As salaam alaikum,
I was going to write about depression and NVC next, but I want to take a break from that to voice my reaction to an article in The Atlantic that I just read about the two young people, now convicted of terrorism, Muhammad "Moe" Dakhlalla and Jaelyn Young.
For as long as I've had this blog, on this site and the previous one on Xanga, I have tried to steer clear of politics. My quest in Islam was personal, and although I did have real opinions on issues across the Muslim world, I felt too poorly read and ill-informed to make this place a platform to voice them. Granted, I know that doesn't stop many other people from sharing their two cents on the internet, but I didn't want to contribute to that pool. So this didn't become the place where I decried wars, crimes against Muslims, Islamophobia or condemned terrorism in its many forms and specifics regularly.
The exception I made a year and a half ago was my entry on the San Bernadino attack, in which I expressed my fear about the rise of ISIS and how Americans seemed to be spontaneously radicalizing to attack such mundane venues as a company Christmas party. I remember as a post-9/11 teenager scoffing at security measures at a college football game. Terrorists weren't going to target Nowheresville, USA. With the rise of IS and its sympathizers, I was wrong.
I know little about IS and their propaganda other than they exist and they are terrorists who primarily target other Muslims in Muslim majority countries but whose sympathizers have carried out attacks in Europe as well. I feel as the majority of Muslims do--that these amoral individuals carrying out monstrosities in the name of Islam do not represent the true nature of our faith and way of life. I remember hearing about these two young people, Muhammad and Jaelyn, in passing a couple of years ago. I read of their arrest and their intent to join ISIS abroad. I looked at their pictures. I wondered how a young, mixed couple, in particular, a young, African American revert to Islam, got mixed up in ISIS. In particular, for Jaelyn, I wondered how a young American woman could aspire to such an existence. What were they telling them?
I read The Atlantic article and it gave me pause for another reason. Jaelyn's story sounded so familiar to me, especially her growing up story. It could have been mine. Smart, nerdy but isolated kid in high school. Very strict parents. Untreated depression. Cluster B tendencies. Increased interest in Islam in college, starting to don hijab then. The only difference is that she bought into ISIS propaganda, and I didn't.
The other difference was that of 10 years.
When I was her age and searching the internet for everything I could about Islam, posting in my blog, trying my best to join the MSA, YouTube was nascent, Facebook was The Facebook and was open to Ivys and specific colleges like the University of Michigan only, and MySpace was hanging on. There was no Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat. Message boards were on their way out. My online quest was limited to reading online translations of the Qur'an on the go, browsing Hadith collections and cruising (painfully) through online fatwa banks. Video sermons and online imams were not as ubiquitous as they are now.
No one knows what is in this woman's heart and what was in her intentions but she and God, and I'm not trying to defend her at all. I'm just startled at how much the beginning of her story sounds like the beginning of my own. I don't think it could have been me, but could it have?
It also gives a sinister spin to my novel in progress, A Rose Much Desired, with the two Muslim young adults, Nisreen and Mo, trying to figure out their next steps. Their stories begin separate and as innocently as my story characters. My characters do make a series of mistakes and ultimately crash and burn, but they do not radicalize. Mo and Nisreen's story is entangled in the new world of social media as well. How much of a reality would this be for my characters if they were young 20-somethings now and not in 2007?
I also recognize that for that one Jaelyn, there are hundreds of thousands of other young black women who grew up isolated nerds with strict parents and resultant depression that do not end up attempting to joint ISIS. No one knows what happened there. And given that the FBI were the makers of COINTELPRO, my trust of that institution is thin, if any. We will not know in this life where their influence began with either of these young people.
But what I do know is that this did not have to be. This never has to be. We, as Muslims, have to stop shutting out too many people as other, not of us. At some point, many current day terrorists were one of us, people we wouldn't hesitate to call Muslims. Some of them were once children, and therefore our responsibility to guide. I am not a parent yet and I do not have answers. But saying that these people are not Muslim is not enough. Once they were, and now they are not, and maybe some of us had a hand in that doing. Socially, our religious institutions are not exempt from structural violence, and by belonging to the religion, we are sometimes its agents.
It's hard with social media, though. In its earliest iteration for young people, AIM, I would spend hours at night IMing friends, paragraphs, monologues, soliloquies about our lives. AIM is the reason that I'm able to type so fast today. It was a world we created of our own. My parents barely knew it existed except to comment on the sound of me "raining on the keyboard" when typing to my friends. In a similar way, young people, especially those who have gone off to college, have a world of their own with many more modalities to communicate on, separate from their parents, guardians and mentors, that they can never infiltrate.
I know the answer is love and connection, and we're going to have to figure out all of the essential spaces in which it needs to be placed.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Monday, May 8, 2017
Sunday, April 23, 2017
My Life in NVC
As salaam alaikum,
Before my husband and I married, we initiated a book club--a book club of two. We haven't resumed for a while because we both got busy. Malcolm X is next on our list.
One of the books we read last year was Nonviolent Communication by the late Marshall Rosenberg. I had learned about nonviolent communication, or NVC, from my residency program during our behavioral science block. We were taught the communication paradigm as not only a way to communicate to patients, but a way to communicate with partners, family and friends.
Violent communication, on the other hand, is communication with oneself or others that is laden with judgment and evaluation. It may seem harsh to call this communication violent, but once you call it what it is, you realize the impact it may have on you.
For example, once I was busily cooking a meal for my mother and multitasking in the kitchen. I am very happy to cook for my mother, but I also want things to be just so. So when my mother suddenly said, "Are you burning your food?" I startled and ran to the pan on the flame. The food was fine.
"Why did you say that? Did you think it was burning?" I asked her.
"No, I just asked," she said, shrugging it off.
If she didn't think it was burning, why did she say that? I think she just wanted me to check on my food and didn't realize that what she said was a little bit hurtful, like she assumed I would be burning my food.
I mean, accidents happen. I burn food all of the time while doing too much in the kitchen. But if she didn't think I was burning my food, there was no reason to make that judgment. Especially as I had been carefully and lovingly making meals for her and the family all week.
Anyway...
The premise of is simple, but it's challenging to execute. There are four elements to NVC: (1) make an observation, (2) state one's feelings (3) express ones needs and (4) make a request. Observation, feelings, needs, request. Each element of this formula has it's own chapter in the book which helps students of NVC use it without injecting the violent language of judgment into the formula.
For example, one makes observations free of evaluation and requests that are specific and life-enriching.
So in the example given above with my mother, if I used NVC, I may have told her, "When you asked me if I was burning my food, I felt hurt and discouraged. I want to be trusted as an accomplished and careful cook in your kitchen. Can you instead ask or suggest that I check on the food when you are afraid I may be distracted? Thank you."
The observation was her asking me if I burned my food, my feelings were of hurt and discouragement. My need was to feel trusted (and respected). And my request was for her to instead ask if I check the food if she thinks I may be distracted.
This was hard for me to write. One could write this, which would not be NVC: "Mom, when you think I'm burning my food, I feel like you expect me to burn the food, like you're judging my skills. I need you to trust me. Don't say things like that to me."
Check it. There is an observation, an attempt at statement of feelings, an expression of needs and a request, but they are laden with judgments and otherwise not quite fitting with NVC.
The observation is not a pure observation, but an evaluation. My mother asked if I was burning my food--she told me she didn't believe I was burning the food, and even if she hadn't, I know what she said and not what she believed. The statement of feelings...is actually not a statement of feelings. Feeling like she expects me to burn the food is not a feeling, and telling her she's judging me is, again, an evaluation of her. To say that I felt judged, ignored, scrutinized or any such verb is relating it to the other person. The NVC statement of feelings should be independent of the other person. That's why my original example included hurt and discouraged.
Finally, the request should be in positive terms and should be specific. "Don't say things like that to me," is a negative request and it is not at all specific.
When our communications are judgmental or evaluative, people are likely to get defensive. The second example I gave would probably not have gone over well. ...and honestly, the first one wouldn't have gone off without a hitch, either. I didn't feel strongly enough about my feelings after my mother asked me if my food was burning to launch into NVC, but just giving an example of how it works.
My husband would sometimes roll his eyes in the early days after we read this book when I would launch into NVC after an argument. Sometimes, he just wants to argue because it feels cathartic to him.
I, on the other hand, do not find arguments cathartic. On the contrary, I find it distressing to have a raise-your-voice argument. Him having grown up with parents who eventually divorced and maybe argued like that, he thinks it's normal. I do not want to deny him catharsis, but I will counter such arguments with NVC every time.
One way to do that within the paradigm is to try to identify, in reverse, one's feelings and needs.
So if he were to say, "I'm the only one doing work around here," I would go backward and try to figure out what observation he made to jump to this conclusion.
"Are you reacting to the floor not being swept?" or, "Are you reacting to the dishes in the sink?" I would continue this without making evaluations until either I or he arrive at the specific observation.
Then I would say, "So, the fact that I haven't swept the floor in two weeks makes you feel angry, yeah?"
And if I misidentified the feeling, perhaps he would tell me. Then, I'd try to identify his need, if he hadn't told me.
"You need to feel as if I care about the house you're working hard to maintain for us, yeah? Do you want me to sweep at least once a week?"
And that would seriously be the root of such vague declarations. We don't argue over each other's household tasks anymore because now I understand that it wasn't so much about him wanting me, as his wife, to do "womanly" housework as much as he wanted to see me do my own tasks (a chore list we agreed upon) as a sign that I cared about the house as much as he did.
I also understand that his main pet peeve is dust. Dirty floor and dusty counter tops to much are just pitfalls of being an active cook in my kitchen. I've watched him cook and pick up every individual rice grain he drops with the pads of his fingers and curse if he gets a drop of sauce on the counter.
When I cook, on the other hand, the kitchen tends towards entropy until the final touches are made and the creation is simmering on the stove.
Don't get me wrong--I don't think in NVC most of the time or talk that way to my husband on a daily basis. But when a communication is important or I sense a miscommunication coming on, going back to that paradigm is helpful for sorting out what we're actually reacting to, what our true feelings are in response, what we actually need and a life-enriching way to request it.
I'm especially interested in the paradigm's take on depression. I'll talk about that later.
Before my husband and I married, we initiated a book club--a book club of two. We haven't resumed for a while because we both got busy. Malcolm X is next on our list.
One of the books we read last year was Nonviolent Communication by the late Marshall Rosenberg. I had learned about nonviolent communication, or NVC, from my residency program during our behavioral science block. We were taught the communication paradigm as not only a way to communicate to patients, but a way to communicate with partners, family and friends.
Violent communication, on the other hand, is communication with oneself or others that is laden with judgment and evaluation. It may seem harsh to call this communication violent, but once you call it what it is, you realize the impact it may have on you.
For example, once I was busily cooking a meal for my mother and multitasking in the kitchen. I am very happy to cook for my mother, but I also want things to be just so. So when my mother suddenly said, "Are you burning your food?" I startled and ran to the pan on the flame. The food was fine.
"Why did you say that? Did you think it was burning?" I asked her.
"No, I just asked," she said, shrugging it off.
If she didn't think it was burning, why did she say that? I think she just wanted me to check on my food and didn't realize that what she said was a little bit hurtful, like she assumed I would be burning my food.
I mean, accidents happen. I burn food all of the time while doing too much in the kitchen. But if she didn't think I was burning my food, there was no reason to make that judgment. Especially as I had been carefully and lovingly making meals for her and the family all week.
Anyway...
The premise of is simple, but it's challenging to execute. There are four elements to NVC: (1) make an observation, (2) state one's feelings (3) express ones needs and (4) make a request. Observation, feelings, needs, request. Each element of this formula has it's own chapter in the book which helps students of NVC use it without injecting the violent language of judgment into the formula.
For example, one makes observations free of evaluation and requests that are specific and life-enriching.
So in the example given above with my mother, if I used NVC, I may have told her, "When you asked me if I was burning my food, I felt hurt and discouraged. I want to be trusted as an accomplished and careful cook in your kitchen. Can you instead ask or suggest that I check on the food when you are afraid I may be distracted? Thank you."
The observation was her asking me if I burned my food, my feelings were of hurt and discouragement. My need was to feel trusted (and respected). And my request was for her to instead ask if I check the food if she thinks I may be distracted.
This was hard for me to write. One could write this, which would not be NVC: "Mom, when you think I'm burning my food, I feel like you expect me to burn the food, like you're judging my skills. I need you to trust me. Don't say things like that to me."
Check it. There is an observation, an attempt at statement of feelings, an expression of needs and a request, but they are laden with judgments and otherwise not quite fitting with NVC.
The observation is not a pure observation, but an evaluation. My mother asked if I was burning my food--she told me she didn't believe I was burning the food, and even if she hadn't, I know what she said and not what she believed. The statement of feelings...is actually not a statement of feelings. Feeling like she expects me to burn the food is not a feeling, and telling her she's judging me is, again, an evaluation of her. To say that I felt judged, ignored, scrutinized or any such verb is relating it to the other person. The NVC statement of feelings should be independent of the other person. That's why my original example included hurt and discouraged.
Finally, the request should be in positive terms and should be specific. "Don't say things like that to me," is a negative request and it is not at all specific.
When our communications are judgmental or evaluative, people are likely to get defensive. The second example I gave would probably not have gone over well. ...and honestly, the first one wouldn't have gone off without a hitch, either. I didn't feel strongly enough about my feelings after my mother asked me if my food was burning to launch into NVC, but just giving an example of how it works.
My husband would sometimes roll his eyes in the early days after we read this book when I would launch into NVC after an argument. Sometimes, he just wants to argue because it feels cathartic to him.
I, on the other hand, do not find arguments cathartic. On the contrary, I find it distressing to have a raise-your-voice argument. Him having grown up with parents who eventually divorced and maybe argued like that, he thinks it's normal. I do not want to deny him catharsis, but I will counter such arguments with NVC every time.
One way to do that within the paradigm is to try to identify, in reverse, one's feelings and needs.
So if he were to say, "I'm the only one doing work around here," I would go backward and try to figure out what observation he made to jump to this conclusion.
"Are you reacting to the floor not being swept?" or, "Are you reacting to the dishes in the sink?" I would continue this without making evaluations until either I or he arrive at the specific observation.
Then I would say, "So, the fact that I haven't swept the floor in two weeks makes you feel angry, yeah?"
And if I misidentified the feeling, perhaps he would tell me. Then, I'd try to identify his need, if he hadn't told me.
"You need to feel as if I care about the house you're working hard to maintain for us, yeah? Do you want me to sweep at least once a week?"
And that would seriously be the root of such vague declarations. We don't argue over each other's household tasks anymore because now I understand that it wasn't so much about him wanting me, as his wife, to do "womanly" housework as much as he wanted to see me do my own tasks (a chore list we agreed upon) as a sign that I cared about the house as much as he did.
