I’ve been wanting to write on my blog since the past so many weeks but I kept pushing away this feeling every time, not because I couldn’t find the time to write or didn’t have anything to write – it’s just that SO much has happened in the past month and such amazing things have happened that I didn’t want to do injustice to those events by trying to encapsulate them into a collection of inexpressive words. Anyway, I’ll just try my best to paint that fire inside me through words. So I had gone to Dubai last month - not so big a deal, I know! That’s what was on my mind when I left for Dubai i.e. it’s just going to be another trip to some place for vacations and I’ll be back like nothing happened, or at most I’ll be back with some memories to cherish and that’s all. Well, I didn’t know I was signing up for quite a lot of surprises. I kind of left my heart there, in Dubai land. But more than that, I found something too. Now that “something” doesn’t have a word through which I can define it, but it’s something so meaningful, so empowering, so fulfilling that all those self-conflicting ideas that were in my mind before I had gone to Dubai are just vanishing. It’s like I have taken a step forward from being a rebel to finding some peace. That doesn’t mean I’ll quit questioning social conformity or start acting like a “sheep”, as I like to call it, but all I am saying is that I feel safe, I feel accompanied even when I am alone, I feel there is more meaning in my life than there ever was and more than anything, I feel like that throbbing pain in my heart which was there since the past three years has finally found an examiner. Yes, it’s not like the pain has vanished like it’s under a magical spell or anything, but at least it has found acceptance. I feel Dubai was THERAPY for me, and as much as I was a non-believer in the powers of love, I have been transformed. And if anyone is getting a wrong idea here, I am talking about my family in Dubai and their love. I am not talking about the fun and the awesomeness of the place itself, I am talking about the people, their love, their way of being there for each other and all that. I also don’t want to give an impression like my life in Pakistan has been SO deprived of love and all that, coz it’s not! I have a loving family here too, but it’s just that Dubai provided me what I really needed that time. So much psychology and psychoanalysis that I studied in the previous semester had already cut open me and I wanted to heal so bad that I didn’t even wait to think what was happening. All I did was let it be, let my heart be vulnerable for some time, let it fall for yet another woman, let it do what it has to do and for once, not try to control the situation, not try to control emotions. I felt free and I didn’t even realize I was healing until I returned.