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theadventuresofamuslimrevert · 3 years

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Forgiving is hard.....

Every time I contemplate on all the heartbreaking episodes & events that i had to endure these past few months, I couldn’t help but to be filled with rage and/or great sorrow. Lately, it has kind of taken a toll on me. I often find it so difficult for me to fully focus & achieve khusyu’ in my ibadah or any task I do in general. As hard as I try to eliminate external distractions when I’m at something, my past always finds its way back to me. I start to be reminded of how hurt i was, and all the familiar faces that caused that hurt. Anger will peek in and just like that, I lose focus.

Now being distracted isn’t my main concern. It’s the fact that by losing focus when i’m in the middle of doing something, be it ibadah or work, I would end up not entirely satisfied of the outcome once it’s done- this bothers me a whole lot. Imagine how much better everything would turn out if I gave my 100%. Until I discover how to get rid of everything that’s bugging me, I don’t think I’ll ever be at peace. The question here is, why can’t I? Why is it so hard to get over everything? Then it occurred me last night that maybe, just maybe, the reason why I can’t let go of my past is because I’m withholding one of the most essential thing that is needed to move on- forgiveness.

In my effort to start fresh, I realised how I still get all emotional and mad each time I think of the ones who broke me. So I ask myself, if I still feel this way then have I really forgiven them? Hm, I don’t think so. But then, why not?

Although Allah has given us the right to refuse from forgiving someone, I’m pretty sure He does not encourage it. As difficult as it is to forgive, holding back forgiveness is way more tormenting and painful. It haunts you. In my idealism, I used to think that if I don’t forgive someone, i have done my revenge. They will not be able to live in peace because regardless of whether they have asked for an apology or not, i’d still consider it as ‘unsettled business’. But hey who am I kidding, because eventually, this mentality corrupts the heart. And a heart which is corrupted will never be at peace- including mine.

Oh come on, It’s islamic new year. If not now, can there be a better time? You see, forgiving does not only benefit the person at fault, but it’s equally as important & necessary for the forgiver as well. You should forgive others not only because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace. After all the crap they got you through, even if they never bothered to say sorry, forgive them. Again not because they deserve it, but you are way better than that. Because you are worthy with the quality of being forgiving. It takes the same amount of energy to forgive as well as to not forgive. There’s a certain kind of humility required to be the adult here. Not forgiving, as convenient as we ‘assume’ it is, just indicates the amount of pride and arrogance we have in us. Since when is life a battle of ego? Remember the story of Adam and Iblis Laknatullah? Ego was the exact reason why Iblis was taken out of jannah.

We are all children of Adam. We make mistakes. At some point of our lives, we have also wronged someone. We might have caused them hurt. With or without intentions, knowingly and unknowingly. It is certainly natural to mess up here and there. Yes right now you are torn. Yes you are shattered to pieces and broke to the bones. That person may have betrayed us, slandered us, or simply been a pain in the ass. But how can you be so sure you’ve never left anyone feeling the same way before? And because of that, we all owe each other forgiveness. If we hope to be forgiven, why is it so hard to do the same to people? Why are we withholding something which we are clearly not the rightful owner of in the first place?

Forgiveness, dear readers, it’s is not our forte. It’s not something we humans are experts of. For goodness sake, we are not God. Even Allah is Al-Ghaffur- The Most Forgiving. He forgives and He loves to forgive. It’s one of his beautiful attributes. A Godly one. Now since Allah is All-Forgiving, if the person at fault commits sincere tawbah (repentance), it is most likely for Him to forgive the person. But us humans? We on the the other hand, are different. We tend to come up with so many excuses and have the cheek to not forgive a fellow human being who breathe, eat, sleep and make mistakes just like us. Do we think that if we do not forgive them, we can refuse them jannah? Are we for real? Don’t compare who hurt who more, or ‘my pain is bigger than your pain’. If you look at it that way, you will never be able to forgive. We are not the bosses of others. I don’t owe you, you don’t owe me. Honey, who are we to punish people? If Allah can forgive people, why should we punish them more than they deserve to be punished?

