Big Beautiful

Salaam,

I've wanted to post for a long time, but I've been really busy. Leave it to public health school to sock it to me in the last couple of days. I have two exams and two papers left to go...those will be all done in the next few days. I'm not stressing anymore, though...the toughest has passed. The exam that I'm studying for Friday is annoying, though, since it'll be a total cram-fest to study for, but thankfully that will be the LAST EXAM I TAKE UNTIL STEP 3!!!!!!!!!!!! LAST EXAM PRE-MD! ALHAMDULILLAH!

Yes, that's how excited I am. Do you realize that not a year has gone without me taking some sort of test or exam since I was in the first grade (six years old)? I have been taking tests for the last 20 years of my life. To have more than a year where I don't have some sort of exam...excellent. Projects? I will have projects for the rest of my life. Exams? I'll have exams for the rest of my life, too, but they'll all be standardized and few and far between...like, every 10 year licensing exams. This is what I signed up for. I want my patients to thrive. No big deal.

So I've been doing that and I haven't had time to write what I wanted to write about...one entry that I plan to write at some point when I'm not totally fried is called "Christian Women." But that will have to wait for the following epiphanies...

I think it happened before and right after I talked to my mother this afternoon. She told me that she had talked to my aunt, who my uncle suddenly dealt divorce papers without explanation or discussion. I was livid when I heard the details of this. Livid to the extend that I said something along the lines of, "And he calls himself Muslim." Astaghfirullah! God is Judge, so it wasn't my place to say that, but I was angry because of all that my aunt means to me and all she's done for the family.

The first thing I realized from this whole story is that what B did to me was so minuscule as compared to throwing away 25 years of marriage with three children (now adults) as my uncle did. I was in a relationship for five months. I am so happy that he did what he did exactly when he did it, actually, no sooner and no later. It taught me a lot of lessons that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. And it saved me from getting any more involved and then being dumped. Like, if B had started with that weight stuff in the midst of wedding plans, after I was pregnant with his child, while our children were in school, any other time would be horrible timing...

So while I still think he was a fool, my uncle is the real fool...doesn't know what a good woman is!

And I guess that's the main epiphany...I am really a good woman, just the way I am. I may want to lose at least 10 pounds, okay. But besides that...I was looking at myself in the reflection of my dead laptop in class on Monday (man, I hate these crappy laptop batteries!) and I looked prettier than I thought I would. I had just washed my hair and still have not twisted it, so it's up in braids and in a scarf as I usually do while my hair is drying. I threw on a shirt that kind of bore my stomach (it's been a bloaty month), threw on some jeans, my jean jacket and ran to class because I decided to go at the last minute.

Let me tell you, it's so different walking to class everyday instead of taking the shuttle. I kind of like it, and it's inspired me to map out my own running route.

Anyway...

I've been noticing for the past couple of days that I'm always prettier in the mirror than I expect myself to be. And I watched myself walking past windows today and I thought to myself, huh, I'm actually kind of cute...

And I just decided today, you know what, I'm gorgeous!

And I say this all very tentatively now, because I've always tried to be wary of being vain and I always thought humility is the best practice...but not when it comes at the cost of your well-being! Not when your self-esteem falters as a result!

So I have to put humility aside for a second until I find a less dysfunctional way to conceive of it. So humility aside, Lady-MacBeth-unsex-me style, but in the name of God instead! (So maybe not at all like Lady MacBeth...oh well, I just find her particularly gangsta.)

I am beautiful! I am big, beautiful me. I am beautiful, intelligent, accomplished, all of those things people have told me in the past and I always dismissed for what? The sake of humility. I used to look in the mirror and be ashamed of looking at myself in the mirror, thinking it was vain, for what, humility. It's only natural to look in the mirror and thank Allah (swt) for the gifts he has granted you, but maybe I didn't, in the name of humility.

And maybe I agreed to be with someone who was clearly beneath me, and I should have tried for better but I didn't because of what?

Well, really, beggars can't be choosers mentality, but I wasn't actually a beggar. I'm waiting around for someone to my level, someone who deserves me.

I'm beautiful just the way I am, and someone out there will see it and realize it, recognize it, whether I am 10 pounds heavier or 10 pounds lighter, or 40 pounds heavier or 40 pounds lighter...whatever I do with my hair. I'm me. I wake up every day and God blesses me with my face, my body, all intact...and I pray that it continues. And I have all of my faculties about me. I'm good.

I'm fine.

So that was my epiphany. It does not do me any good to be down on myself, because I'll accept any sort of BS and end up with someone who will leave me on any sort of BS because he's a fool. I don't have time for that at my age. On to the next one!