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Let's Talk FMU, FAISALABAD MEDICAL UNIVERSITY, FAISALABAD , PUNJAB, Faisalabad (2025)

20/08/2025

"FMU LISTENERS CLUB PRESENTS: VOICES UNHEARD AND HEALING HUES 🎨 ✍️"
Get ready all the creative souls because FLC proudly announces two exciting competitions that will blend expression with impact- "VOICES UNHEARD", a writing competition where you can let your creativity speak through words and "Healing Hues", a painting competition where your brush becomes a tool for emotional release.

_To be a part of "Healing Hues", register now through the following link_
https://forms.gle/pcfpCaGEabD2HxuV9

_Join "Voices Unheard" by registering here:_
https://forms.gle/mvELYmEtqtuRYRnd8

Judges:
Muhammad Hanzala Umer (General Secretary FLC)
Haleema Zahid (Writer's head)

_📍Submit your writings and paintings before "3 September"_

15/08/2025

'Lumos Maxima'

14/08/2025

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

There’s a dream I’ve kept to myself for years.
To spend my twenties doing everything I can.
To live with all the energy I have.
And when I finally reach the peak, I just walk away.
Leave the city.
Leave the country.
Leave the empty noise.
Somewhere small.
Ordinary.
A place where no one knows my name.
Where my past feels extraordinary only to me.
Where my personality belongs to a different world.
And that contrast makes me feel like the main character.
Here, I'm transparent.
There, I'm rare.
My presence would fill a space only I could fill.
I want to be needed in a way that makes my worth feel real.
Not for applause.
Not for attention.
To know my existence isn’t interchangeable.
That what I give is mine by choice,
not something swallowed by a system that wouldn’t notice if I disappeared.
In that life, I’d feel lighter.
Happier.
And if I leave it someday,
It would matter.
The gap I leave wouldn’t be filled by someone just like me.
What's all I’ve ever wanted.
Not wealth. Not fame.
Just the quiet certainty that I’m irreplaceable.

[ Raw concept: "Unhappiness" is a slow poison that kills you little by little till the point you stop needing humans to make you feel valued anymore; one way to feel precious is to be somewhere no one is like you. In our society, everyone feels the same; same exhaustion, same thinking — that sameness suck out all the composition of the material we are, even if it's too much, it feels hollow and that emptiness suffocates. ]

FIZA KHALIQ
MBBS'27

12/08/2025

CONVERSATION 101

I am bad at conversation. This is an irrefutable fact, a universal truth and something I know with certainty.
You might think, "What's so hard about conversations? You just talk to people?" Well, it's not that easy. I'm sure there are a lot of people who have experienced the following:
The deafening silence descends upon the room as soon as something comes out of your mouth. The long periods of quietude between words occur because you feel you have nothing worthwhile to say. While you're panicking and thinking about what to say next, the conversation has taken its last breath and is already resting in peace with all its predecessors ( your previous attempts at conversing ). You're too busy overthinking to realize that the other person has already moved on with their day after witnessing your absolute failure. Which makes you wish you had that memory erasing device they had in Men in black, so you could reset everyone around your vicinity on a random Tuesday. Pretty common stuff, right? Right.
I have this tried and trusted method: when in doubt, talk about the weather. But there isn't a lot you can say about Faisalabad weather, aside from it being scorching hot. Well, this isn't going to cut it anymore. I have decided to actively try to be a good conversationalist. I'm not making all this effort because I want to command the attention of any room I walk in, nor do I want to be a public speaker. I just want to hold my own in a conversation. I want to be able to say witty and meaningful stuff with other people. Not just in my head.
My first step in becoming a phenomenal conversationalist is to research. I go straight to YouTube. But my neurons are fried because of my Instagram reel attention span and watching everything exclusively on 2X speed. So watching long videos is out of the question. I go to ChatGPT. It gives me a bulleted list on how to go about my dilemma. It includes things like being attentive, asking open-ended questions, not interrupting, listening more than you speak, etc.
With ChatGPT's list as my ammunition, I set about my journey and decided I'm going to try these conversing manoeuvres on my friends ( yes, I do have a few of those). If I told you that in the span of a week, I tremendously improved my communication skills and mastered the art of small talk, that would be a lie. But I did improve. The internet's advice did not magically transform me into a remarkable speaker. Nor did it miraculously make all my conundrums vanish. But it did arouse the suspicion of my friends about why I was talking so much. I came clean about my mission impossible and how I was on a journey of personal growth. They encouraged me but also pointed out that I was already good at conversation. I was flabbergasted. What? I'm good at conversation? I confirmed my eloquence a further three times and asked my friends to elaborate why they thought I was good at conversations. Their answer was simple: I just was. I already checked all the points in ChatGPT's list of great conversationalists.
So, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, I being bad at conversation was indeed an irrefutable fact, a universal truth and something I knew with certainty. All these truths were of my own making. In my head. I was the only one who had assumed I was bad at conversing. I had come to terms with it and accepted it as my personality flaw. When in reality, I was already good at it. So, the point of all this discourse is to say: put yourself out there, be confident in your abilities, you've made it this far, surely you can see this through. And the biggest suggestion I would give to others, but mostly to myself, is to stop overthinking. I know it's easier said than done and it's something I've struggled with my whole life. But trust me life gets a lot better when you get out of your head and start enjoying it in real time.