I also understand that his main pet peeve is dust. Dirty floor and dusty counter tops to much are just pitfalls of being an active cook in my kitchen. I've watched him cook and pick up every individual rice grain he drops with the pads of his fingers and curse if he gets a drop of sauce on the counter.
When I cook, on the other hand, the kitchen tends towards entropy until the final touches are made and the creation is simmering on the stove.
Don't get me wrong--I don't think in NVC most of the time or talk that way to my husband on a daily basis. But when a communication is important or I sense a miscommunication coming on, going back to that paradigm is helpful for sorting out what we're actually reacting to, what our true feelings are in response, what we actually need and a life-enriching way to request it.
I'm especially interested in the paradigm's take on depression. I'll talk about that later.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Learning to Love Myself by Loving Someone Else
Salaam,
The fiance is out of the country for two weeks, so for the first time in several months, I truly have all of my time to myself. Instead of commuting to see each other and dedicating slices of time that used to be dedicated to writing and music instead to our growing relationship, our daily interactions consist of 30 minutes total text breaks.
It was glorious this morning: waking up when my body felt ready, lounging around in my pajamas for the first half of the day, leisurely completing charts from clinic while simultaneously documenting ideas for future writing projects. This instead of my usual Friday fare of hurriedly completing any charting left so that I'll be ready to hang out with him when he gets off of work.
He works half days on Friday, and I have Friday off for that specific reason. It makes up for Wednesdays where we have lunch together but I work until 9 or 10pm and otherwise wouldn't see him that day.
I got to spend nearly 30 minutes on the chart of a complicated neonate I'm caring for. I carefully documented the birth history, and my plan, and I was about to finalize the document, I remembered something essential I wanted to add to my plan. I went back to the assessment and plan tab and saw that I had already documented that very thing.
I instantly felt that warm glow in my heart space I get whenever I'm proud of myself. Good job, you're pretty sharp! Look at you, way ahead of the game...
...and that gave me pause. How long have I been feeling that way? For a while now, I haven't been counting. I feel particularly accomplished after complete, well-rounded patient visits where our plan for their health worked, or a treatment helped more than either of us expected, or the patient felt listened to like they had by no other provider. That heart space swell happens there, too.
It wasn't always like that, though. And that's what gave me pause this morning. There was a time where I had to imagine someone else being impressed by me before I could be impressed with myself.
Rewind to ten to twelve years ago, and that was exactly the case. I was in love with a man I imagined to be different from who he actually was. Whenever we interacted, he was impressed by me. And I mistook that for interest. And I fell in love with this man, who was so outside my realm, who could enter my world and like me.
He was not that courageous, but I wouldn't come to terms with that for a few years.
When I met him, I was knee deep in depression. I had to have friends talk me down from self-destructive behaviors and plead with me to start medication, which I never did. I prayed and God didn't seem to listen. I had convinced myself that the reason was because I was actually one destined for hell, one whose heart God had hardened. I felt doomed. I was a high functioning severely depressed college woman who earned a 4.0 GPA her freshman year.
And then I met him, and I had a reason for living.
Not only living, but thriving. I had a reason to get better. I wanted to be worthy of his love. I didn't want to be depressed, damaged. So like a whining child who struggles to wipe away signs of crying with a parent's reprimanding, I quickly tried to become normal. I tried to become the full person my depression was keeping me from becoming. And it had to be convincing, so he wouldn't become disconcerted and take his interest elsewhere.
It was often emotional whiplash and I wasn't ready. Depression became neurosis. I used to walk around his dorm late nights, hoping I'd chance to run into him, sometime taking those walks past midnight alone on campus, absently singing "Love's Train" to myself.
"Now if by chance, you'll let me come over. Down on the street, I wanna see you, baby."
I just wanted to see him, to have one of our 2 minute awkward interactions and be on my way, fill myself with the hope that would keep me going.
Long after the time I realized that we would never be and he met the woman that would be his wife, my brain was still stuck in this circuit. I met him in a science class. So, whenever I solved a difficult problem in my science problem sets, years later, I imagined him being impressed with my prowess over the tough material, and I'd get that glow in my heart space, and it would inspire me to keep going.
It took me a while to realize what I was doing, and a while longer to break it.
Sitting here, doing charts, congratulating myself on making a clever plan for my complicated baby patient, I realized that I had to learn to love myself by loving someone else. And isn't that backwards? Isn't that exactly what all of the smarmy advice articles tell you not to do.
Oh well.
My life was close to losing all meaning for myself. And since I was a child, I lost myself in love for others. So it would just make sense that I'd have to lose my self-destroying persona in the love for someone else in order to start over. It may not have been ideal, but it was an emergency!
And through prayer and time, I've come to fully love myself without needing the love of someone else. There are things about me that no one else appreciates that I love. My love for myself is far beyond my fiance's love for me, so I don't have to imagine his pride to be proud of myself. I don't need his love to fill my heart space with warmth.
Although, I must say, having people who love you, including a partner, does wonders to validate your own great love for yourself. It's not everything, though.
All this being said, I don't recommend this way of learning to love oneself. I'm just so grateful that, after years of despair and desolation, I finally do.
The fiance is out of the country for two weeks, so for the first time in several months, I truly have all of my time to myself. Instead of commuting to see each other and dedicating slices of time that used to be dedicated to writing and music instead to our growing relationship, our daily interactions consist of 30 minutes total text breaks.
It was glorious this morning: waking up when my body felt ready, lounging around in my pajamas for the first half of the day, leisurely completing charts from clinic while simultaneously documenting ideas for future writing projects. This instead of my usual Friday fare of hurriedly completing any charting left so that I'll be ready to hang out with him when he gets off of work.
He works half days on Friday, and I have Friday off for that specific reason. It makes up for Wednesdays where we have lunch together but I work until 9 or 10pm and otherwise wouldn't see him that day.
I got to spend nearly 30 minutes on the chart of a complicated neonate I'm caring for. I carefully documented the birth history, and my plan, and I was about to finalize the document, I remembered something essential I wanted to add to my plan. I went back to the assessment and plan tab and saw that I had already documented that very thing.
I instantly felt that warm glow in my heart space I get whenever I'm proud of myself. Good job, you're pretty sharp! Look at you, way ahead of the game...
...and that gave me pause. How long have I been feeling that way? For a while now, I haven't been counting. I feel particularly accomplished after complete, well-rounded patient visits where our plan for their health worked, or a treatment helped more than either of us expected, or the patient felt listened to like they had by no other provider. That heart space swell happens there, too.
It wasn't always like that, though. And that's what gave me pause this morning. There was a time where I had to imagine someone else being impressed by me before I could be impressed with myself.
Rewind to ten to twelve years ago, and that was exactly the case. I was in love with a man I imagined to be different from who he actually was. Whenever we interacted, he was impressed by me. And I mistook that for interest. And I fell in love with this man, who was so outside my realm, who could enter my world and like me.
He was not that courageous, but I wouldn't come to terms with that for a few years.
When I met him, I was knee deep in depression. I had to have friends talk me down from self-destructive behaviors and plead with me to start medication, which I never did. I prayed and God didn't seem to listen. I had convinced myself that the reason was because I was actually one destined for hell, one whose heart God had hardened. I felt doomed. I was a high functioning severely depressed college woman who earned a 4.0 GPA her freshman year.
And then I met him, and I had a reason for living.
Not only living, but thriving. I had a reason to get better. I wanted to be worthy of his love. I didn't want to be depressed, damaged. So like a whining child who struggles to wipe away signs of crying with a parent's reprimanding, I quickly tried to become normal. I tried to become the full person my depression was keeping me from becoming. And it had to be convincing, so he wouldn't become disconcerted and take his interest elsewhere.
It was often emotional whiplash and I wasn't ready. Depression became neurosis. I used to walk around his dorm late nights, hoping I'd chance to run into him, sometime taking those walks past midnight alone on campus, absently singing "Love's Train" to myself.
"Now if by chance, you'll let me come over. Down on the street, I wanna see you, baby."
I just wanted to see him, to have one of our 2 minute awkward interactions and be on my way, fill myself with the hope that would keep me going.
Long after the time I realized that we would never be and he met the woman that would be his wife, my brain was still stuck in this circuit. I met him in a science class. So, whenever I solved a difficult problem in my science problem sets, years later, I imagined him being impressed with my prowess over the tough material, and I'd get that glow in my heart space, and it would inspire me to keep going.
It took me a while to realize what I was doing, and a while longer to break it.
Sitting here, doing charts, congratulating myself on making a clever plan for my complicated baby patient, I realized that I had to learn to love myself by loving someone else. And isn't that backwards? Isn't that exactly what all of the smarmy advice articles tell you not to do.
Oh well.
My life was close to losing all meaning for myself. And since I was a child, I lost myself in love for others. So it would just make sense that I'd have to lose my self-destroying persona in the love for someone else in order to start over. It may not have been ideal, but it was an emergency!
And through prayer and time, I've come to fully love myself without needing the love of someone else. There are things about me that no one else appreciates that I love. My love for myself is far beyond my fiance's love for me, so I don't have to imagine his pride to be proud of myself. I don't need his love to fill my heart space with warmth.
Although, I must say, having people who love you, including a partner, does wonders to validate your own great love for yourself. It's not everything, though.
All this being said, I don't recommend this way of learning to love oneself. I'm just so grateful that, after years of despair and desolation, I finally do.
Friday, February 5, 2016
Love Vignette 1: The Strategic Valentine
Salaam,
I fully intended to be here more often, but I'm not. Alas, the real world and the realities of preparing to marry (namely the building the relationship part, not wedding plans in the least) have sucked me dry of late--of time, not of inspiration. There are so many thoughts I have and so many things that I want to write. So, at this hour, I am sacrificing sleep in favor of my favorite art form...
...yes, even more favorite than music, somehow...
But I can't bring myself to write anything of substance about the state of the world, about politics, about Black Lives Matter, about mass incarceration, about the Flint water crisis, about ISIS, about the refugee crisis...about the various topics that are important to me and swimming around my head right now.
So instead, I will ease myself back into blogging by posting these little Love Vignettes.
I've started easing my fiancé in by telling him stories about guys I've crushed on over the years--one, to assure him he's got no competition. But also to give him a sense of why and how I love. And in telling him these stories, it's reminded me of some of my favorite stories of childhood crushes. Some of the stories are cute. So, in honor of Valentine's Day approaching and my the impending 31st anniversary of my circling the sun (aA), I'm going to share with you some Love Vignettes.
In no particular order.
This one, for Valentine's Day - The Strategic Valentine.
Before I would fall in love for the first time, I had crushes pretty much every year of kindergarten and elementary school. I had my first crush when I was five years old in kindergarten. His name was Terry. I liked him simply because he was cute. With each year, I would fall in like with a boy for a slightly more nuanced reason. By first grade, though, I hadn't gotten that far.
By the first grade, Terry went to another school. Our kindergarten was district-wide, so all of the kindergarteners of the five elementary school district attended school in one building, Thurston Early Childhood Development Center (Thurston ECDC). Graduating from kindergarten meant going to a new school. So it was in Ms. Miller's first grade class that I would meet my next crush, Darryl.
My like for Darryl would begin a years-long preference for husky or chubby men--one that has not borne out in my present relationship, but that's a different story.
Darryl was a husky little boy. Looking back, he probably was prescribed a steroid inhaler for asthma. Or maybe he was just husky. He was in good company, because I was a chubby little girl. I liked him because he was bigger than the other boys. Bigger and a little bit brusk.
I don't think there was very much more to it than that.
Heaven for me was this one time when we were on a field trip to the Henry Ford Museum, which we lovingly called Greenfield Village, though we never spent time in the actual village, and I got to sit next to him on the bus. And we fell asleep on each other! When he woke me as we arrived to Greenfield Village, I tried to act like I was annoyed with him so he wouldn't guess that I reveled in every minute we lay on each other.
Yes, I was six.
Love as a child can be real and complex, but there is something about being a child that makes it forbidden to be out in the open. It would have mortified me for anyone, especially Darryl, to know. I kept it to myself. Most days it was easy. It wasn't like I swooned from afar. It was enough that I knew that I liked him, it was my own little secret, and I was satisfied with that. I didn't have to do anything with that, we didn't have to become an item, nothing like that. It was what it was.
That is, until Valentine's day.
As an almost 8 year old in the second grade, Darryl was still in my class. I realized that Valentine's Day may blow my cover. I don't know if a note went home with all of the kids, but all of our parents bought valentines enough for the whole class and addressed them to the whole class. The best valentines of elementary school were those that included a sucker or some other sizable piece of candy along with them. Or one of those boxes of chalky Valentine's candy. The message was dispensable.
I was advanced enough at that age to help my mother write out the valentines and assemble them. Or maybe I volunteered to help, because I had to do damage control. Darryl couldn't know that I liked him. Therefore, I had to make sure he didn't get a valentine from me that said something like, "I love you," or, "I like you," or something obvious. I didn't want it to be a thing.
So, I poured over the stack of valentines that my mother bought and found one that I thought was pretty generic and innocent such that no one would have any suspicion about my intent. I felt proud of myself and relieved that my secret was safe with me.
Then I got to school. I passed the valentine's out to my friends in class. I got to his desk and put his valentine down and said nothing. As I walked away, I heard him laugh.
"Hey, this is cool! I like this! Hey, look!" he beckoned to his friend sitting next to him. Shoot, shoot, shoot...it had backfired. What happened? Who would have thought he'd pay any attention to a valentine with a dolphin on it?
"Look at this. It says, 'I flip over you!' Isn't that cool? I flip over you."
I buried my head in the desk, mortified, wishing he'd stop reading it aloud.
My valentine to Darryl that I hand picked precisely so he'd have no idea that I liked him ended up being his favorite out of the 20-some kids in class. Probably because it was the only valentine so painstakingly chosen.
But, little did I know, he would never know that I liked him. He'd have no idea. A smart boy would begin to suspect it after he noticed a girl made effort to sit next to him on the bus so she could press her legs next to him and lie on him.
But no, he was an average boy, and average boys have no clue about those things.
I moved on to a boy named Michael in the third grade, who I liked not only for his looks, but because he was smart (I was getting there!). But not again until Kenneth in the fifth grade would I be so mortified at the possibility of someone knowing that I liked a boy.
...though I would continue to keep crushes secret until I was 25 years old.
I fully intended to be here more often, but I'm not. Alas, the real world and the realities of preparing to marry (namely the building the relationship part, not wedding plans in the least) have sucked me dry of late--of time, not of inspiration. There are so many thoughts I have and so many things that I want to write. So, at this hour, I am sacrificing sleep in favor of my favorite art form...
