Photography by Elif Karakoc

If life gave us a second chance, I mean like a real second chance, a new start, a blank page, an eraser for all the bad in our past, don’t you think we’d still make new mistakes for which we’d want a new start again!
And if so, if the new start could still somehow mean another way to the same life, the one that gets hard at times and good at others, the one where mistakes are inevitable, then shouldn’t we just so easily use the second chance we get everyday right after we wake up in which we know that we are still alive and capable of making a difference.

I find myself writing down these thoughts one morning when I was sipping burdens along with my coffee. I have been going through a certain phase in my life where my eyes are blinded from everything but my imperfections, mistakes and sins.

A phase where my heart is full with this feeling of insufficiency, where I’m haunted by regret and by a continuous sensation of my dereliction towards work and towards myself in general .

I could do more. I could be more. I could grow more, I keep telling myself but I take no action.
In love I’ve been pushing people away dominated by a thought that I’m not meant for love. In work I don’t give my best dominated by the idea that I’m more trivial than what I’m trying to do, I’m less. In life I’m the first to look away from her dreams just because I got Weak before one obstacle once, so I think it’d happen again.
All this happened based on probably one bad experience in each, one thing gave me enough regret to hinder me from taking any steps further, one thing managed to turn me from someone full of life to someone full of doubts and demons. One thing, I say, how come can it change a person this much!!

It could have continued that feeling of mine and by this rate I could see I’m about to fall from the brink of despair Until there came a point where I realized where all this whining and underrating my ability is taking me.
Until i realized that by this I’m letting my past define me in everything starting with work and ending with love and my capability of loving or even accepting the fact I am loved because I feel like I don’t deserve either so I end up worse than I was before, so I end up with even more regrets.

Until one realizes that a bad mistake don’t say a thing about who you are neither do your problems but we’re, surprisingly, defined by our attitude towards them. Only then you could take actions, to stand for what you believe in, to forget your mistakes but never forget the lessons you’ve learned from them and to realize that the most important thing in life is to stand after you fall, every time you fall, even if you have been on the ground for too long and now think you may have forgotten how to stand, try with all you have got, put your hands on the floor and push yourself higher against it, lean on someone or on a dream knowing that it makes you no less great, to depend on others sometimes and seek their help.

Only then we realize all the opportunities we keep getting from life and with our fears we keep wasting but now with our faith regained In our dreams and better in ourselves we could use them wisely.

Only then we realize that what matters is that eventually you get back on your feet and put mistakes behind your back to push you now to do more, to be more and certainly to grow more.

—

Mariem Sherif is an Egyptian medical student who believes that words can heal a wound, that in each and every one of us there is something special and that in details lies another great different life for those who notice.

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