if life was a coloring book

we write because we have to, because words are what we are. and i have nothing to write, but i have bubbling, bubbling, toiling troubling thoughts that have no words today.

to be alone with you. oh, sufjan.

and i think that maybe the reason there is so much judgment here, so many uncrossable lines, is that there is no forgiveness. there is love, so so much love, and all of it conditional. you can't have forgiveness if your honor is your life, if reputation is all you are. and you don't need forgiveness if you kill anyone who steps on the borders of your family's reputation.

i've been trying to research this, trying to figure out why my birth and my family and my life are so immutably unacceptable here. but what am i supposed to do, google "arab culture obsession with bloodlines"? trust me, none of the results are helpful. all i get is geneology websites and dating site offers. find an arab husband in minutes? no thanks.

but it makes sense i guess. i am impossible here. my situation, my life, is unforgivable, and if it cannot be forgiven it does not exist. it's like a coloring book where you color everything inside the lines and then cut out the picture- every little red and purple crayon mark outside the thick black lines is lost. we are so zero sum, so black and white, that we can't accept anything out of the ordinary. so of course, i am illegitimate. because if it doesn't fit into our idea of "how life should be" and "how women should be" and "how a family should be", it is wrong. there is no should be, here. there is only what is.

and i love this place, i love it to the moon and back. which is pretty far seeing as how i'd have to hold my breath the whole time. but i wish we could forgive, and forget, and call things mistakes, and have regrets, and accept each other with all our faults, without some pretense of what we should be. we are what we are.

it just seems so unfair, that with everything that i disagree with, i accept this culture. but it can't accept me. there is no agree to disagree in any head but mine.