...yes, even more favorite than music, somehow...
But I can't bring myself to write anything of substance about the state of the world, about politics, about Black Lives Matter, about mass incarceration, about the Flint water crisis, about ISIS, about the refugee crisis...about the various topics that are important to me and swimming around my head right now.
So instead, I will ease myself back into blogging by posting these little Love Vignettes.
I've started easing my fiancé in by telling him stories about guys I've crushed on over the years--one, to assure him he's got no competition. But also to give him a sense of why and how I love. And in telling him these stories, it's reminded me of some of my favorite stories of childhood crushes. Some of the stories are cute. So, in honor of Valentine's Day approaching and my the impending 31st anniversary of my circling the sun (aA), I'm going to share with you some Love Vignettes.
In no particular order.
This one, for Valentine's Day - The Strategic Valentine.
Before I would fall in love for the first time, I had crushes pretty much every year of kindergarten and elementary school. I had my first crush when I was five years old in kindergarten. His name was Terry. I liked him simply because he was cute. With each year, I would fall in like with a boy for a slightly more nuanced reason. By first grade, though, I hadn't gotten that far.
By the first grade, Terry went to another school. Our kindergarten was district-wide, so all of the kindergarteners of the five elementary school district attended school in one building, Thurston Early Childhood Development Center (Thurston ECDC). Graduating from kindergarten meant going to a new school. So it was in Ms. Miller's first grade class that I would meet my next crush, Darryl.
My like for Darryl would begin a years-long preference for husky or chubby men--one that has not borne out in my present relationship, but that's a different story.
Darryl was a husky little boy. Looking back, he probably was prescribed a steroid inhaler for asthma. Or maybe he was just husky. He was in good company, because I was a chubby little girl. I liked him because he was bigger than the other boys. Bigger and a little bit brusk.
I don't think there was very much more to it than that.
Heaven for me was this one time when we were on a field trip to the Henry Ford Museum, which we lovingly called Greenfield Village, though we never spent time in the actual village, and I got to sit next to him on the bus. And we fell asleep on each other! When he woke me as we arrived to Greenfield Village, I tried to act like I was annoyed with him so he wouldn't guess that I reveled in every minute we lay on each other.
Yes, I was six.
Love as a child can be real and complex, but there is something about being a child that makes it forbidden to be out in the open. It would have mortified me for anyone, especially Darryl, to know. I kept it to myself. Most days it was easy. It wasn't like I swooned from afar. It was enough that I knew that I liked him, it was my own little secret, and I was satisfied with that. I didn't have to do anything with that, we didn't have to become an item, nothing like that. It was what it was.
That is, until Valentine's day.
As an almost 8 year old in the second grade, Darryl was still in my class. I realized that Valentine's Day may blow my cover. I don't know if a note went home with all of the kids, but all of our parents bought valentines enough for the whole class and addressed them to the whole class. The best valentines of elementary school were those that included a sucker or some other sizable piece of candy along with them. Or one of those boxes of chalky Valentine's candy. The message was dispensable.
I was advanced enough at that age to help my mother write out the valentines and assemble them. Or maybe I volunteered to help, because I had to do damage control. Darryl couldn't know that I liked him. Therefore, I had to make sure he didn't get a valentine from me that said something like, "I love you," or, "I like you," or something obvious. I didn't want it to be a thing.
So, I poured over the stack of valentines that my mother bought and found one that I thought was pretty generic and innocent such that no one would have any suspicion about my intent. I felt proud of myself and relieved that my secret was safe with me.
Then I got to school. I passed the valentine's out to my friends in class. I got to his desk and put his valentine down and said nothing. As I walked away, I heard him laugh.
"Hey, this is cool! I like this! Hey, look!" he beckoned to his friend sitting next to him. Shoot, shoot, shoot...it had backfired. What happened? Who would have thought he'd pay any attention to a valentine with a dolphin on it?
"Look at this. It says, 'I flip over you!' Isn't that cool? I flip over you."
I buried my head in the desk, mortified, wishing he'd stop reading it aloud.
My valentine to Darryl that I hand picked precisely so he'd have no idea that I liked him ended up being his favorite out of the 20-some kids in class. Probably because it was the only valentine so painstakingly chosen.
But, little did I know, he would never know that I liked him. He'd have no idea. A smart boy would begin to suspect it after he noticed a girl made effort to sit next to him on the bus so she could press her legs next to him and lie on him.
But no, he was an average boy, and average boys have no clue about those things.
I moved on to a boy named Michael in the third grade, who I liked not only for his looks, but because he was smart (I was getting there!). But not again until Kenneth in the fifth grade would I be so mortified at the possibility of someone knowing that I liked a boy.
...though I would continue to keep crushes secret until I was 25 years old.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
"It Wasn't Meant to Be" Takes New Meaning
Salaam,
"It wasn't meant to be."
Intellectually, I could get with that, but emotionally, I could not. As a several-year sufferer of unrequited love for much of my young adult years, the phrase seemed cruel, a hackneyed trope offered by people who didn't have answers but were well-meaning nonetheless.
Years after getting over the love that never would be, I still couldn't really understand that. Yes, obviously it was not meant to be, because here I am and there he is, living two separate lives, probably never chancing to meet again and, because of Facebook, I know too much.
My last entry shows how I couldn't understand it.
And to be clear, part of me will still wonder. There were so many signs that I interpreted as meaning we would end up together after pointed and plaintive prayers. These signs from hearing a random string quartet practice the wedding march in my dorm to him being down the hall in my friend's dorm, hearing me as I cried. Why would God tease me with these signs if we were, in fact, never meant to be.
Because we weren't. We existed in each others' lives exactly as we should have.
Before I fell for him, I had prayed specifically that I would not do such a thing. I prayed to God not to allow me to fall for a man who was not meant for me. But I did.
Most other prayers I have prayed in my life have been answered, from small things like praying that the rain would let up so I could take pictures for a summer project in high school, to big things like medical school acceptances and residency matches. But my faith remained shaken after the man I prayed for so long would be my future husband ended up to be someone else's.
I used to wonder why, and then for a long time, I gave up. I just didn't think about it. I reasoned, there are probably people who pray for more important things, like being able to feed their child, or to save their dying spouse from the wrath of disease, or any other number of situations who are now sitting on the other side of things, wondering why their prayers weren't answered. For me, the only thing not answered for me is that some dude I had a crush on in college didn't like me back. Big deal.
But then, thinking about the turmoil my fiancé has had to go through because of his family's disapproval of me, I realize something...
...well, for one, it likely would have been several times worse with my college crush. My fiancé has a small family. My college crush had a large family that was apparently invested in him ending up with someone from their own community. And that he did, and their families get along well.
Whereas, my future in-laws will likely have little contact with me...thankfully, as the case were.
I would love to be part of a family that loved me as I feel I deserve to be loved as an excellent future-partner to their beloved son, but it looks like I'm not going to...just as I was prepared was a distinct possibility with my college crush.
I said I was ready for anything back then, now I get to eat my words. It is hard. It's harder to see your fiancé essentially disowned from his family.
But more than realizing that, rationally, it was not meant to be, I also recognize that...sometimes, even if certain traits line up, there is mutual attraction, interest, fascination...whatever...it wasn't meant to be.
Yes, so many other prayers in my life have been answered, and easily. Of course this prayer would be the hardest. Yes, I have a friend who claims she prayed to find a husband and then met her husband the next day, but a lot happened before he became her husband that did not seal that prayer as answered for her. She made it sound easy, but it wasn't.
It's easy when a prayer only involves you, or your personal protection, or something like that. It's easy when a prayer is about a career path, or a housing option, or safety on road or in the air while one travels. It's not easy when a prayer involves a whole other human being who is just as complex as you are, with their own desires, needs and prayers.
The man that you see who you decide must be the future husband of your prayer and desire may have congruent desires but perhaps incongruent needs, for example. People are not ready to order. I have yet to hear anyone say that someone came and was perfectly equipped to be their future spouse when they met them.
So as much as I may have loved my college crush, I could not pray him into being for me. As much as I felt I could "deal with everything going through [his] head," I was never in his head. We existed together in the same realm for just a little bit. His path was other, and I had to steer away. It wasn't meant to be.
Relationship prayers are the hardest to pray and the hardest with which to wait for the answer. The answer is sometimes quite unexpected. Whenever our desires and prayers are directed at a thing that necessarily involves another complete human being, so many things have to line up to make it work. And while certainly nothing is impossible with God, it will take a little bit more time than...driving under a bridge to see the rain stop instantly to allow you to do your high school summer project.
So for me, it wasn't meant to be takes on new meaning. It's no longer hackneyed and frustrating. It's a simple truth. It's not a term of resignation; it reminds me of my submission. Submission to the Truth. For all I prayed, God knew that my college crush was not actually who I thought he was or what I wanted, and if he was, he knew that I was not what he needed. It was never a prayer unanswered. It was a prayer answered, but I didn't leave space or understanding of that being possibly the answer.
And with the tincture of time and experience and the prospect of assuming a family name of a family that will have nothing to do with me, I see...I come to understand. Love can conquer much but you have to decide if it's worth it.
In terms of the signs I got after pointed prayers...I still don't understand those. Maybe it's like the movie Mr. Nobody, and I could have lived a life where I ended up with my college crush if I took precise actions earlier on, actions I was not ready to take at 19. Maybe that piece has some meaning that I'll uncover later in my life. This little epiphany about the whole situation only took 11 years, after all.
"It wasn't meant to be."
Intellectually, I could get with that, but emotionally, I could not. As a several-year sufferer of unrequited love for much of my young adult years, the phrase seemed cruel, a hackneyed trope offered by people who didn't have answers but were well-meaning nonetheless.
Years after getting over the love that never would be, I still couldn't really understand that. Yes, obviously it was not meant to be, because here I am and there he is, living two separate lives, probably never chancing to meet again and, because of Facebook, I know too much.
My last entry shows how I couldn't understand it.
And to be clear, part of me will still wonder. There were so many signs that I interpreted as meaning we would end up together after pointed and plaintive prayers. These signs from hearing a random string quartet practice the wedding march in my dorm to him being down the hall in my friend's dorm, hearing me as I cried. Why would God tease me with these signs if we were, in fact, never meant to be.
Because we weren't. We existed in each others' lives exactly as we should have.
Before I fell for him, I had prayed specifically that I would not do such a thing. I prayed to God not to allow me to fall for a man who was not meant for me. But I did.
Most other prayers I have prayed in my life have been answered, from small things like praying that the rain would let up so I could take pictures for a summer project in high school, to big things like medical school acceptances and residency matches. But my faith remained shaken after the man I prayed for so long would be my future husband ended up to be someone else's.
I used to wonder why, and then for a long time, I gave up. I just didn't think about it. I reasoned, there are probably people who pray for more important things, like being able to feed their child, or to save their dying spouse from the wrath of disease, or any other number of situations who are now sitting on the other side of things, wondering why their prayers weren't answered. For me, the only thing not answered for me is that some dude I had a crush on in college didn't like me back. Big deal.
But then, thinking about the turmoil my fiancé has had to go through because of his family's disapproval of me, I realize something...
...well, for one, it likely would have been several times worse with my college crush. My fiancé has a small family. My college crush had a large family that was apparently invested in him ending up with someone from their own community. And that he did, and their families get along well.
Whereas, my future in-laws will likely have little contact with me...thankfully, as the case were.
I would love to be part of a family that loved me as I feel I deserve to be loved as an excellent future-partner to their beloved son, but it looks like I'm not going to...just as I was prepared was a distinct possibility with my college crush.
I said I was ready for anything back then, now I get to eat my words. It is hard. It's harder to see your fiancé essentially disowned from his family.
But more than realizing that, rationally, it was not meant to be, I also recognize that...sometimes, even if certain traits line up, there is mutual attraction, interest, fascination...whatever...it wasn't meant to be.
Yes, so many other prayers in my life have been answered, and easily. Of course this prayer would be the hardest. Yes, I have a friend who claims she prayed to find a husband and then met her husband the next day, but a lot happened before he became her husband that did not seal that prayer as answered for her. She made it sound easy, but it wasn't.
It's easy when a prayer only involves you, or your personal protection, or something like that. It's easy when a prayer is about a career path, or a housing option, or safety on road or in the air while one travels. It's not easy when a prayer involves a whole other human being who is just as complex as you are, with their own desires, needs and prayers.
The man that you see who you decide must be the future husband of your prayer and desire may have congruent desires but perhaps incongruent needs, for example. People are not ready to order. I have yet to hear anyone say that someone came and was perfectly equipped to be their future spouse when they met them.
So as much as I may have loved my college crush, I could not pray him into being for me. As much as I felt I could "deal with everything going through [his] head," I was never in his head. We existed together in the same realm for just a little bit. His path was other, and I had to steer away. It wasn't meant to be.
Relationship prayers are the hardest to pray and the hardest with which to wait for the answer. The answer is sometimes quite unexpected. Whenever our desires and prayers are directed at a thing that necessarily involves another complete human being, so many things have to line up to make it work. And while certainly nothing is impossible with God, it will take a little bit more time than...driving under a bridge to see the rain stop instantly to allow you to do your high school summer project.
So for me, it wasn't meant to be takes on new meaning. It's no longer hackneyed and frustrating. It's a simple truth. It's not a term of resignation; it reminds me of my submission. Submission to the Truth. For all I prayed, God knew that my college crush was not actually who I thought he was or what I wanted, and if he was, he knew that I was not what he needed. It was never a prayer unanswered. It was a prayer answered, but I didn't leave space or understanding of that being possibly the answer.
And with the tincture of time and experience and the prospect of assuming a family name of a family that will have nothing to do with me, I see...I come to understand. Love can conquer much but you have to decide if it's worth it.
In terms of the signs I got after pointed prayers...I still don't understand those. Maybe it's like the movie Mr. Nobody, and I could have lived a life where I ended up with my college crush if I took precise actions earlier on, actions I was not ready to take at 19. Maybe that piece has some meaning that I'll uncover later in my life. This little epiphany about the whole situation only took 11 years, after all.
Saturday, September 5, 2015
I Never Existed Again
Salaam,
Me apaixonei?
Talvez, pode ser
Enloqueci?
Não sei, nunca vi
Preciso sair
Depois que eu descobri
Que há você
Nunca mais existi
I fell in love?
Maybe, it could be
I went crazy?
I don't know, I've never been there
I need to get out
After I discovered
That there is you
I never existed again.
I told the story of this song before. How I heard this song on my "Haiti" playlist on Pandora in 2008, how I excitedly ordered a CD imported from Brasil with the song on it since I couldn't download it on the internet, how I read the insert in the CD to find a translation of the song, and how I realized that the song put into words what I could not.