It warms my heart every single time I recall on how forgiving our prophet Muhammad SAW was. Do you remember how he was once rejected by the people of Ta’if? When he arrived to Ta’if, he was pelted with rocks and stones until he bled awfully. His whole body was covered with blood and his sandals were clogged to his feet. Things got so ugly that Jibril was sent down to usher the angels in charge of the mountains to look after this matter. The angel greeted Rasulullah and said;

“Oh Prophet of Allah! I am at your service. If you wish, I can cause the mountains overlooking this town on both sides to collide with each other, so that all the people therein would be crushed to death, or you may suggest any other punishment for them.”

I bet you can guess what the prophet did next.

Yes, he forgave them instead. Allah. He was A PROPHET. A Nabi! He could simply ask Allah to destroy the people of Ta’if. But not only he forgave them, he also prayed for them. He prayed for his enemies. No grudges. No nothing. MashaAllah, such humility. Muhammad SAW raised his hands towards the heavens and said “…So long as You are not angry with me, I do not care. Your favour is of a more expansive relief to me.”

Allahuakbar

Here’s another story. Once during the time of the prophet SAW, a man was said to be given glad tidings of Jannah. A sahabah heard this news and due to curiosity, he observed that man’s activities for 3 days from the moment he wakes up, to the time he goes to bed. However he did not find anything that made the man stand out from the rest of the sahabah who seemed to be doing more good deeds. So one day, he gave up and decided to ask the man directly. The man revealed a truly virtuous act that he never forgets to do every night. He said “Every night, before I go to sleep, I forgive whoever has wronged me. I remove any bad feelings towards anyone from my heart.”

How beautiful is that?

I learnt that one way to be more forgiving is by reading more seerah of the prophets. How they dealt with people, particularly who hated them and had harm inflicted on them. They were so gentle towards others and they showed that it is absolutely possible to forgive with hikmah; to become strong, without being hard, and remain soft, without being weak. Personally, the more I read about the prophets, the more I feel so little. As if I have no right at all to NOT forgive people, despite how they were towards me before.

Again,

Forgive others not solely because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace

It’s a win-win situation, for both parties. Not only that, it is also an investment for our Aakhirah. Our “jannah access cards”. Give yourself a chance to be happy again. Get rid of all that intention of wanting to torment a fellow human being by not forgiving them. It’s liberating and life changing, you know. Set them free, while setting yourself free. Pray for them. Ask Allah to guide them and make them happy. I noticed that by making du’a for those who have hurt us, we will find that their happiness can also be our happiness too. Tell me how can we not be happy seeing our prayers being granted?

And to every single soul that I have wronged, if by any chance you’re reading this, I sincerely beg for your apology. Please make du’a for me. Also know that I have forgiven you and I wish you nothing but the best for both your dunya and aakhirah. May Allah grant you contentment and peace, and may he soften our hearts to continue forgiving.

I deserve peace. You deserve peace.

So may peace be upon us all, inshaAllah.

#reflection #islam #islamicquotes #beautiful quote #positivethinking #manifestyourlife #selfreminder #holy quran #prophet muhammad #forgiveness

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blackishkiss · 4 years

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Some brutal truth, for myself.

I gotta be honest.

I’m going to be brutally honest with myself.

During the early times of the quarantine due to COVID-19, I remember I was being highly motivated and functioning. I think it was because I was very tired of my daily activity, especially the ones I do in college. Also, I did not expect that COVID-19 would be this long. “This is my ultimate break.” I thought. So I functioned very well, I joined some trainings, I wrote a lot of motivation letter and got accepted a lot too. And yeah, suddenly life wasn’t as cruel as the COVID-19 rage outside the house. I develop a whole new (not-so called) routine and never really got bored because, well just because. I think it was because nobody sees me and I don’t need to strive hard seeking validation from others. And I also achieved everything with ease.

Probably has some idea how this is all goes wrong?

I (I mean, we all) practiced my Ramadan during quarantine. And as usual Ramadans, I achieved my Ramadan target with no significant difficulty. And then things started go wrong when I started leaving my Ramadan habits.

Strangely, I still felt like I’m on top of the world because I still have a lot of tasks, works, and activities ongoing. I abandoned those things I need to do to attained peaceful and mindfulness. But now I feel like Allah has given me a little pinch to open my eyes.

