Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, having finished writing a note on love, I realized I needed to change course. I was noodling in my mind the idea of “On Languages” being the next note. I was going to weave in the curious fact that human sounds seem to be consistent across different languages, such that if you listen closely to a language you don’t know, you can almost make out words in your native tongue. Insane, right? It was at that point I knew that “On Sanity” was urgent and can no longer wait. I have been worrying about my state of sanity for a long time which is like a circular reference error, the kind you find in a Microsoft Excel formula that refers back to itself. How then to prove to myself and others that I am perfectly sane when I am relying on the very same instrument, my mind, to solve the equation? Is sanity a popularity test, forcing consensus in views and disposition of the self to the current social norms, the zeitgeist? Or is sanity a healthy dose of skepticism and the questioning of those who marinate in the status quo out of fear of reprisal? Why does it seem like my way of thinking is unwelcome and divergent, even though for some strange reason, people who parrot my thoughts are celebrated, while I get prosecuted over and over again? It is as if the messenger of the message, the vessel that carries the ideas matters. Not you, says the world to me, when I voice a thought that people hear for the first time. But yes you, the world says to others when they repeat my message that I just said to the same people minutes ago. Why do people not hear me, or listen to me when I speak, as if I am invisible somehow? Am I a pariah? A persona-non-grata? My brother-in-law, Nick, said to my family to listen to “Noha” the last time I saw him at the restaurant near their old apartment, when I kept getting sidelined at the dining table, unable to get a word in edgewise. Then there is the issue of my mental breakdowns that started up in earnest in 2022. Talk about a tale of two cities. I was simultaneously feeling I had everything before me and nothing for me. I was finally getting somewhere at work, getting to management levels, learning new skills in project financials, which is something I really wanted to do, but felt barred from promotions and career success for reasons unknown. Adding insult to injury, like a macabre story, or a kafkaesque tale, I started to “lose my mind” and needed hospitalizing for “behavioral health.” It basically amounted to prison. I was in a ward, sealed to the outside world, without a hint of fresh air, and other poor souls trapped like me in a stitch of time. There must be a God, because given my claustrophobia, I was eerily calm for the two weeks I spent there, treating the whole thing like a much-deserved holiday from “life.” I told myself the food was gourmet, the tea overflowing, the activities entertaining with a good music channel playing in the background. I picked up a protector who walked next to me as we toured the ward, round and round to keep active. He shooed anyone who came close to me or tried to interject in my space, like an over-protective Middle-Eastern brother. Incidentally, he was of Iranian descent and lived close by our apartment, in real life on the outside. Such was his desire to keep me safe. I’ll take a brother like him any day given the situation I find myself in these days. I got out of the mental ward, like a scene from “Girl Interrupted” only to find myself in a similar facility within the same year, two more times. Each time, I had to use my wits to the maximum to walk the fine line between sanity and the illusion of sanity. If that isn’t a test of my mental faculties, I don’t know what is. When my doctor asked me if I hear voices, I said yes, of course. I just heard you say the words “do you hear voices?” Will I live, doc? I asked him in return. Needless to say, the humor was lost on him. Doctors and their god complexes. Who really are the insane ones? The people who practice healthcare with zero humanity or healing. Or the patients who can see through their lies, make-believe, “playing doctor” child play? In the end, I got myself out of the ward, proving not only that I am sane, but more knowledgeable on human health than they will ever be, so trapped in an inhumane, diagnosis-code driven matrix worthy of Neo and Morpheus. God help them. I showed up by surprise, and unannounced at home to my now ex-husband who opened the door with a stupid smile on his face, as if he was Stiva sheepishly admitting guilt to adultery by betraying his wife Daria. Time for Anna Karenina, Stiva’s sister to come to their rescue and hold the family together. With life mirroring fiction, Sulafa, aka Ana, as in “me” in Arabic, came waltzing in to check on my wellbeing by force. But did she really care about me, dear reader? No, she got in the bed and proceeded to tell me her trivial troubles, hoping I would take her up on her offer of coffee at some new place she wants to check out. Australian, if I remember correctly. I declined and waited for her to leave. My ex, Kamal, knowing he had betrayed me once again, pleaded his case. He did not call my family on me, like last time in 2014. That time, I took to bed and stopped eating, drinking, talking or going to work. I just laid in bed, waiting to die. My family and friends were summoned to my bedroom, encircling my bed, as if I was a dead body waiting to be buried. The dead should stay dead, I read in a book recently that told of a solider who is buried alive but manages to dig himself out of the hole, and find his way home to his loving wife, who has long since moved on to a new man. I told Kamal to treat me how he would want to be treated. The golden rule. Just like he wouldn’t want me spreading his misfortunes to family and friends to preserve his reputation and self-image, he should not tell my mom, sisters and friends that I have relapsed and taken to bed. Besides, isn’t it obvious why I am having nervous breakdowns? Can anyone handle the herculean-level burden placed on me to carry not only my out-of-work husband, my expensive son, but also my mom and out-of-work sister? For how long will I be required to work, earn money, just to pay for never-ending bills that seem to know how much I make, so as to extract just enough funds to keep me in chains? Wouldn’t you go crazy if your family did this to you since the start of your working life? Wouldn’t you also go “insane”? The truth of the matter is, not only am I not crazy, I vowed to solve this problem, come hell or high water. I declared independence. Inspired by the example set by our country’s forefathers, I divorced my British husband. I walled off my mom, sisters and friends, like the “illegal immigrants” that they are, trying to mooch off American resources, keeping hard-working families spinning in their wheels. No more, I say. This is the end of madness. On sanity.