I fell in love with a man and then I never existed again.
Alas, the very thing I prayed to God wouldn't happened had happened. I fell in love with a man who would not be mine. Why? Why would God allow it?
Over 11 years later, I still don't know. But this song reminds me of that place.
No song that exists on earth speaks to me more than this one. No artist has more quickly become my favorite than Djavan for the fact that he wrote this song. Talk about killing me softly.
There was a time where I couldn't complete a task without thinking about how this man would be proud of me, as he said he was. Proud of how smart I was, amazed at how smart I was. "I amazed him," he told me once. I had never been admired so brightly and so earnestly by a man. It had to be love.
I was so convinced and he was so emblazoned into my person for years that the best way that I could put it is that I wasn't myself anymore. The me that I was before had stopped existing. I became other. And I never existed again.
I was never the same. I have not existed again. He's since married the woman I knew he would end up with. Years after I was over him, his wife came to me in a dream, and described what he was like at their wedding.
I did not know until days later that I dreamed of her on the day they married. I would later see a Facebook post in which she described him exactly as she described him to me in my dream--serious in the face of his upcoming responsibility as a married man.
It's been 11 years since I first fell for him, and I've moved on. We are at two opposite sides of the country living separate and completely full lives, but I had to dream about him to congratulate him on his son. I hadn't dreamed of him in years, but I guess that was an occasion.
In every manifestation of his life, I can now see that he was meant for her, and she was meant for him. I don't know why I ever came into the picture and interrupted destiny. And I don't mean that to be self-deprecating, because the whole thing sure as hell interrupted my life.
The piece in the anthology only tells part of the story. I was too shy to write about the raw obsession and the pain of disillusionment when I found out he had no idea that I liked him, let alone that I stopped existing because of him.
The best that I can say did come out of the whole experience in the manuscript that I'm gearing up to edit.
I can't believe it's been 11 years. We were two different people then. Now, we're doctors. He has a family, and I'm at the precipice of marrying, at least I hope. When we met, we had no idea where we'd be, what we'd be able to do. We were just two nerdy kids in an organic chemistry class.
He didn't know a black girl could be so smart. I didn't know that the annoying, boisterous kid who I dreaded seeing in class every week would change my life.
The me before I met him never existed again. I wanted that someone who felt so important in my life to remain in my life, but only God knows.
Me apaixonei?
Talvez, pode ser
Enloqueci?
Não sei, nunca vi
Preciso sair
Depois que eu descobri
Que há você
Nunca mais existi
I fell in love?
Maybe, it could be
I went crazy?
I don't know, I've never been there
I need to get out
After I discovered
That there is you
I never existed again.
I told the story of this song before. How I heard this song on my "Haiti" playlist on Pandora in 2008, how I excitedly ordered a CD imported from Brasil with the song on it since I couldn't download it on the internet, how I read the insert in the CD to find a translation of the song, and how I realized that the song put into words what I could not.
I fell in love with a man and then I never existed again.
Alas, the very thing I prayed to God wouldn't happened had happened. I fell in love with a man who would not be mine. Why? Why would God allow it?
Over 11 years later, I still don't know. But this song reminds me of that place.
No song that exists on earth speaks to me more than this one. No artist has more quickly become my favorite than Djavan for the fact that he wrote this song. Talk about killing me softly.
There was a time where I couldn't complete a task without thinking about how this man would be proud of me, as he said he was. Proud of how smart I was, amazed at how smart I was. "I amazed him," he told me once. I had never been admired so brightly and so earnestly by a man. It had to be love.
I was so convinced and he was so emblazoned into my person for years that the best way that I could put it is that I wasn't myself anymore. The me that I was before had stopped existing. I became other. And I never existed again.
I was never the same. I have not existed again. He's since married the woman I knew he would end up with. Years after I was over him, his wife came to me in a dream, and described what he was like at their wedding.
I did not know until days later that I dreamed of her on the day they married. I would later see a Facebook post in which she described him exactly as she described him to me in my dream--serious in the face of his upcoming responsibility as a married man.
It's been 11 years since I first fell for him, and I've moved on. We are at two opposite sides of the country living separate and completely full lives, but I had to dream about him to congratulate him on his son. I hadn't dreamed of him in years, but I guess that was an occasion.
In every manifestation of his life, I can now see that he was meant for her, and she was meant for him. I don't know why I ever came into the picture and interrupted destiny. And I don't mean that to be self-deprecating, because the whole thing sure as hell interrupted my life.
The piece in the anthology only tells part of the story. I was too shy to write about the raw obsession and the pain of disillusionment when I found out he had no idea that I liked him, let alone that I stopped existing because of him.
The best that I can say did come out of the whole experience in the manuscript that I'm gearing up to edit.
I can't believe it's been 11 years. We were two different people then. Now, we're doctors. He has a family, and I'm at the precipice of marrying, at least I hope. When we met, we had no idea where we'd be, what we'd be able to do. We were just two nerdy kids in an organic chemistry class.
He didn't know a black girl could be so smart. I didn't know that the annoying, boisterous kid who I dreaded seeing in class every week would change my life.
The me before I met him never existed again. I wanted that someone who felt so important in my life to remain in my life, but only God knows.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Long Time
Salaam,
It's been a long time since I've liked a popular song this much. Maybe 7 years or more. Maybe more than that.
The voice is an incredible instrument. It's also incredible how many unique melodies can be created over time.
Otherwise, I'm in a pensive mood tonight. I'm stuck on a presentation I have to make on Tuesday but don't want to do any more work on it tonight. And so many other things on my mind.
It's been a long time since I've liked a popular song this much. Maybe 7 years or more. Maybe more than that.
The voice is an incredible instrument. It's also incredible how many unique melodies can be created over time.
Otherwise, I'm in a pensive mood tonight. I'm stuck on a presentation I have to make on Tuesday but don't want to do any more work on it tonight. And so many other things on my mind.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
A Reason to Go
Salaam,
I need to sleep because I need to be up in about 6 hours. But I did want to reflect on this.
I now have a reason to go. Not only to die, but to aim for heaven.
I want to see my grandfather again, and I know that he's there.
And while I want to live a long life, and see my own children and grandchildren, and maybe even great grandchildren like he did, I have no reason to want to be here indefinitely.
He's there, with his father and mother, because as he was dying he called to them. He's there, with my grandmother's parents, and my grandmother will join them. When I hear nostalgic music or remember my childhood, I remember when everything was good and that was when he was in it, when he was a constant, a given, before I knew death, or life, really.
I was listening to Luther Vandross' "A House is Not a Home" and reflected on how many people were alive for the majority of my life so far who have now passed, most of them not at all close to me, and then there was Grandfather.
I think the feeling that he is not gone, that he just exists in another realm, in another space...gives the pull of heaven a little bit more urgency.
I pray that I can be everything he dreamed of for me and more.
And insha'Allah I'll meet up with Grandfather again, someday.
And I won't just feel his essence when I'm quiet or when I listen to New Jack Swing from the early 90s or gut-bucket blues from the 1930s and 40s.
I need to sleep because I need to be up in about 6 hours. But I did want to reflect on this.
I now have a reason to go. Not only to die, but to aim for heaven.
I want to see my grandfather again, and I know that he's there.
And while I want to live a long life, and see my own children and grandchildren, and maybe even great grandchildren like he did, I have no reason to want to be here indefinitely.
He's there, with his father and mother, because as he was dying he called to them. He's there, with my grandmother's parents, and my grandmother will join them. When I hear nostalgic music or remember my childhood, I remember when everything was good and that was when he was in it, when he was a constant, a given, before I knew death, or life, really.
I was listening to Luther Vandross' "A House is Not a Home" and reflected on how many people were alive for the majority of my life so far who have now passed, most of them not at all close to me, and then there was Grandfather.
I think the feeling that he is not gone, that he just exists in another realm, in another space...gives the pull of heaven a little bit more urgency.
I pray that I can be everything he dreamed of for me and more.
And insha'Allah I'll meet up with Grandfather again, someday.
And I won't just feel his essence when I'm quiet or when I listen to New Jack Swing from the early 90s or gut-bucket blues from the 1930s and 40s.
Friday, July 18, 2014
The First Death
Salaam,
My beloved grandfather died on Wednesday. We buried him today. I saw his body beforehand, and I smiled. It held him for so long, but it was so clear, looking at the frame, that this was just a shell, and not at all the man I've loved all 29 years of my life.
I am so happy that he died in his sleep and that he died at home, surrounded by family members. I am so happy that 9 of his 10 children, 30 of his 40 grandchildren and several of his 70 great-grandchildren were able to make it to the funeral, as well as most of his daughter-in-laws, his son-in-law (my father) and several community members.
He left behind my grandmother. They knew each other as children, for 82 years, and were married for 68 years, had 10 children, 40 grandchildren, over 70 great grand children and 3 great-great grandchildren. He converted from Christianity to eventually Islam with his family of 10 and was a founding leader of the Flint, MI Muslim community. He raised three of his grandchildren. Their home was a home for any and all of us when we needed it. I lived with my grandparents for about three months during the summer of 1995 and the winter of 1996 when my mother had medical problems.
My first memories of my grandfather were of the horsey rides on his knee, the string of lollipops he seemed to have an endless supply of, and his sugary coffee. My final memories of him, before his most recent decline, was of climbing up on a step ladder much less stable than he ought have, putting corn cobs in the feeder for the squirrels.
He had a unique way of telling stories, of mimicking people's voices, of making sounds, of playing with babies and making them laugh that is not duplicated on earth right now. He, along with my grandmother, loved children infinitely. They raised children from 1947 to 1998.
And between WWII, the auto plant and the conversion, there's so many stories that I do not know about Grandfather.
At first when he died, when I heard about it, it felt like a part of me died. It felt like a part of my mother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, it felt like a part of us all died. Like a part of my heart went away. Then, in a matter of minutes, I had a sense of peace and fullness because, even though we can't know know, I was reassured that my grandfather was in Jannah. And more than all of the Qur'an reading I've been doing this month by ajiza, I felt the mercy of God, right then.
It was one of the strongest moments of my faith, and it makes all of the tears that I shed either happy tears or tears of saudade. My grandfather was a staple in my life, like my sustenance, and life will never be the same without him here. And life is not as precious without him here. But I will strive each day towards God, may I be all that Grandfather desired of us, his legacy, his progeny, and even more than he could have imagined.
I love you, Grandfather, and that you are in Jannah makes it even more of a goal for me.
My beloved grandfather died on Wednesday. We buried him today. I saw his body beforehand, and I smiled. It held him for so long, but it was so clear, looking at the frame, that this was just a shell, and not at all the man I've loved all 29 years of my life.
I am so happy that he died in his sleep and that he died at home, surrounded by family members. I am so happy that 9 of his 10 children, 30 of his 40 grandchildren and several of his 70 great-grandchildren were able to make it to the funeral, as well as most of his daughter-in-laws, his son-in-law (my father) and several community members.
He left behind my grandmother. They knew each other as children, for 82 years, and were married for 68 years, had 10 children, 40 grandchildren, over 70 great grand children and 3 great-great grandchildren. He converted from Christianity to eventually Islam with his family of 10 and was a founding leader of the Flint, MI Muslim community. He raised three of his grandchildren. Their home was a home for any and all of us when we needed it. I lived with my grandparents for about three months during the summer of 1995 and the winter of 1996 when my mother had medical problems.
My first memories of my grandfather were of the horsey rides on his knee, the string of lollipops he seemed to have an endless supply of, and his sugary coffee. My final memories of him, before his most recent decline, was of climbing up on a step ladder much less stable than he ought have, putting corn cobs in the feeder for the squirrels.
He had a unique way of telling stories, of mimicking people's voices, of making sounds, of playing with babies and making them laugh that is not duplicated on earth right now. He, along with my grandmother, loved children infinitely. They raised children from 1947 to 1998.
And between WWII, the auto plant and the conversion, there's so many stories that I do not know about Grandfather.
At first when he died, when I heard about it, it felt like a part of me died. It felt like a part of my mother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, it felt like a part of us all died. Like a part of my heart went away. Then, in a matter of minutes, I had a sense of peace and fullness because, even though we can't know know, I was reassured that my grandfather was in Jannah. And more than all of the Qur'an reading I've been doing this month by ajiza, I felt the mercy of God, right then.
It was one of the strongest moments of my faith, and it makes all of the tears that I shed either happy tears or tears of saudade. My grandfather was a staple in my life, like my sustenance, and life will never be the same without him here. And life is not as precious without him here. But I will strive each day towards God, may I be all that Grandfather desired of us, his legacy, his progeny, and even more than he could have imagined.
I love you, Grandfather, and that you are in Jannah makes it even more of a goal for me.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Learning to Be Alone
Salaam,
Now that I've been stably in a relationship for nearly two years, I've gone back and read some of those pieces aimed specifically at single people that I couldn't palate the while I was single. Most of the time, I am usually dismayed that I was not able to arrive at the level of sheer self-contentment that the articles recommend. Happily partnered and not desirous of single status, though intellectually feeling that this time around, I could handle it, I wondered how much of my partnership was just for the sake of not being alone. I began to wonder if I would keep looking if I had arrived at a place where I was as content with solitude as these pieces recommend single people to be.
One of the pieces of advice that these articles often cite is that one needs to learn how to be alone, in general. Not just be single, but learn how to be content with one's own company.
And I thought about how bad I was at doing that even while still single. It wasn't that I was constantly yearning for a significant other to fill a space. But my space was constantly filled--with phone calls to my family and friends and visits from friends. The time that I actually spent alone was very meticulously filled with necessary studying while I was in school and writing projects or casual reading when I had free time. I usually exercised alone as well. But I didn't think I enjoyed this time alone--it was just a matter of course.
I enjoy hot showers after sweaty workouts, for example, but showering is something that one necessarily does alone the grand majority of times--I assume this is true even for married women.
But then, it happened. After a week of staycation and getting my life in my apartment organized for the first time since the first few months that I had moved in, I was organized enough to seek out samba class. I found one that I wanted to check out, finished my rotation duties and headed over to the class. I had a good dance and workout, walked home, cooled down and then jumped into the shower to wash the paint off of my feet (I danced barefoot on a raggedy, painted dance floor in a small cultural center in the International District) and in general enjoy the hot spray on my body.
Then, lotioned and deodorized, I sat on my futon and adjusted the temperature in my place by placing the window fan in the window, turning on the only lamp that survived the move from Boston in the corner, and settling down to write a little.
And I probably let one of those this-is-the-life sighs escape my lips before I realized...
Here I am, alone, in my own space, completely content with being alone right now, with the trajectory of the day, with how I plan to conclude my evening, with the fact that I can sit down and write.
