writer of it, was a petrified and hopeful grade 10 who refused to see the truth about herself. However this, this piece, has been carefully crafted in order to show you who I am, not coated in unrealistic idealism, but coated in hope that you can see how much sunshine is there in your plain and simple life, as long as you are willing to see it. I am no longer terrified of publishing my soul and no longer intimidated by the imperfectness of me and the future.  I am undeniably and unequivocally imperfect, and everything that makes me imperfect are what defines me and who I am, when my mask is fully off.

**: Emulated by an Untitled Poem by Rupi Kaur from Milk and Honey. 

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a list of some of my imperfections:

• My life isn’t coated in gold drops and genuine smiles. Sometimes, it’s coated in the darkest paint known to man and moments of wondering when this feeling will ever leave me.
• I get lost in my mind, which can only be described as a messy place with no cabinets.
• I take transit home and clutch myself in fear of what could happen if people find out I’m Muslim.
• I know what it is like to have love in my life and feel like I am at the top of the roller coaster, seeing everyone below me, focusing only on the love I have sitting next to me. But, I also know what it’s like to lose that love, and feel like rock bottom is all you’ll ever see, not knowing there is an entire ride ahead of you, full of sky-high feelings.

I know what it’s like to love myself and praise my imperfections. I know what it’s like to not dare look in the mirror for fear of what will be staring back at me. Everything I know, everything I do, every up, every down has shaped me into who I am today, which defines the person behind the name Alyna.

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my blog & meaning. 

The URL of my blog is Occhiolism:

n. the awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all, about the world or the past or the complexities of culture, because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room.

I learned about the meaning of Occhiolism around this time last year. It seemed to hit me like a truck- how small my view of our very big world, really is. I didn’t even begin to understand that my take on the world could be and is completely different than someone else’s, because no matter what, we have been through different things that have shaped our take on a certain thing. My blog is a very minuscule part of the take on my life, my world and my community. It represents solely how I have decided to view my life and how I decide to portray it. By having Occhiolism as my URL, it allows me and any reader, like yourself, to understand that this is a small piece of the puzzle in my life & world, one with meaning but only a sample size of one, simple as that.

The Title of my blog is Liberosis: 

n. the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.

Liberosis is a word/way of life I am working on acting by. While learning to feel safe publishing my work, I have had to learn to apply Liberosis. It has helped me push past fears of publishing, writing posts and letting them stay in the hands of trusted friends- and whoever reads my blog. All my pieces have a sense of liberosis, allowing them to be as raw and open as possible.

The Subtitle.

“sometimes to self-discover you must self-destruct.”- robert m. drake

Robert M. Drake has written some of my favourite poetry books- which as you can tell, is one of my favourite genre’s to read and write, so of course, my subtitle was a quote from a personal favourite book; Beautiful Chaos. You have to reset before you are able to load anything new. Being able to discover who you are, beneath the fake smiles and mask, means letting your mask blow up, so only your true self is there. This leads to the idea that Broken is Beautiful, and to feel discovery, or feel love, you need to know destruction and hate. I have always strived to understand and value broken, as you need to break before you can be something new, meaning self discovery can only be found by destruction. To discover my voice as a writer, I have had to fail in finding that voice, and writing pieces I have no business writing, until I was able to find my voice.

Other Choices Made to Create My Blog:

• The Theme: Amadeus. Allows my posts, sidebar, pages and title to be displayed in an organized way, acheiving my desired aesthetic.
• The Background: Black&White Marble. Achieves my desired aesthetic and fonts/any typing on blog can be clearly shown and seen by any reader.
• The Featured Images: While the overall theme seems dark, the featured images are brighter with yellow tones, displaying the brightness in dark and stars in a pitch black night.
• Widgets on Sidebar:
  • Harmony: A song I have written many of my 12 Word Stories too. A song of the struggle of love and how the loss of love affects the one who never quite stopped loving. A sense of inspiration for me that explains a lot of my pieces.
  • A Breath: While reading my other pieces, seeing “A Breath” allows you to get a glimpse into my writing style and also a small reminder of your self-worth and importance of self-love.

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images

https://www.tumblr.com/search/lifelongfiction

https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/occhiolism

https://br.pinterest.com/pin/420664421429944133/

http://majikphil.blogspot.com/2016/08/top-50-twitter-climate-accounts-to.html