One tap, and BAM. All the vulnerabilities are there. And I. Have. To. Face. Them. All.

I was very stressful because I had to let go the thing that I thought would bring me an ultimate satisfaction towards my life. I was cocky. I had to go on a consultation with a psychologist. And I think that everything she said was what Allah wanted to tell me this time. But I was blinded. She said, “what is it with you and being a center spotlight when you know that is not what you want, not what you’re capable of?” Well as you can predict from previous questions, I was really craving for attention from others despite knowing the fact that at the end of the day, I will only be alone inside my grave. So the psychologist told me that I was also abandoning myself. Not listening to what it needs, only listening to what i (think) people would be pleased with. Furthermore, I also ain’t listening to what Allah would be pleased with.

Being distant from Him, I really feel like I am in an endless wheel of tiredness and not feeling enough. And whenever I feel like I am not enough I will try to take one or two workloads. And then I feel like all the things I do are tiring and pointless, like I don’t gain anything despite the soreness. But when I look at my friends, I’d still feel like I’m never gonna be good enough. And this cycle will go all over again.

So here’s the truth you need to look with your very two eyes, @/Ms.Shofia,

1. You should not abandon your soul just because you think it is not enough for others. You have to IMPLANT it inside your mind that inner peace comes when you are thoughtful of what Allah likes and what your soul need. It is known that God will never change someone’s condition unless they change what is in themselves. The question, is the change enough to please Allah that He will guide us towards the changing process?

2. You SHOULD never be cocky about what you have because you believe that in one blink you can lose everything. And then what will be remaining? Nothing. Just you. And if you’re lucky enough you will also find Allah. But what if you don’t?

3. The truth is, during these times, people is really focused on themselves. Yes, they may need someone to look up to as an inspiration but that does not mean you have to be one. Yes, we have to be beneficial as it is the best quality in a human. But also remember that you have Allah to also please and yourself to nurture.

You have your own role Shof, maybe not to be publicly known as your oldman. But in other way. Because there is just no one that gives what you give to this world.

So yeah, last week I had a little reunion with my stars: Teh Juan, Rafa, Ajung, Lala, Fasya, Andin, and Spika. I was refreshed and reminded that a good routine does involve Allah inside it. I was forced to do all the things that I’ve abandoned. But somehow, deep down, I know that I need it badly. I keep on seeking people’s appreciation and validation, forgetting that His appreciation and validation is the one thing I need to reach fulfillment in life.

Dedicated for: Penakluk

#reflection #note to self #penakluk

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medeafive · 4 years

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Blood and Stone - 12

Masterpost

"I'm not sure that's actionable," Pepper remarks. "We don't want to burn our source, after all."

"It's useless anyway if we don't know where they'll move," Fury states coldly. "So nothing changes. You'll keep observing Barrandov and once they pack up and leave, we'll start patrolling the entire city until we find them again. The other ones are located, yes?"

"Yes," Sharon confirms. "We'll pull back now in order not to make them suspicious, only check in once in a while that they're still there."

"Bílá Hora's under control," Natasha mutters. "That's what he said."

"Time's running out," Fury reminds them. "So, how is the ice block?"

"I don't know," Tony replies. "How are you?"

"Fuck off," Natasha hisses.

"I was talking to Fury," Tony replies graciously. "It turns out you can actually be a nice person, you just don't like us."

"Stop acting like fucking children," Fury interrupts. "Banner?"

Bruce rubs the dark circles under his eyes. "I don't know. I looked at the vampire blood and it's got some properties that… The frozen man might have not gotten frost damage, my colleagues might be right about that, but if we're going to thaw him, we'll need to reconstruct a lot of tissue. And maybe injecting him with vampire blood could do that. I might be colossally wrong, though."

"You'd turn him into a vampire," Fury states.