It took me two years of a stable relationship to learn to be alone.
When my apartment was filled with papers that needed organizing, laundry to be sorted and washed and put away, dishes caked in grease that didn't come off with one round of dishwashing (but always with a clean bathroom!), I did not enjoy my time here. I spent most of the time in my bed, the only relatively clear spot in my place, with the blinds drawn because...if I have a night shift, I sometimes sleep during the day, so the goal of the bedroom is darkness. I spent most of my days at my SO's place, because he has a house, actually, and is a minimalist so has very little clutter. My house became a cluttered sleeping den with a refrigerator I was afraid to open.
Now, with all of my educational papers organized into binders and files, all of the junk mail that I had let accumulate over two years shreaded and recycled, the kitchen clean and ready for the next meal, my dining room apetizing, my reading corner restored with my papasan chair open and inviting...I have no need to be anywhere else. My space is less than 600 square feet, but I now can do almost everything I want in here. I can practice my samba moves in the living room with my small stereo system with sub woofer. I can experiment with different recipes and eat them at my dining room table or my now pristine bar area at the sink. I can curl up with a good book or medical journal and read in my reading corner. I can take a nap on my futon.
Or, like now, I can sit with my legs crossed and my laptop on my lap and write whatever comes to mind.
And my room, small and functional, can be reserved for what I always meant it to be for: sleep! Fresh sheets, organized closet and dresser drawers, dusted nightstand with my Qur'an, alarm clock and personal effects there at the side. It's back to being my bedroom again, and not a glorified dorm room of yore.
In med school more than in college, my dorm room bed was a place to eat, study, watch television, read and sleep. And repeat. And sometimes cry.
And there are so many other things that I occasionally do when I'm here, like long hair-care days. I recently spent 9 hours twisting my hair, and could spend a similar amount of time doing my next henna rinse and deep conditioning routine. And of course, there's the singing and the documentary-watching.
And this is just inside of my apartment! There's a whole world of things outside of the apartment that I enjoy doing solo - my samba classes, my workouts, shopping, eating what I want without being policed.
Not that I don't love doing things with my SO. Not at all. But there are definitely things that I did when my time was all my own that I miss now because I'm trying to balance a busy work schedule with future family time, so to speak.
That's when I wondered whether these self-help blurbs for singles are written by people who are happily partnered. Because it sounds a lot like my happily married mother's advice when I was a young, yearning girl. "One day, you'll look back at this time and be repentant," is the only thing missing from the learn to be alone injunction.
Because that's what I wish I could tell my single self now and what I'll know in the future. This time that you're spending doing whatever the hell you want is priceless. Don't sell it short for the sake of a relationship. Enjoy it. Soak in it. You may not have it again.
Especially since I have baby fever at all times, I don't feel like I'm going to get to enjoy too much of my future married life non-pregnant or mothering, insha'Allah.
So if I don't take advantage of the last of my alone time now, gone could be the days of my concurrent samba dancing, jazz club singing (!!), personal training, exercising, hair henna glossing, two strand twisting, journal writing, MPB singing all the while doctoring self.
Ahhh...I get it.
But I did not arrive at this place when I was perpetually single. I didn't know what it was like to divide my time. I had time to do all of those things but I also had time to be lonely, devastated and disillusioned. That space is now filled and is overflowing into my alone time.
So now, I know how to be alone. Yes. Great.
No, but actually, great! It just gives me hope that my success in a relationship was not dependent on my being completely happy single. In fact, part of the impetus that keeps any two of us together as disparate human beings is anything from a preference against to a fear of being alone. So that's okay.
But I didn't need to have the single thing perfect before leaving that stage of my life.
...and the fact still remains, if nothing much is going on, I'm going to end up calling my mother, preferentially, anyway.
Now that I've been stably in a relationship for nearly two years, I've gone back and read some of those pieces aimed specifically at single people that I couldn't palate the while I was single. Most of the time, I am usually dismayed that I was not able to arrive at the level of sheer self-contentment that the articles recommend. Happily partnered and not desirous of single status, though intellectually feeling that this time around, I could handle it, I wondered how much of my partnership was just for the sake of not being alone. I began to wonder if I would keep looking if I had arrived at a place where I was as content with solitude as these pieces recommend single people to be.
One of the pieces of advice that these articles often cite is that one needs to learn how to be alone, in general. Not just be single, but learn how to be content with one's own company.
And I thought about how bad I was at doing that even while still single. It wasn't that I was constantly yearning for a significant other to fill a space. But my space was constantly filled--with phone calls to my family and friends and visits from friends. The time that I actually spent alone was very meticulously filled with necessary studying while I was in school and writing projects or casual reading when I had free time. I usually exercised alone as well. But I didn't think I enjoyed this time alone--it was just a matter of course.
I enjoy hot showers after sweaty workouts, for example, but showering is something that one necessarily does alone the grand majority of times--I assume this is true even for married women.
But then, it happened. After a week of staycation and getting my life in my apartment organized for the first time since the first few months that I had moved in, I was organized enough to seek out samba class. I found one that I wanted to check out, finished my rotation duties and headed over to the class. I had a good dance and workout, walked home, cooled down and then jumped into the shower to wash the paint off of my feet (I danced barefoot on a raggedy, painted dance floor in a small cultural center in the International District) and in general enjoy the hot spray on my body.
Then, lotioned and deodorized, I sat on my futon and adjusted the temperature in my place by placing the window fan in the window, turning on the only lamp that survived the move from Boston in the corner, and settling down to write a little.
And I probably let one of those this-is-the-life sighs escape my lips before I realized...
Here I am, alone, in my own space, completely content with being alone right now, with the trajectory of the day, with how I plan to conclude my evening, with the fact that I can sit down and write.
It took me two years of a stable relationship to learn to be alone.
When my apartment was filled with papers that needed organizing, laundry to be sorted and washed and put away, dishes caked in grease that didn't come off with one round of dishwashing (but always with a clean bathroom!), I did not enjoy my time here. I spent most of the time in my bed, the only relatively clear spot in my place, with the blinds drawn because...if I have a night shift, I sometimes sleep during the day, so the goal of the bedroom is darkness. I spent most of my days at my SO's place, because he has a house, actually, and is a minimalist so has very little clutter. My house became a cluttered sleeping den with a refrigerator I was afraid to open.
Now, with all of my educational papers organized into binders and files, all of the junk mail that I had let accumulate over two years shreaded and recycled, the kitchen clean and ready for the next meal, my dining room apetizing, my reading corner restored with my papasan chair open and inviting...I have no need to be anywhere else. My space is less than 600 square feet, but I now can do almost everything I want in here. I can practice my samba moves in the living room with my small stereo system with sub woofer. I can experiment with different recipes and eat them at my dining room table or my now pristine bar area at the sink. I can curl up with a good book or medical journal and read in my reading corner. I can take a nap on my futon.
Or, like now, I can sit with my legs crossed and my laptop on my lap and write whatever comes to mind.
And my room, small and functional, can be reserved for what I always meant it to be for: sleep! Fresh sheets, organized closet and dresser drawers, dusted nightstand with my Qur'an, alarm clock and personal effects there at the side. It's back to being my bedroom again, and not a glorified dorm room of yore.
In med school more than in college, my dorm room bed was a place to eat, study, watch television, read and sleep. And repeat. And sometimes cry.
And there are so many other things that I occasionally do when I'm here, like long hair-care days. I recently spent 9 hours twisting my hair, and could spend a similar amount of time doing my next henna rinse and deep conditioning routine. And of course, there's the singing and the documentary-watching.
And this is just inside of my apartment! There's a whole world of things outside of the apartment that I enjoy doing solo - my samba classes, my workouts, shopping, eating what I want without being policed.
Not that I don't love doing things with my SO. Not at all. But there are definitely things that I did when my time was all my own that I miss now because I'm trying to balance a busy work schedule with future family time, so to speak.
That's when I wondered whether these self-help blurbs for singles are written by people who are happily partnered. Because it sounds a lot like my happily married mother's advice when I was a young, yearning girl. "One day, you'll look back at this time and be repentant," is the only thing missing from the learn to be alone injunction.
Because that's what I wish I could tell my single self now and what I'll know in the future. This time that you're spending doing whatever the hell you want is priceless. Don't sell it short for the sake of a relationship. Enjoy it. Soak in it. You may not have it again.
Especially since I have baby fever at all times, I don't feel like I'm going to get to enjoy too much of my future married life non-pregnant or mothering, insha'Allah.
So if I don't take advantage of the last of my alone time now, gone could be the days of my concurrent samba dancing, jazz club singing (!!), personal training, exercising, hair henna glossing, two strand twisting, journal writing, MPB singing all the while doctoring self.
Ahhh...I get it.
But I did not arrive at this place when I was perpetually single. I didn't know what it was like to divide my time. I had time to do all of those things but I also had time to be lonely, devastated and disillusioned. That space is now filled and is overflowing into my alone time.
So now, I know how to be alone. Yes. Great.
No, but actually, great! It just gives me hope that my success in a relationship was not dependent on my being completely happy single. In fact, part of the impetus that keeps any two of us together as disparate human beings is anything from a preference against to a fear of being alone. So that's okay.
But I didn't need to have the single thing perfect before leaving that stage of my life.
...and the fact still remains, if nothing much is going on, I'm going to end up calling my mother, preferentially, anyway.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Hypomanic Birthday
Salaam,
Last week, I worked for 76 hours. I haven't worked that much since I was an intern (God bless R2 year!). Yesterday alone, I worked from 6:30am to nearly 11pm. I had a video to make for my former boss (long story short) and I had to fry chicken for our weekly Friday potluck, so I got up yesterday at 4:30am. I went to bed yesterday just before midnight, I think. And then I woke up at 4am and couldn't go back to sleep and began digging into old projects.
For example, my dream would be to do a rotation in Family Medicine of some sort in Brazil, São Paulo or in Salvador if possible. I reopened my A Capella project in which I'm producing an arrangement of "What You Won't Do For Love." I was up, scrambling around my apartment looking for the notebook in which I sketched out the bass line and was immediately intimidated by the amount of work I put into this project months ago and realized that it wasn't the best project to resume at 5am.
And I don't know where I would start in trying to find contacts in Brazil in Family Medicine. Actually, I do know...I emailed a physician who I was connected with who worked in public health in São Paulo who I hadn't spoken with in almost 6 years.
Happy 29th birthday to me! Feburary 15!
That was my yesterday. I think I've finally chilled out.
I usually look at my birthday as a new year of sorts. Actually, my birthday feels more like new years than the actual advent of the new year on the Gregorian calendar does. I think my call day sent me into a temporary hypomania from which I came down slowly.
This year also totally did not feel like the beginning of a new year. I think I was too busy to have an intention-filled, mindful birthday. But that doesn't mean I don't have goals for my 29th year.
Realizations I've made in the last year, being 28 years old:
(1) I never got used to being 28. It was the most I've worked in my life and I rarely thought of how old I was. I had to think when people asked me how old I was. It seems like I was 27 longer than I was 28.
(2) 28 was a challenging year but I think it's the happiest year I've had in a while. Residency surely gave me enough stress but I think I was the healthiest I've been in a while from a mental health standpoint this past year.
(3) Prayer changes things. Immediately, sometimes! I shall never abandon it, as God has never abandoned me, even when I consider myself worthy of abandoning.
So, with that, goals for my 29th year:
-- To eat more mindfully.
-- To make more space in my life for gratitude, in prayer and in my relationships.
-- To move forward in my own personal Islam that has been in the making for the last few years.
-- To dance samba!
-- To get in the shape of my life.
-- To up my running game!
-- To write with abandon like I used to, now that I have more to write about.
-- To read more, because there's so many things I've always wanted to know more about.
-- To spend more time with friends.
-- To be more honest with myself and others about my personal values and goals.
I think that'll do it. That's a hefty enough list to tackle in one year's time.
Last week, I worked for 76 hours. I haven't worked that much since I was an intern (God bless R2 year!). Yesterday alone, I worked from 6:30am to nearly 11pm. I had a video to make for my former boss (long story short) and I had to fry chicken for our weekly Friday potluck, so I got up yesterday at 4:30am. I went to bed yesterday just before midnight, I think. And then I woke up at 4am and couldn't go back to sleep and began digging into old projects.
For example, my dream would be to do a rotation in Family Medicine of some sort in Brazil, São Paulo or in Salvador if possible. I reopened my A Capella project in which I'm producing an arrangement of "What You Won't Do For Love." I was up, scrambling around my apartment looking for the notebook in which I sketched out the bass line and was immediately intimidated by the amount of work I put into this project months ago and realized that it wasn't the best project to resume at 5am.
And I don't know where I would start in trying to find contacts in Brazil in Family Medicine. Actually, I do know...I emailed a physician who I was connected with who worked in public health in São Paulo who I hadn't spoken with in almost 6 years.
Happy 29th birthday to me! Feburary 15!
That was my yesterday. I think I've finally chilled out.
I usually look at my birthday as a new year of sorts. Actually, my birthday feels more like new years than the actual advent of the new year on the Gregorian calendar does. I think my call day sent me into a temporary hypomania from which I came down slowly.
This year also totally did not feel like the beginning of a new year. I think I was too busy to have an intention-filled, mindful birthday. But that doesn't mean I don't have goals for my 29th year.
Realizations I've made in the last year, being 28 years old:
(1) I never got used to being 28. It was the most I've worked in my life and I rarely thought of how old I was. I had to think when people asked me how old I was. It seems like I was 27 longer than I was 28.
(2) 28 was a challenging year but I think it's the happiest year I've had in a while. Residency surely gave me enough stress but I think I was the healthiest I've been in a while from a mental health standpoint this past year.
(3) Prayer changes things. Immediately, sometimes! I shall never abandon it, as God has never abandoned me, even when I consider myself worthy of abandoning.
So, with that, goals for my 29th year:
-- To eat more mindfully.
-- To make more space in my life for gratitude, in prayer and in my relationships.
-- To move forward in my own personal Islam that has been in the making for the last few years.
-- To dance samba!
-- To get in the shape of my life.
-- To up my running game!
-- To write with abandon like I used to, now that I have more to write about.
-- To read more, because there's so many things I've always wanted to know more about.
-- To spend more time with friends.
-- To be more honest with myself and others about my personal values and goals.
I think that'll do it. That's a hefty enough list to tackle in one year's time.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Superwoman
Salaam,
"Very well
I believe I know you
Very well
Wish that you knew me, too
Very well
And I think I can deal with everything going through your head."
--Stevie Wonder "Superwoman/Where Were you When I Needed You."
After the summer of 2004, before I started to lose my grip on reality and when I began to sense that a relationship between me and MQ was not to be, this song was my theme song. Or rather, my theme song for how I felt about him.