ZOPHIM ZULFIQAR
MBBS'27

10/08/2025

WELCOME TO FAMILY FIRM ANXIETY CO.LTD.

One morning when I woke up, I found out that I had inherited my family's hidden business. No emails, no offer letters, just a silent promotion into the Family Firm Anxiety Co.Ltd
I was very shocked; I had not applied, but I was a part of it while I was in my mother's womb. Inheriting a family business can be a wild ride. Instead of being worth millions, it's worth a lifetime of worrying about everything, and promotions include sudden crying, overthinking, and chest tightness.
A legacy that comes with a heavy emotional price. I inherited the most valuable family heirloom, Anxiety Co. Ltd. Yep, you read that right: anxiety can be a dodgy inheritance passed on through generations like a prestigious family business. For many people, anxiety and depression can be learned behaviours passed down through family members who may not know how to deal with their emotions in a healthy way.
Imagine growing up in a household where the phrase " keep calm and carry on" is more like "keep calm and sweep it under the rug." Sound familiar? Anxiety in our family isn't just a condition it's tradition. It is treated less like a mental health condition and more like a personality trait. She/he's always been a little dramatic-when in reality it's untreated mental health, but gently
telling Ammi, it's not a drama, it's mental health. Ever tried telling your brown mom you have anxiety? She'll reply, "When I was your age, I had two jobs, three children, and a mother-in-law who hated
me, and I never complained! Therapy? It's either too white or too expensive or not for strong people."Every attempt at emotional honesty gets redirected towards the grades, chai and your overachieving cousin who already owns a house and has two degrees. This is not about blaming; it's about naming. Naming their weight we carry because mental health is not a drama, weakness, or Western nonsense. It's real. I'm not sure if I'll pass on this gift to my own children one day, but I'm working on breaking the cycle of anxiety. It's time we start treating mental health not as a rebellion or weakness but as a part of being human. Maybe this generation can pivot the Family Business Anxiety Co.Ltd. to Healing Sons and Daughters Co.Ltd.

Mateeba Nawab
MLT
Batch 28

08/08/2025

RUMINATED

Dark night and wallowing
Did she stutter with her tears?
Or maybe with her tone in full swing
Did her words hurt like spear?
It was cold, it was lonely
In a room not so homely
Pupils dilated and hands shaking
It was a call for her waking
A paper drenched in her thoughts
A Strange sensation in her throat
Dark night and wallowing
Dried water of her eyes
And thoughts following
how many more tries?
She looks in the mirror
An unknown, fazed face staring back
She wondered what she Lacked?
Dark nights and wallowing
The walls closing in on her
And eyes thinking what she were?

BAHEEN
B'27 MBBS

05/08/2025

BEYOND THE CAGE

A cage is a quiet sanctuary where one feels safe.
Lost in their own world, far from the noise of life,
Some souls pour their strength and sorrow
Into the very bars that confine them.

But when the fierce sunlight pierces through the cage
And becomes trapped within,
It struggles to escape—
Only to lose its essence...
And take the shape of the bars themselves.

Just as the pearl breaks free from its shell,
The rich core escapes the walnut’s hard embrace,
And sweet water flows from the unyielding shell of the coconut—
So too, when a person steps beyond their cage,
They emerge with a new identity,
Shaped by values no longer bound by old walls.

And this identity—
This awakening—
Becomes the most meaningful one they’ve ever known.
No longer mistaken themselves for the light
That once slipped through iron bars,
Abandoning purpose and resolve.

