The Potato Nation

17: Maybe

Unedited, but a chapter, nonetheless and 5.6K long. That's like a record for me. Sorry it took twenty days to update but I am actually satisfied with the chapter save for the last 300-400 words which I've written half-asleep. Anyways, don't forget to leave your feedback and thank you so much for your support! Also, I hope you all have a potato filled life, haha

dedicated to @flamenurri for her tremendous support. she's one of my favourite commenters/readers. Thank you so much, love.

17: Maybe

Farrah is a zombie barely making through life.

Her eyes are always swollen, her lips turned down at all times and a solemn expression on her face. She doesn’t laugh, she doesn’t smile – she just makes it through, like it’s a burden to be alive.

And it is to her. It is a burden to be breathing in this prison, in this place where she doesn’t belong, where no one understands what it feels like to be her.

It is hard to be living now. She’s an over-reactor, a liar, a curse to this world. She’s just wasting the oxygen, living in here like she has the right to when really, the whole world would be better off if she stopped living.

Because who will need her, who will love her? She’s too sensitive, too serious, too bitchy to be loved. She is the type of person people probably hate at first glance, not love.

She wants to kill herself but it’s prohibited in Islam and well, she knows that even if she does kill herself, she won’t get the peace she needs.

So she resorts to living like a zombie.

Her brother notices. Her brother – someone she has never really expected to ask her if she’s okay, to come forward and tell her he’s here for her – notices.

Farrah feels like she’s hallucinating for a moment, like her life is a lie, like the balance of her world has toppled and she’s halfway down but she’s halfway up too.

When Zayd comes back home for his winter break, the first thing he asks her is, “Are you sure you’re still alive?” and then he knocks her forehead and places his ear on it to see if there’s an answer.

Farrah nods, at a loss about what to say, “I think so.”

He shakes his head disapprovingly, “High school caught up to you?”

She shrugs and chuckles a little, to assure her brother that she’s okay and to divert his attention from the forthcoming question “what’s wrong” because she never really does have an answer to that.

“Something like that.”

He narrows his eyes, “Do I need to kill someone for you?”

Farrah laughs, “Nah, I’ve got the killing part under control.”

Ruffling her hair, he laughs too, “That’s my girl.”

And then, he pushes past her and goes on to greet their parents. It is a nice sight, Farrah must admit, having a family reunion but then she decides against it, when her family starts talking together and completely ignores her presence.

Not wanting to “disturb” them, she goes back up to her room, almost expecting her mother to call her back down again, except that no one does and she is once again, trapped alone in the prison of a world, once again a zombie who can’t smile, can’t laugh, can’t live in a happy life.

She doesn’t know what to do.

What she does know is that she doesn’t want to mope around anymore. She wants to distract herself, have peace in her mind for a moment, forget about all the memories, forget about life and just drown in the noise of the world, in the brightness of the Sun, in the fullness of the moon, in everyone and everything that’ll make her forget, that’ll make her happy.