For whatever reason, I felt like I knew him well, if he'd just let me tell him about himself. He would see that I knew him well, and he would come to love me for it. And together, we could deal with everything going through his head.
But then there was this cumbersome part of the lyric to reconcile, and that was about Mary wanting to be a superwoman.
The woman that I was early college, I wasn't into that lyric. What's wrong with Mary wanting to be a superwoman, I asked myself...and probably seriously asked my mother. She didn't give me an answer. For those who have never enjoyed this wonderful Stevie song, here is a sampling of not just the chorus:
"Mary wants to be a superwoman
But is that really in her head?
'Cause I just wanna live each day
And love her for what she is
"Mary wants to be another movie star
But is that really in her mind?
And all the things she wants to be
She needs to leave behind."
Then it launches into the "very well" part.
As my brother is want to say, I took offense to this lyric. Why does Mary have to leave behind the things she wants to do? Her dreams, her aspirations, just for this man? And he claims to know her very well, well enough to know what is best for her as if she doesn't.
"My woman wants to be a superwoman
And I just had to say goodbye
Because I can't spend all my hours
Start to cry."
And like that, it's over.
The lyrics were based on Stevie's relationship with his first wife who had aspirations to be a singer herself. I think he helped produce her first album or something, but it was splitsville from there.
Towards the end of that marriage, Stevie wrote "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" for a woman not his wife. Burn.
Just a little music trivia there.
I took offense and I told myself I never wanted to be with a man who wouldn't let me be a superwoman. Because I've always imagined myself being somewhat of a superwoman. That image has metamorphosed over time...
From my 6-year-old imaginings of a thinner, browner-skinned version of myself sporting bantu knots, a tank top and capri jeans singing "Yes and yes indeed, nobody's just a-right for me," while passing by interested young black men on either side of me in an elaborate fantasy music video daydream to my 21-year-old image of myself in black hijab and jilbab with my activist husband to my left and my young son on my hip, overlooking the landscape of the human rights march we had organized, I always imagine myself a superwoman.
That has got to be the longest sentence I've ever written.
These days, superwoman me is a bit nebulous at best. I see her as some kind of leader in medicine, leader in her community, loving wife and mother, champion of the underserved. I don't see my hair texture or color or whether or not its covered. I don't see the color of my husband or my babies. I don't see my size and I don't hear my voice and the specific of my aspirations I don't know, but I do know I want to be great.
But is that beyond what I am?
Maybe I don't have within me to be a leader. Maybe I'm too soft spoken and accommodating. I've certainly had time in my life to be as activist as I want to be, and I haven't done nearly what I could have done.
Maybe I want to be a superwoman, but that's not really what's in my head. Maybe I should just be satisfied with who I am and go on from there.
...I still take issue with someone telling you, for the sake of your relationship, to forsake your ambitions. Although, at least he left without giving an ultimatum.
The truth of the matter is that I am not the superwoman I saw myself being when I was younger and even among the things I'm relatively good at, I'm mediocre at best at them in the grand scheme of things. I'm relatively poorly read, I'm not that good of a writer, I am not a model Muslimah, and my body has swung on the pendulum back to the fat side of things. My hair is broken at the crown in spite of its growth, and I'm an okay family medicine resident. I'm an occasionally disappointing daughter (to my father) and a distant sister. I'm a hesitant significant other. I'm not the best at anything that I do.
And you know what, that's okay.
Maybe now I can focus on making real goals in my life and not idealized ones, just as I will focus on making a life with a real man in my life, and not an idealized one.
One who I do not know very well. One who I'm not sure I can deal with everything inside his head. And I won't be able to. But that doesn't preclude me from becoming part of his life.
And now I've come full circle.
"Very well
I believe I know you
Very well
Wish that you knew me, too
Very well
And I think I can deal with everything going through your head."
--Stevie Wonder "Superwoman/Where Were you When I Needed You."
After the summer of 2004, before I started to lose my grip on reality and when I began to sense that a relationship between me and MQ was not to be, this song was my theme song. Or rather, my theme song for how I felt about him.
For whatever reason, I felt like I knew him well, if he'd just let me tell him about himself. He would see that I knew him well, and he would come to love me for it. And together, we could deal with everything going through his head.
But then there was this cumbersome part of the lyric to reconcile, and that was about Mary wanting to be a superwoman.
The woman that I was early college, I wasn't into that lyric. What's wrong with Mary wanting to be a superwoman, I asked myself...and probably seriously asked my mother. She didn't give me an answer. For those who have never enjoyed this wonderful Stevie song, here is a sampling of not just the chorus:
"Mary wants to be a superwoman
But is that really in her head?
'Cause I just wanna live each day
And love her for what she is
"Mary wants to be another movie star
But is that really in her mind?
And all the things she wants to be
She needs to leave behind."
Then it launches into the "very well" part.
As my brother is want to say, I took offense to this lyric. Why does Mary have to leave behind the things she wants to do? Her dreams, her aspirations, just for this man? And he claims to know her very well, well enough to know what is best for her as if she doesn't.
"My woman wants to be a superwoman
And I just had to say goodbye
Because I can't spend all my hours
Start to cry."
And like that, it's over.
The lyrics were based on Stevie's relationship with his first wife who had aspirations to be a singer herself. I think he helped produce her first album or something, but it was splitsville from there.
Towards the end of that marriage, Stevie wrote "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" for a woman not his wife. Burn.
Just a little music trivia there.
I took offense and I told myself I never wanted to be with a man who wouldn't let me be a superwoman. Because I've always imagined myself being somewhat of a superwoman. That image has metamorphosed over time...
From my 6-year-old imaginings of a thinner, browner-skinned version of myself sporting bantu knots, a tank top and capri jeans singing "Yes and yes indeed, nobody's just a-right for me," while passing by interested young black men on either side of me in an elaborate fantasy music video daydream to my 21-year-old image of myself in black hijab and jilbab with my activist husband to my left and my young son on my hip, overlooking the landscape of the human rights march we had organized, I always imagine myself a superwoman.
That has got to be the longest sentence I've ever written.
These days, superwoman me is a bit nebulous at best. I see her as some kind of leader in medicine, leader in her community, loving wife and mother, champion of the underserved. I don't see my hair texture or color or whether or not its covered. I don't see the color of my husband or my babies. I don't see my size and I don't hear my voice and the specific of my aspirations I don't know, but I do know I want to be great.
But is that beyond what I am?
Maybe I don't have within me to be a leader. Maybe I'm too soft spoken and accommodating. I've certainly had time in my life to be as activist as I want to be, and I haven't done nearly what I could have done.
Maybe I want to be a superwoman, but that's not really what's in my head. Maybe I should just be satisfied with who I am and go on from there.
...I still take issue with someone telling you, for the sake of your relationship, to forsake your ambitions. Although, at least he left without giving an ultimatum.
The truth of the matter is that I am not the superwoman I saw myself being when I was younger and even among the things I'm relatively good at, I'm mediocre at best at them in the grand scheme of things. I'm relatively poorly read, I'm not that good of a writer, I am not a model Muslimah, and my body has swung on the pendulum back to the fat side of things. My hair is broken at the crown in spite of its growth, and I'm an okay family medicine resident. I'm an occasionally disappointing daughter (to my father) and a distant sister. I'm a hesitant significant other. I'm not the best at anything that I do.
And you know what, that's okay.
Maybe now I can focus on making real goals in my life and not idealized ones, just as I will focus on making a life with a real man in my life, and not an idealized one.
One who I do not know very well. One who I'm not sure I can deal with everything inside his head. And I won't be able to. But that doesn't preclude me from becoming part of his life.
And now I've come full circle.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
My Aged Uterus
Salaam,
In January 1996, 17 years and 11 months ago, I was living with my grandparents for the second time in 6 months. My mother had a hysterectomy earlier that year because of pretty serious cramping and bleeding she had with endometriosis and large uterine fibroids.
When my mother told me, I was saddened by the finality of never having that little sister I wanted. Because my father continued working five days a week, my 8-year-old brother and I lived with my grandparents for the summer. It would be the last summer that my grandparents did not have air conditioning. It was installed in the days before we returned home. It was also the summer of the OJ Simpson trial, and we spent many of those sweaty Midwestern summer days lying on the floor in front of the television, low enough so our grandparents could see the trial. It was also the summer we introduced our grandparents to Rugrats.
I returned to the fifth grade just to end up going back to Flint that winter of 1994-95. They took her uterus and cervix but not her ovaries, and one of them had enlarged, concerning for cancer. When my mother told me, I was devastated, crying with the fear of losing her. My father continued working, so back to our grandparents it was. I completed weekly assignments from my public school down in Ypsilanti at my aunt's Islamic School in Flint. I wouldn't have to repeat the fifth grade for my missed days, my mother assured me.
I remember that winter. I called it the tundra winter because it was cold and barely snowed. Temperatures did not venture above 20 Fahrenheit for most of the summer. I remember the cold between my grandparents' house and Grandfather's conversion van, from the van to the school, from the school to the van, and back again. The pathology came back on my mother's ovary and it wasn't cancer. It was a chocolate cyst, a large focus of endometriosis that grew and caused her ovary to torse. My mother, who had opted to keep her ovaries in order to maintain her normal hormones, went into surgical menopause at the age of 41.
A week or so later, I was playing in the TV room of my grandparents' house when I felt a sudden trickle. I went to the bathroom and pulled down my panties to see little spots of brown in the bottom. I knew what a period was. My mother taught me about it when she pulled me out of maturation class in the fourth grade, wanting to present me sex "in the context of God" but still being too afraid to talk about intercourse with me. I knew what a period was because that's what happened to Mommy sometimes on family trips when she'd have to sit on a towel in the car and when she was writhing in pain and vomiting. It was the pads in the bathroom and the smell. This was a little bit of brown. I was confused.
I called Grandmother and asked her what it was. I can't remember her words, but she confirmed my suspicions with a groan, turning her eyes towards the ceiling with a look of "Lord help us, another one fertile!" It was my period!
She gave me a pad and clean panties, and I scurried off to play, excited that I was, like Clair Huxtable told Rudy, "a woman now."
...and then, the next day, I got my first cramps, and it was no longer fun.
My mother lost her ability to ovulate, and I gained mine. My mother lost her ability to bear children as I began my journey to be able to bear my own. I was 10 years old.
Now, 17 years and 11 months later, I am 28 years old. My ovaries have ovulated and my uterus has shed for over 200 cycles. It's coming up on 18 years of menstruation and I'm over halfway done with my reproductive years and the best ones have already passed me by. And I wonder...what was the use of starting to menstruate when I was 10 years old?
I thought about this after reflecting on the teenage girls whose babies I've delivered over times. These girls usually have short labors, breathing well through their contractions and tolerating them without epidurals and then proceed to push their babies out in less than an hour of pushing. And these are first babies, the babies it can take up to two hours to push out. I once had a patient come in at five centimeter dilated, get pushed back to labor and delivery, progress 10 minutes after my exam to complete, and pushed the baby out in one contraction, three pushes.
Sitting next to one of our interns, we reflected on this. "I hate to admit it, but there's something about the teenage body that is made for having babies. It's like, they're not mentally or emotionally ready, but their bodies are ready."
I said, "Maybe that's why we developed patriarchal societies. Because we best reproduce when we are teenage women and therefore need the extra support and protection from men."
She nodded. "You're probably right." After some thought, she said, "You know, I don't know why we haven't yet evolved so that our optimum reproductive years are after we, you know, get ourselves settled, get an education, figure out what we want in life..."
The fact of the matter remains that I am a female physician who completed medical and graduate school at 27, only now have begun to have reasonable marriage prospects, and I have had the ability to bear children for the last 18 years. My reproductive system is old and unused. It will not be as easy for me to get pregnant as it may have been for me 8-10 years ago, when I was in my reproductive prime. The tissue of my cervix is not as pliable and may not dilate as efficiently. My body has been so used to being in the non-pregnant conformation for so long, its no telling if my hips will open wide enough for a large baby head.
My mother had me at 30. My head was too big for her pelvis and she could not push me out. She went to c-section for cephalopelvic disproportion. My head was so big, the pediatrician had to measure it twice. I am going to have a large-headed baby, hehe.
When I was 13 years old, three years into menstruation and already in love with an age-mate of mine, I imagined us getting married. We would get married and have our first baby when I was 20. That baby would be a boy and he would be a junior. We were going to live in Detroit in a brick, one-story house. I was going to call 9-11 and deliver at home and he was going to be my miracle baby, just like this 13-year-old boy was a miracle in my life.
At the same time, I scoffed at the girls in my class who wanted to be teenage mothers, like their moms. At least my aspirations weren't so ridiculous.
I would move away from that boy, never letting him know how I felt, and I would not be having a child at 20. Or 25. And maybe not at 30.
In the end, I don't mourn my lost reproductive time. Instead, I celebrate my privilege, my ability to choose my partner, my ability to attain my education and ability to wait for a time of more security for whoever my baby beans will be. And although at times I feel like that business is atrophying...insha'Allah, it keeps working into your 40s, less efficiently, sometimes making mistakes, but it keeps working. Insha'Allah, I'll have time.
...but 18 years of being able to reproduce is a long time and makes me feel old. Makes my uterus and ovaries feel old. That's 18 years of nausea and vomit inducing cramps. That's 18 years of overdosing on ibuprofen to try not to stay in bed all day in fetal position. That's 18 years of trying not to ruin clothes.
Oh my aged uterus, why do you torment me so?
In January 1996, 17 years and 11 months ago, I was living with my grandparents for the second time in 6 months. My mother had a hysterectomy earlier that year because of pretty serious cramping and bleeding she had with endometriosis and large uterine fibroids.
When my mother told me, I was saddened by the finality of never having that little sister I wanted. Because my father continued working five days a week, my 8-year-old brother and I lived with my grandparents for the summer. It would be the last summer that my grandparents did not have air conditioning. It was installed in the days before we returned home. It was also the summer of the OJ Simpson trial, and we spent many of those sweaty Midwestern summer days lying on the floor in front of the television, low enough so our grandparents could see the trial. It was also the summer we introduced our grandparents to Rugrats.
I returned to the fifth grade just to end up going back to Flint that winter of 1994-95. They took her uterus and cervix but not her ovaries, and one of them had enlarged, concerning for cancer. When my mother told me, I was devastated, crying with the fear of losing her. My father continued working, so back to our grandparents it was. I completed weekly assignments from my public school down in Ypsilanti at my aunt's Islamic School in Flint. I wouldn't have to repeat the fifth grade for my missed days, my mother assured me.