The day a person becomes their own light
A light rooted in truth,
On that day,
They become the soft water within the coconut,
The nourishing essence of the walnut
Free, whole, and entirely their own.

Zainab Hafeez
BS MLT
B 28

04/08/2025

SHE WAS TOLD TO BE CAREFUL

She was told to be careful
She spoke without a sound
Some things are too heavy for words and too sacred for noise.
The pages before this were not just written they were a reflection of her trauma,
Some lines trembled. Some screamed without sound.
Some were crossed out not because they were wrong, but because remembering them was a struggle
She had filled this diary on nights when the world felt unsafe in her own skin
when footsteps behind her made her ribs tighten, uncomfortable
when being seen felt like being torn apart quietly.
This book knew everything,
even the parts she had never said out loud
the ones she couldn’t name,
The ones that lived in her silence more than in her voice.
But today was different.
Not because it was over but because she no longer carried it alone.
She had given it to the paper, which held her.
Without judgment. Without question. Without noise.
She sat, calm now. Not healed, but breathing.
She picked up the pen and wrote slowly,

"Every time a girl stepped out of her house whether to work to study or just exist in public she risked being harassed
Every single day, a girl somewhere is carrying a weight of a stare too long, a comment too cheap, a touch too unwanted
This act does not always scream, sometimes it whispers through mirrors, lingers in silence or hides behind a fake smile.
And the worst part -
It's being normalised, brushed off,minimized. When she was told to
Get used to it, not a big deal this is how society is.
But it is a big deal; It breaks the personality quietly, slowly, brutally It leaves behind a fear that follows them home, a scar that never fully fades, no matter how strong she is.
Only that she is trying to live
Why does she always ask to stay careful? Why don't they think about not being a danger?"
She closed the diary.
The room felt a little less heavy, not because the story was over, but because she finally had enough , she was fed up.

TAHREEM
BS MLT B'28

01/08/2025

GEN Z'S "ALIVE ISSUES"

Racing minds. Racing hearts. Feet still, yet swollen.
Body aches, stiff back, as if beaten for months, or perhaps as if engaged in a marathon.
But once again, the culprit was not the body.
It was the mind, tirelessly working day and night, caught in an endless race.
The irony? The winner of this race is the biggest loser of all time. Science says, or more precisely, AI claims that with every passing generation, life expectancy shortens. For now, efforts are no longer physical, but mental.
A race of thoughts.
Millions of participants, equally competitive players run and run every day, hoping to achieve a fraction of what their predecessors gained with half the input.
Some call it a generational gap.
But Gen Z's alive issues call it generational jealousy.
According to them, physical exertion rarely breaks one's nerves; it is the exhausted mind that fractures a person most.

He cracked a joke — long ago.
He had a fine family gathering without the haunting guilt of wasting time — years ago.
His contact with nature — minimal.
The last time he witnessed a shooting star or a hummingbird sipping nectar from delicate flowers amidst the fine windy mornings of March — long, long ago.
For March has since been reserved for exams, ever since he matured.
Haunting exams that leave you foggy, emotionally and physically.

The more fertilizer you add, the healthier the plant grows.
But the Gen Z child wished to explain, cutting his roots will never bear fruit, regardless of the highest quality fertilizers added.
Unlike past, now the marathon is overcrowded.
Degrees are devalued.
Saturation is overwhelming.
Money talks, and privilege paves the way.

Rumors say within a decade, AI will replace professions that now demand blood, sweat, and tears.
The algorithm may shift.
Dynamics may change.
But somewhere, deep down, Gen Z's alive issues have always been a secret cheerer of AI
For maybe then, just maybe, they will get a chance to live.

To smile fully.
To run on windy meadows.
To climb.
To swim.
To get wild and free.
They long to get tired from an intensive climb on the world’s highest peaks — not from the weight of their thoughts.
They want to sweat from chasing sunsets — not from chasing worries.
To let their heartbeats race from running trails — not from running thoughts.
For it has been long, far too long since they lived.

Abiha Shahid
MBBS'25

30/07/2025

ROOTS AND WRECKAGE

A seed was sown
The dampness of insecurity and moisture of doubt made it sprout

It grew slowly, silently being watered by little barbed whispers
The roots got deeper
It got bigger

Until it broke through the pot that held his Self

The pot lay shattered
Shards of Self scattered on the floor,
Too many pieces to count,
Too sharp to touch without bleeding...

