Não Vou! / I'm Not Going!

As salaam alaikum,

Não vou! Eu não sou ninguém de ir em conversa de esqeucer a tristeza de um amor que passo. Não! Eu só vou se for pra ver a estrela parecer na manhã de um novo amor...

I'm not going! I'm not someone to believe this talk about forgetting the sadness of a love that has ended. No! I'll only go if it is to see the star appear in the dawn of a new love...

I like this lyric, but that's not really want I wanted to talk about.

I'm just tired. I am so tired of men trying to talking to me thinking that my sex will be free. I feel so disrespected. Honestly, this is why I wore hijab back in college. I must have been a PYT or something, because I got hit on all the time. I remember one day, everyone from boys on campus to truck drivers to the police patrolling campus stopped to holler at me...all ages, all ethnicities. I am not a woman to immediately find that all degrading...in fact, as a 19- and 20-year-old, I thought the attention was cute.

That was until one day, I didn't respond to the advances of a random boy on the street and he called me a ho.

A ho? Seriously? I'd never been called that before!

It was shortly after that experience that I wore hijab...and I got to be called a couple of other things that I had never been called before, spoken to in Arabic without understanding, but I also no longer got the attention of so many men and boys. Instead, doors were opened for me...literally, they opened doors for me. In the Dominican Republic, I was mistaken for a nun...

And I guess I've returned to my early 20s baseline, because this boy (he can't have been the same age as I am, but he was a bold young'un) followed me out of the T stop after they kicked us off of the T (something about Park Street station being on fire). He wanted my number but his phone had been turned off. Bad game, young blood, bad game.

But none of these men have honorable intentions. Hell, not even B did. He thought that since we were "in a relationship," we were just going to get it on, and I told him no. No, nope, nopers, as I used to say in high school. I fed him with a long-handled spoon for sure...and he bailed before I got deeper into something that, in the end, I recognized I would regret.

I'm tired of that! I'm tired of thinking I have to put up with that.

There were way too many things that I settled on with that last experience.

There is a key difference between my 20-year-old heyday and my 26-year-old now. The difference is, while I don't wear khimar, I'm more vocally, outwardly, spiritually Muslim than I was before I wore the khimar. Everyone I know knows I am Muslim, and that's why I don't smoke or drink or do X, Y and Z, and why I do pray and observe Ramadan and all else. As a result, I feel like there is a barrier around me, and men know to steer clear...except for B, who was a little bit of a fool in that regard.

And at first, I was bothered by it...I was thinking, am I incompatible with life? Now, I recognize...it's actually a good thing. It's keeping these men with dishonorable intentions (it's not their fault, necessarily...they are products of this society where there is no such thing as premarital sex being dishonorable) away and not putting me in a position to compromise my own personal values...

At the same time, I recognize that Muslim men are not (necessarily) the solution. Ladies, I've done Muslim matrimonial sites before, and oh my gosh, that is sooo less than ideal in so many ways. I could expand. And no, I uphold that I am not being elitist or stuck-up to expect educational and financial compatibility. I have no aspiration to be the breadwinner of the household, nor do I want a house husband. I may in fact make more money, but I never dreamed and actually do not want to be the main one responsible for putting food on the table and a roof over heads, no.

And I couldn't trust that all of those guys from overseas were simply interested in me and not at all interested in getting to the US. Especially when they spoke French and could therefore not communicate with me.

So messed up in so many ways.

I don't like it, but I may have to just wait for someone to drop out of the sky, for real.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and PS...just because I am an American female doesn't mean that I've most certainly been in a series of relationships and most certainly have had sex before, so please do not try to ask me about if I've been tested for STDs in your first conversation with me. Seriously! Uggghhhhh...