I remember that winter. I called it the tundra winter because it was cold and barely snowed. Temperatures did not venture above 20 Fahrenheit for most of the summer. I remember the cold between my grandparents' house and Grandfather's conversion van, from the van to the school, from the school to the van, and back again. The pathology came back on my mother's ovary and it wasn't cancer. It was a chocolate cyst, a large focus of endometriosis that grew and caused her ovary to torse. My mother, who had opted to keep her ovaries in order to maintain her normal hormones, went into surgical menopause at the age of 41.
A week or so later, I was playing in the TV room of my grandparents' house when I felt a sudden trickle. I went to the bathroom and pulled down my panties to see little spots of brown in the bottom. I knew what a period was. My mother taught me about it when she pulled me out of maturation class in the fourth grade, wanting to present me sex "in the context of God" but still being too afraid to talk about intercourse with me. I knew what a period was because that's what happened to Mommy sometimes on family trips when she'd have to sit on a towel in the car and when she was writhing in pain and vomiting. It was the pads in the bathroom and the smell. This was a little bit of brown. I was confused.
I called Grandmother and asked her what it was. I can't remember her words, but she confirmed my suspicions with a groan, turning her eyes towards the ceiling with a look of "Lord help us, another one fertile!" It was my period!
She gave me a pad and clean panties, and I scurried off to play, excited that I was, like Clair Huxtable told Rudy, "a woman now."
...and then, the next day, I got my first cramps, and it was no longer fun.
My mother lost her ability to ovulate, and I gained mine. My mother lost her ability to bear children as I began my journey to be able to bear my own. I was 10 years old.
Now, 17 years and 11 months later, I am 28 years old. My ovaries have ovulated and my uterus has shed for over 200 cycles. It's coming up on 18 years of menstruation and I'm over halfway done with my reproductive years and the best ones have already passed me by. And I wonder...what was the use of starting to menstruate when I was 10 years old?
I thought about this after reflecting on the teenage girls whose babies I've delivered over times. These girls usually have short labors, breathing well through their contractions and tolerating them without epidurals and then proceed to push their babies out in less than an hour of pushing. And these are first babies, the babies it can take up to two hours to push out. I once had a patient come in at five centimeter dilated, get pushed back to labor and delivery, progress 10 minutes after my exam to complete, and pushed the baby out in one contraction, three pushes.
Sitting next to one of our interns, we reflected on this. "I hate to admit it, but there's something about the teenage body that is made for having babies. It's like, they're not mentally or emotionally ready, but their bodies are ready."
I said, "Maybe that's why we developed patriarchal societies. Because we best reproduce when we are teenage women and therefore need the extra support and protection from men."
She nodded. "You're probably right." After some thought, she said, "You know, I don't know why we haven't yet evolved so that our optimum reproductive years are after we, you know, get ourselves settled, get an education, figure out what we want in life..."
The fact of the matter remains that I am a female physician who completed medical and graduate school at 27, only now have begun to have reasonable marriage prospects, and I have had the ability to bear children for the last 18 years. My reproductive system is old and unused. It will not be as easy for me to get pregnant as it may have been for me 8-10 years ago, when I was in my reproductive prime. The tissue of my cervix is not as pliable and may not dilate as efficiently. My body has been so used to being in the non-pregnant conformation for so long, its no telling if my hips will open wide enough for a large baby head.
My mother had me at 30. My head was too big for her pelvis and she could not push me out. She went to c-section for cephalopelvic disproportion. My head was so big, the pediatrician had to measure it twice. I am going to have a large-headed baby, hehe.
When I was 13 years old, three years into menstruation and already in love with an age-mate of mine, I imagined us getting married. We would get married and have our first baby when I was 20. That baby would be a boy and he would be a junior. We were going to live in Detroit in a brick, one-story house. I was going to call 9-11 and deliver at home and he was going to be my miracle baby, just like this 13-year-old boy was a miracle in my life.
At the same time, I scoffed at the girls in my class who wanted to be teenage mothers, like their moms. At least my aspirations weren't so ridiculous.
I would move away from that boy, never letting him know how I felt, and I would not be having a child at 20. Or 25. And maybe not at 30.
In the end, I don't mourn my lost reproductive time. Instead, I celebrate my privilege, my ability to choose my partner, my ability to attain my education and ability to wait for a time of more security for whoever my baby beans will be. And although at times I feel like that business is atrophying...insha'Allah, it keeps working into your 40s, less efficiently, sometimes making mistakes, but it keeps working. Insha'Allah, I'll have time.
...but 18 years of being able to reproduce is a long time and makes me feel old. Makes my uterus and ovaries feel old. That's 18 years of nausea and vomit inducing cramps. That's 18 years of overdosing on ibuprofen to try not to stay in bed all day in fetal position. That's 18 years of trying not to ruin clothes.
Oh my aged uterus, why do you torment me so?
Friday, November 29, 2013
[uncensored]: Part of That World
Salaam,
I've been following along with the recent posts at loveinshallah.com in response to the controversial contribution, "How I Met My Son's Mother." First of all, big ups to this guy who was so courageous to write a piece on this website and be subject to such scrutiny. There's not much left to say that hasn't already been said in several response posts on that website and the 140 and counting comments.
Reading all of these posts about the ideals of Muslim marriage and how we fall so far from that ideal did get me feeling, to use a phrase that I actively despise, "some kinda way..."
I'm probably just ovulating or something and my hormones have come out of a year and a half long hiding, because I almost started crying at a beautiful moment between a tiny newborn and her teenage mother when I was doing baby's exam yesterday. But reading these blogs about people seeking out marriage in the halal way reminded me of what I once wanted for myself, and frankly, what I gave up on a long time ago.
It all unraveled years ago when I was on an online site and this brother from Florida was serious about setting up communication. This was not the first one and nor was he the last. He was also not the first more than 1000 miles away who wanted to skype. In these settings, I usually gave an email that I used to forward my old University of Michigan mail that I used for the purpose of signing up for internet things that I didn't want to spam me...and for online dating. No phone numbers, no skype dates. Anyone who wanted to skype with me immediately I figured were too into my looks, anyway.
So brother from Florida was earnest. He was not at all my time and had a career trajectory that was not appetizing (the lyric comes to mind, "I'm a hustler, baby, I just want you to know..."). But otherwise, he was just fine on initial contacts from an Islamic standpoint. And for him, I was just fine...pre-med (at that time), with a promising career, "just throw a hijab on [me] and [I'd] be perfect."
I didn't take offense to this because I never said never again to hijab, and at this point in the game, approaching 25, I didn't know if I should be so picky as to not want to be with a man who felt hijab was fard.
Then he asked me if I had a wali. Ooohh...
"Because, you know, I talk to sisters on here and they act like they're serious, but then I find out they don't have a wali, which is absolutely required."
This was either about to be my perfect out for the Florida Hustler or it was going to be yet another cop-out for a brother who may have had promise.
I didn't have a wali. I hadn't sought a wali and at that point was unsure if I wanted to, even though I know that it would be required if I chose to go about marriage at this way. What was I thinking? I know exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking that I had to finesse this Muslim marriage thing. I have a Christian father who gets nervous anyone has a Muslim name or comes from a majority-Muslim country for "extremist ties," in spite of being married to a Muslim woman who practices five pillars. My "coming out" as Muslim in my early 20s imposed a deep rift in my family that my adult brother with autism cannot afford, nor can my parents' otherwise loving and functional relationship afford. It's a sucky place to be in as a daughter of an interfaith couple, but so it is. My parents, for this reason, were not fit to guide me through the marriage process.
Of course, my father would love to arrange my marriage with a man that he trusts. That man would be a Christian man. I bet he still would love to, but that's another story.
So, if I wanted to go forward with legit Muslim marriage, by the books, I probably would need a wali. But where would I find one? One of my formerly atheist now Muslim convert friends from medical school who converted to Islam prior to marrying her husband easily told me that I should talk to an imam, that he would help me.
Yes, thank you so much. Because it was so hard for you, dating your Muslim husband the regular way.
I hope this friend is okay. She had no wali and shut herself out from her friends in the time leading up to her marriage. I didn't even get to do my "there is no compulsion in religion" talk with her before she apparently converted and struggled through salat with Arabic words she didn't understand.
So here I was, trying to be more honest, on skype (still wasn't comfortable with it) with Florida Hustler Brother who was right. If I wanted to do this right, I needed a wali. But doing things right would mean ultimately alienating my father from this process, and maybe alienating him from my life as well. I realized that getting a wali was just a red herring. The process of attempting to get "Muslim married" by getting to know a man outside of the dating paradigm and essentially arranging my marriage was incompatible with maintaining a relationship with my father and having my parents at all involved in my decision to marry.
Because my mother is a wife that defers to her husband. My mother is also a woman who did not have patience for her pool of Muslim suitors, which for her as a black Muslim woman in the late 70s were black Muslim men, the new Muslim crew following WD Muhammad or at that point, stragglers from the Nation, who she had seen preferentially select "lost found girls" because "they put out." She is also a woman who does salat in English and does not shudder when people tell her that her prayers will therefore not be recognized. She slides easily from reading the Qur'an daily to living her Islam in the way she sees fit, and in that mode of Islam, she sees no conflict in having married my Christian father, whose morality is more excellent than any other Muslim man she's known, including her own father.
Therefore, she would not be my ally in seeking to get Muslim married at the expense of my relationship with my father.
There's always the slim possibility that I would go about this process, not alienate my father, he meets my suitor and sees past the religious difference to see that he was a genuinely God-fearing man who had the best intentions for his daughter. My mother would also be pleased with such a suitor.
But in order to get there, I would have to begin a serious search, and in order for it to be safe for me as a single woman searching without the aid of family or other elders of a spouse, I would need a wali, a legit one, a trusted guardian who really had my best interests at heart.
And I'd either have to keep it from my father or endure months of disapproval from him until the process yielded success, and the impact that would have on my mother and brother as my father took out his frustration on my mother, as he did when I first told him that I would "never be Christian."
I'm not being melodramatic. My father still tries at intervals to get me to realize my salvation through Jesus Christ and convert.
Some would argue that the decision should be easy, that I should aim to please God more than my parents. And what more example do I need than the father of both my and my father's religion, Abraham, and blah blah blah.
I mean, it is a valid argument. I should want to please God over everything else. But people who make these arguments typically were never in the position I was in. Without my parents, I have no one in this world. And at the very least, as a single woman, that is not safe.
So I closed the Skype conversation with Florida Brother and never spoke to him again. I would not be getting a wali. And from that point onward, it slowly degenerated to, "I will not be getting Muslim married."
To which I occasionally wonder, what will become of me? Marriage being half of my religion, I either will not get married at all or, if I marry, I will be less of a Muslim because of it. The ramifications are clear. I will become like my mother, who has not prayed with anyone else besides me, occasionally, when prayers are silent because I do salat in Arabic and she does salat in English. She fasts in isolation, she practices in isolation. She hasn't been in a mosque since before I was born. She's able to exist as a Muslim woman married to this Christian man praying in English because of her isolation. This was not what I wanted for myself.
It's not true that marrying a non-Muslim man means that you're children will be raised non-Muslim. I've seen more Muslim men married to non-Muslim women raise non-Muslim children than the other way around. Cultures are different, and in ours, often, the mother's faith rules. But it is true that a strong, believing father of another faith will continue to have an influence and somewhat control over especially his daughter's potential spouses, especially if that daughter loves and respects him.
I wore hijab for two years, successfully finding ways to hide it from my father until I couldn't anymore and for multiple other reasons, stopped. The same way goes my plans for marriage.
And I've come out the other side a shadow of the Muslimah that I initially sought to become. I strove to become part of a world that I could not have become a part of without disowning myself from my father and potentially permanently destroying our relationship. But my father is a good Christian man who believes in God with all of his heart who raised me to the best of his ability and wants the best for me and he does not deserve such cruelty.
My mother, a few years ago in my angst about my situation, apologized to me as I spelled this out for her. She should not have placed me in such a precarious position. What a thing to apologize for, to have married a solid husband, a great father and provider.
In the end, I have made a choice about how I will seek my partner. It is one that both of my parents approve of and because of that, feels a lot safer, although in reality, I realize that there is no safe way to do such a thing. Not only in terms of safety of emotions, but in terms of safety of person. I go forward prayerfully as with everything I do.
I've been following along with the recent posts at loveinshallah.com in response to the controversial contribution, "How I Met My Son's Mother." First of all, big ups to this guy who was so courageous to write a piece on this website and be subject to such scrutiny. There's not much left to say that hasn't already been said in several response posts on that website and the 140 and counting comments.
Reading all of these posts about the ideals of Muslim marriage and how we fall so far from that ideal did get me feeling, to use a phrase that I actively despise, "some kinda way..."
I'm probably just ovulating or something and my hormones have come out of a year and a half long hiding, because I almost started crying at a beautiful moment between a tiny newborn and her teenage mother when I was doing baby's exam yesterday. But reading these blogs about people seeking out marriage in the halal way reminded me of what I once wanted for myself, and frankly, what I gave up on a long time ago.
It all unraveled years ago when I was on an online site and this brother from Florida was serious about setting up communication. This was not the first one and nor was he the last. He was also not the first more than 1000 miles away who wanted to skype. In these settings, I usually gave an email that I used to forward my old University of Michigan mail that I used for the purpose of signing up for internet things that I didn't want to spam me...and for online dating. No phone numbers, no skype dates. Anyone who wanted to skype with me immediately I figured were too into my looks, anyway.
So brother from Florida was earnest. He was not at all my time and had a career trajectory that was not appetizing (the lyric comes to mind, "I'm a hustler, baby, I just want you to know..."). But otherwise, he was just fine on initial contacts from an Islamic standpoint. And for him, I was just fine...pre-med (at that time), with a promising career, "just throw a hijab on [me] and [I'd] be perfect."
I didn't take offense to this because I never said never again to hijab, and at this point in the game, approaching 25, I didn't know if I should be so picky as to not want to be with a man who felt hijab was fard.
Then he asked me if I had a wali. Ooohh...
"Because, you know, I talk to sisters on here and they act like they're serious, but then I find out they don't have a wali, which is absolutely required."
This was either about to be my perfect out for the Florida Hustler or it was going to be yet another cop-out for a brother who may have had promise.
I didn't have a wali. I hadn't sought a wali and at that point was unsure if I wanted to, even though I know that it would be required if I chose to go about marriage at this way. What was I thinking? I know exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking that I had to finesse this Muslim marriage thing. I have a Christian father who gets nervous anyone has a Muslim name or comes from a majority-Muslim country for "extremist ties," in spite of being married to a Muslim woman who practices five pillars. My "coming out" as Muslim in my early 20s imposed a deep rift in my family that my adult brother with autism cannot afford, nor can my parents' otherwise loving and functional relationship afford. It's a sucky place to be in as a daughter of an interfaith couple, but so it is. My parents, for this reason, were not fit to guide me through the marriage process.