He stood there,
Not knowing
If he was the roots
or the wreckage..
Not knowing
If the thing that grew
was him,
Or something
planted in him...

But in that silence after the break,
He saw something.....
Not hope. Not yet, anyway
Just air..
Just space...

Where once the soil was confined,
Now light touched it for the first time..
And the roots, exposed,
Quivered..

It wasn’t healing, no.
It wasn’t pretty at all...
But it was real.

A breath.
A beginning.

SHAROZ SHAHID
MBBS'26

29/07/2025

THE SPARK THAT IGNITES

She gave me crochet flowers, "Roses" as I call her Rose. Not because she looks like Rose but feels like that sweet and refreshing fragrance. A week later, someone did something that hurt me. I almost ran towards her, held her hand, started walking, we sat down on the side, and I cried my heart out. How can someone feel so much like mine that I can cry in front of her.
I remember her as a fairy in the school's Talent Show. Who could have told me then that 11 years later she would actually become a fairy for me. The one who silently holds my hand in crowded places because I don't feel comfortable, the one who knows that I am not a physical touch person but need a hug when the world gets mean and the one who brings a smile on my face by her mere presence.

Here's another person who asked me what happened just by looking at my swollen face because I was sad. My friend got her summer vacation' schedule and I was there making it through my final exams all alone in a class where I didn't have any friends. In the midst of all the chaos, that person randomly checking up on me was the whole point. I don't like people raising their voices at me and someone being there silently comforting and making me realize that it's not a big deal, is what anyone asks for. How can someone make a moment from bitter to sweeter just by making me feel seen and heard. I hate that feeling of being alone in a room full of people, and someone in the distance offering me company at that time somehow makes me luckier.The feelings I try my best to hide are being caught so beautifully.

In a world full of people, where one doesn't believe in true friendships, where 'toxic female friendship' is becoming a general term, where people don't talk about friendship break-ups, where the toxicity of mates is not highlighted, where friendship has become a seasonal thing, I found Gems. They have no idea how many times they saved me just because I had it subconsciously in my mind that they are there. When it gets too much, they will always give me 8 minutes. Yes, I did lose people, had friendship breakups, and grieved over that, but people who make my life easier and better with every passing day deserve appreciation too.

Parveen Shakir penned the importance of such Gems in her lines like;
لازم نہیں حیات میں احباب کا ہجوم
ہو پیکر خلوص تو کافی ہے ایک شخص

Most of the things we read today have this point saying "In your twenties you lose and gain many people", but no one talks about the grief of losing people whom we once called home and the lack of trust in the world that comes with it. Some people help in healing not by replacing the people we lose but simply by being good companions.
Here's an appreciation to all people who make life better by just being there!

ZOBIA ASIF
BS MEDICAL LAB TECHNOLOGY '26

27/07/2025

FROM SELF CARE TO SELF COMPASSION

It started with a checklist.

Drink water
Meditate
Journal
Do yoga
I wrote it all down—every soothing, healing, wellness-approved step. I followed it religiously, like it could save me.

And for a while, it helped.

Lighting a candle after work felt calming. Skincare became a small moment of control. Morning routines gave me something to hold onto when everything else felt like it was slipping.

But deep down, I knew something wasn’t working.

Because even after all the self-care, I still felt hollow. I still hated myself when I failed, when I cancelled plans, when I cried over “nothing.” I still pushed through exhaustion, silenced my own needs, and shamed myself for not being better by now.

That wasn’t care.
That was maintenance with a mask on.

I didn’t need more eucalyptus oil.
I needed to stop treating myself like a project to fix.

It hit me one night when I was lying in bed, paralyzed by guilt for doing nothing. I skipped yoga. I didn’t journal. I ordered junk food. I broke every “rule.”

And for the first time, I didn’t try to fix it.
I just said, “It’s okay. You’re tired. That’s enough for today.”

It was small. But it cracked something open.

That was the first moment of self-compassion.
Not pushing myself to perform care, but simply letting myself be.

Since then, healing has looked different.

It’s not always pretty. I still have bad days. I still get stuck. But I talk to myself like someone worth kindness—not just discipline. I forgive the mess. I give myself rest without earning it. I show up for myself even when I feel undeserving.

That’s the shift.
From self-care to self-compassion.
From “I need to fix myself” to “I deserve gentleness.”

And honestly? That’s what saved me.

FARWA KHALIQ
MBBS'28

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