Of course, my father would love to arrange my marriage with a man that he trusts. That man would be a Christian man. I bet he still would love to, but that's another story.
So, if I wanted to go forward with legit Muslim marriage, by the books, I probably would need a wali. But where would I find one? One of my formerly atheist now Muslim convert friends from medical school who converted to Islam prior to marrying her husband easily told me that I should talk to an imam, that he would help me.
Yes, thank you so much. Because it was so hard for you, dating your Muslim husband the regular way.
I hope this friend is okay. She had no wali and shut herself out from her friends in the time leading up to her marriage. I didn't even get to do my "there is no compulsion in religion" talk with her before she apparently converted and struggled through salat with Arabic words she didn't understand.
So here I was, trying to be more honest, on skype (still wasn't comfortable with it) with Florida Hustler Brother who was right. If I wanted to do this right, I needed a wali. But doing things right would mean ultimately alienating my father from this process, and maybe alienating him from my life as well. I realized that getting a wali was just a red herring. The process of attempting to get "Muslim married" by getting to know a man outside of the dating paradigm and essentially arranging my marriage was incompatible with maintaining a relationship with my father and having my parents at all involved in my decision to marry.
Because my mother is a wife that defers to her husband. My mother is also a woman who did not have patience for her pool of Muslim suitors, which for her as a black Muslim woman in the late 70s were black Muslim men, the new Muslim crew following WD Muhammad or at that point, stragglers from the Nation, who she had seen preferentially select "lost found girls" because "they put out." She is also a woman who does salat in English and does not shudder when people tell her that her prayers will therefore not be recognized. She slides easily from reading the Qur'an daily to living her Islam in the way she sees fit, and in that mode of Islam, she sees no conflict in having married my Christian father, whose morality is more excellent than any other Muslim man she's known, including her own father.
Therefore, she would not be my ally in seeking to get Muslim married at the expense of my relationship with my father.
There's always the slim possibility that I would go about this process, not alienate my father, he meets my suitor and sees past the religious difference to see that he was a genuinely God-fearing man who had the best intentions for his daughter. My mother would also be pleased with such a suitor.
But in order to get there, I would have to begin a serious search, and in order for it to be safe for me as a single woman searching without the aid of family or other elders of a spouse, I would need a wali, a legit one, a trusted guardian who really had my best interests at heart.
And I'd either have to keep it from my father or endure months of disapproval from him until the process yielded success, and the impact that would have on my mother and brother as my father took out his frustration on my mother, as he did when I first told him that I would "never be Christian."
I'm not being melodramatic. My father still tries at intervals to get me to realize my salvation through Jesus Christ and convert.
Some would argue that the decision should be easy, that I should aim to please God more than my parents. And what more example do I need than the father of both my and my father's religion, Abraham, and blah blah blah.
I mean, it is a valid argument. I should want to please God over everything else. But people who make these arguments typically were never in the position I was in. Without my parents, I have no one in this world. And at the very least, as a single woman, that is not safe.
So I closed the Skype conversation with Florida Brother and never spoke to him again. I would not be getting a wali. And from that point onward, it slowly degenerated to, "I will not be getting Muslim married."
To which I occasionally wonder, what will become of me? Marriage being half of my religion, I either will not get married at all or, if I marry, I will be less of a Muslim because of it. The ramifications are clear. I will become like my mother, who has not prayed with anyone else besides me, occasionally, when prayers are silent because I do salat in Arabic and she does salat in English. She fasts in isolation, she practices in isolation. She hasn't been in a mosque since before I was born. She's able to exist as a Muslim woman married to this Christian man praying in English because of her isolation. This was not what I wanted for myself.
It's not true that marrying a non-Muslim man means that you're children will be raised non-Muslim. I've seen more Muslim men married to non-Muslim women raise non-Muslim children than the other way around. Cultures are different, and in ours, often, the mother's faith rules. But it is true that a strong, believing father of another faith will continue to have an influence and somewhat control over especially his daughter's potential spouses, especially if that daughter loves and respects him.
I wore hijab for two years, successfully finding ways to hide it from my father until I couldn't anymore and for multiple other reasons, stopped. The same way goes my plans for marriage.
And I've come out the other side a shadow of the Muslimah that I initially sought to become. I strove to become part of a world that I could not have become a part of without disowning myself from my father and potentially permanently destroying our relationship. But my father is a good Christian man who believes in God with all of his heart who raised me to the best of his ability and wants the best for me and he does not deserve such cruelty.
My mother, a few years ago in my angst about my situation, apologized to me as I spelled this out for her. She should not have placed me in such a precarious position. What a thing to apologize for, to have married a solid husband, a great father and provider.
In the end, I have made a choice about how I will seek my partner. It is one that both of my parents approve of and because of that, feels a lot safer, although in reality, I realize that there is no safe way to do such a thing. Not only in terms of safety of emotions, but in terms of safety of person. I go forward prayerfully as with everything I do.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
And I Stop Breathing
Salaam,
It never fails. I find when I see pictures of MQ and his wife together, my breathing arrests. And I only realize it when they're out of my view and I've scrolled down the page. It's no longer about him, though. It's about the memory of how much I loved, seeing that other person who is in the position I desperately wanted to be for a few good years of my adulthood, and realizing that I will never love like that, again. It's over. That was my chance, and it was never going to be, anyway.
And I thought I no longer stopped breathing when I saw them. But I still do.
...maybe I should delete them from my Facebook.
It never fails. I find when I see pictures of MQ and his wife together, my breathing arrests. And I only realize it when they're out of my view and I've scrolled down the page. It's no longer about him, though. It's about the memory of how much I loved, seeing that other person who is in the position I desperately wanted to be for a few good years of my adulthood, and realizing that I will never love like that, again. It's over. That was my chance, and it was never going to be, anyway.
And I thought I no longer stopped breathing when I saw them. But I still do.
...maybe I should delete them from my Facebook.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
"She said yes!" Really?
Salaam,
Wow, a lot of my friends have gotten engaged this weekend. Not even Michigan people with that absurd Sweetest Day. Maybe it was the nip in the air, pumpkin spice lattes and the crunch of dry leaves that gets people sentimental, thinking about spending the rest of their holidays with that one person. I don't know.
One of my friends, whose entire beginning of courtship I witnessed in medical school, proposed to his girlfriend of 4-5 years. Thank you, Facebook, for letting me know. He had a later post in which he said excitedly, "She said yes!" And thus my knee jerk response, "O RLY?"
You act like you're surprised. Or maybe that statement, like much of the engagement-marriage institutional tradition in the US, is just a matter of tradition with empty meaning. Because, seriously dude, you could have asked her to marry you 3-4 years ago and she would have said yes.
Hell, you could have asked her to marry you when she kept squeezing her petite body between us in the dance floor when I first realized she was interested in you, and she probably would have said yes.
Do I sound bitter? Hah! Let me explain.
I'm very happy for my friends. I was friends with the guy first. He was one of my guy friends who loved the ladies and dated around and "had fun" as much as he could before he settled down. He was one of my guy friends who had ridiculous notions about relationships and women, even after he was in a relationship. I think he was vociferous about these ideas to counteract the very obvious different persona he had with his girlfriend.
And I was very happy for them because I felt like he would be one of these guys content with a perpetual relationship with marriage not in sight. But really, she said yes? Hackneyed, unnecessary, and a no duh situation.
Now, there are, for sure, women who have said no, women who have hesitated, women who have said yes and get cold feet once wedding day comes, yes. That happens. I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about men and women in relationships that I've accompanied for either part time where I feel like the guy needs to shit or get off the pot.
Seriously!
I'm tired of the standard male discourse, oh, marriage is just about a piece of paper, oh, the ball and chain, or as one guy told me, being "locked up in holy matrimony." Them's fightin' words! There's already enough gender struggle without the notion that one, marriage is something that only women want and two, men are just besides themselves in suffering once they are forced to marry. As the two genders who we're supposed to believe are here to be a comfort to one another, we have spent much of our history being the opposite, and really, that cycle needs to end.
But maybe, just maybe, my friend is surprised. Maybe he's recognized all the times when his actions weren't worthy of her devotion, the times they've been distant, the times he felt that she could do better, maybe still believes that she could do better, and she said yes anyway. I can't know. All I know is, he surmounted those ideas that he previously held, about relationships, about marriage, about women, to make permanent the life that he'd made with this woman in a way that is meaningful to both of them. And what's not to celebrate about that?
Wow, a lot of my friends have gotten engaged this weekend. Not even Michigan people with that absurd Sweetest Day. Maybe it was the nip in the air, pumpkin spice lattes and the crunch of dry leaves that gets people sentimental, thinking about spending the rest of their holidays with that one person. I don't know.
One of my friends, whose entire beginning of courtship I witnessed in medical school, proposed to his girlfriend of 4-5 years. Thank you, Facebook, for letting me know. He had a later post in which he said excitedly, "She said yes!" And thus my knee jerk response, "O RLY?"
You act like you're surprised. Or maybe that statement, like much of the engagement-marriage institutional tradition in the US, is just a matter of tradition with empty meaning. Because, seriously dude, you could have asked her to marry you 3-4 years ago and she would have said yes.
Hell, you could have asked her to marry you when she kept squeezing her petite body between us in the dance floor when I first realized she was interested in you, and she probably would have said yes.
Do I sound bitter? Hah! Let me explain.
I'm very happy for my friends. I was friends with the guy first. He was one of my guy friends who loved the ladies and dated around and "had fun" as much as he could before he settled down. He was one of my guy friends who had ridiculous notions about relationships and women, even after he was in a relationship. I think he was vociferous about these ideas to counteract the very obvious different persona he had with his girlfriend.
And I was very happy for them because I felt like he would be one of these guys content with a perpetual relationship with marriage not in sight. But really, she said yes? Hackneyed, unnecessary, and a no duh situation.
Now, there are, for sure, women who have said no, women who have hesitated, women who have said yes and get cold feet once wedding day comes, yes. That happens. I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about men and women in relationships that I've accompanied for either part time where I feel like the guy needs to shit or get off the pot.
Seriously!
I'm tired of the standard male discourse, oh, marriage is just about a piece of paper, oh, the ball and chain, or as one guy told me, being "locked up in holy matrimony." Them's fightin' words! There's already enough gender struggle without the notion that one, marriage is something that only women want and two, men are just besides themselves in suffering once they are forced to marry. As the two genders who we're supposed to believe are here to be a comfort to one another, we have spent much of our history being the opposite, and really, that cycle needs to end.
But maybe, just maybe, my friend is surprised. Maybe he's recognized all the times when his actions weren't worthy of her devotion, the times they've been distant, the times he felt that she could do better, maybe still believes that she could do better, and she said yes anyway. I can't know. All I know is, he surmounted those ideas that he previously held, about relationships, about marriage, about women, to make permanent the life that he'd made with this woman in a way that is meaningful to both of them. And what's not to celebrate about that?
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Can I Choose You?
Salaam,
I posted this back June 27, 2012, and removed it for various reasons. I decided to repost it because here, a year and change later, having worked with G for several rotations, the while forming a relationship with someone else...I still feel this way when I'm around him.
I think it's just that he has a beautiful spirit...
This stage of my life is amazing and I don't have all of the words to describe it. There are so many things happening, and I'm learning so many things about myself. At the same time, I'm on the cusp of another challenging phase of my life, of many more challenging and rewarding phases to come. I'm drastically changing philosophies that I've held at one time in favor of more organic, realistic and practical ways of living my life, love and faith.
And man, it's not easy.
But in the midst of all of this, I want to say I've fallen in love. I actually haven't. I just have a crush. One like I've never had before, one that was immediate, some enchanted evening, love at first sight, across a crowded room type deals.
We'll call him G.
It's time for me to get ready for work so I don't have a ton to say, except...there's something different about this one, and I can't tell if it's destiny or desire to make it destiny, strong enough, that uncontrollable thing that people always talk about, you can't help who you like.
Because you want to make strong feelings destiny.
You want to believe that there is an eternal meaning for your emotions, that it's part of God's plan, that the strong pull you're feeling towards another human being is God guiding you down the straight path, the path He intends for you. Like, snap out of it, girl, this is it. This is the it you've always wanted.
And the first time I looked into G's eyes, that's what I felt. And I've never felt that way about any living human being before. It wasn't just the striking pale green of his eyes offset by the olive of his skin and his dark brown hair. Because I've seen attractive men before but never been so drawn before...
So, as I prepare for work for the day and other things, I'm deciding what I'm going to do with this. And praying on it, because really, what I want is him. It sounds silly and crazy for someone who lived through an MTQ, but I feel like we're meant to be, and yeah. I want to lock that, secure that in any way I can.
Is it okay if I choose you, G?
I posted this back June 27, 2012, and removed it for various reasons. I decided to repost it because here, a year and change later, having worked with G for several rotations, the while forming a relationship with someone else...I still feel this way when I'm around him.
I think it's just that he has a beautiful spirit...
Can I Choose You? (Repost)
As salaam alaikum,This stage of my life is amazing and I don't have all of the words to describe it. There are so many things happening, and I'm learning so many things about myself. At the same time, I'm on the cusp of another challenging phase of my life, of many more challenging and rewarding phases to come. I'm drastically changing philosophies that I've held at one time in favor of more organic, realistic and practical ways of living my life, love and faith.
And man, it's not easy.
But in the midst of all of this, I want to say I've fallen in love. I actually haven't. I just have a crush. One like I've never had before, one that was immediate, some enchanted evening, love at first sight, across a crowded room type deals.
We'll call him G.
It's time for me to get ready for work so I don't have a ton to say, except...there's something different about this one, and I can't tell if it's destiny or desire to make it destiny, strong enough, that uncontrollable thing that people always talk about, you can't help who you like.
Because you want to make strong feelings destiny.
You want to believe that there is an eternal meaning for your emotions, that it's part of God's plan, that the strong pull you're feeling towards another human being is God guiding you down the straight path, the path He intends for you. Like, snap out of it, girl, this is it. This is the it you've always wanted.
And the first time I looked into G's eyes, that's what I felt. And I've never felt that way about any living human being before. It wasn't just the striking pale green of his eyes offset by the olive of his skin and his dark brown hair. Because I've seen attractive men before but never been so drawn before...
So, as I prepare for work for the day and other things, I'm deciding what I'm going to do with this. And praying on it, because really, what I want is him. It sounds silly and crazy for someone who lived through an MTQ, but I feel like we're meant to be, and yeah. I want to lock that, secure that in any way I can.
Is it okay if I choose you, G?
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