"Injecting vampire blood does not turn you into a vampire," Bruce replies. "That has been extensively studied, in Russia, ask Natasha. Only the poison bite. I looked at the poison and the blood and… it's not very scientific but think of a beehive. The vampire cells in the blood are workers, they can't reproduce, so they just do their job until they fall apart. The poison, though, has the bee queens. They keep churning out workers and new queen cells, and that never ends. So, if we inject him with vampire blood, the workers will repair his body and then die, leaving him a functioning and human body. I hope. Again, I'm at the very start of understanding this massively complex system, it might totally backfire."

"The guy also must have frozen really really quick," Tony adds. "So there would be no real cause of death. He's just frozen in time."

"Do we even know if it's a guy?" Pepper asks critically. "You can't really make that out, in the ice."

Tony snorts. "Well, if it's a woman, she's certainly very tall and has very broad shoulders, cupcake."

"But we have no idea who he is," Clint remarks.

"None," Fury confirms. "They fished him out off the coast of Norway. He was inside some sort of plane but the cold salt water has corroded that so badly they haven't figured it out yet."

"But you'd need a lot of vampire blood, right?" Sam asks. "For his whole body."

"Oh yeah." Bruce rubs his eyes again. "A lot."

"I don't think Natasha's friend will give us that," Tony comments. "Depending on how much she has him under her thumb."

Yeah, they're not even on good terms. "Not an option. I could get a little, probably, but not a lot ."

"What if we smoke out a hunting party?" Sam suggests. "The one near Central Station. Three vampires. I mean, the Castle won't be surprised that we're hunting them."

"We couldn't hit them with silver, though," Sharon objects. "Contaminates the blood."

"That's gonna be tough," Clint remarks. "Without our weapons."

"We can still break their bones," Natasha argues. "Snap their necks. Cut their heads off with anything that's not silver. Even if we can't fully kill them, we can incapacitate them enough that we can get their blood, and then we can drive a wooden stick through their hearts."

"You're vicious," Tony remarks. "Seriously, you want to bring live vampires into the lab?"

"I'm not comfortable with that," Bruce announces. "Also, the UV traps will burn them to a crisp, even if you drag them in here."

"Turn them off for a short while," Sam suggests. "We're not going to be overrun because of that. And collecting the blood outside the lab is just not possible, we don't have the equipment for that."

"True," Bruce admits. "Maybe we could… cordon a part off for that."

"So," Fury states. "A raid."

"We are a lot of people," Clint admits. "Only three vampires, even if they're trained. It's doable."

"We were going to do it sooner or later anyway," Pepper reminds them.

"Barton, Carter, you know all the exits, draw up a plan," Fury orders. "Everyone else, keep staking out Barrandov, even if it's pointless, keep up the appearances. Banner and Stark stay in the lab, of course."

"My… friend might stop by tonight," Natasha offers. "Not sure, though."

"Might?" Tony repeats. "I better fucking hope he does. I really need the X-ray. Yeah, yeah, it won't kill him, we checked."

"Well, then we're all good," Fury remarks. "Now, get the fuck to sleep, you all look like zombies."

She sleeps late into the afternoon. Sharon is in the gym, boxing against a sandbag. She almost turns right around but has already been noticed. "Oh. Hey."

"Hey," Natasha replies unenthusiastically.

"I'm not that good in unarmed hand-to-hand," Sharon admits, punching the sandbag again. "So I thought I'd train a little. Did you sleep well?"

"No," Natasha confesses. "Bunch of nightmares."

"Mhm." Sharon lowers her fists, breathing, sweat forming on her forehead. "I get those, too. I think every hunter does."

"Maybe," Natasha sort of agrees. "Uh, we could try sparring, if you want."

"Oh, sure." Sharon unwraps her hands. "You should get warmed up, though."

Natasha sighs, grabbing a jumping rope. "Right. Give me a minute."

"Mhm, sure." Sharon rolls her head slightly. "You didn't seem very happy this morning, if I may say so. Something with your friend?"

Natasha snorts, over the whipping sound. Yeah, how can she explain that. "I might have pissed him off again."

Sharon shrugs. "Happens, right? What was it about?"

She finds she doesn't want Sharon to view his involvement in their endeavor with suspicion. "I don't know. Just the- mixing of an interpersonal relationship and work, I guess. That always kills it."

"Quite the opposite, I'd say," Sharon disagrees. "He wouldn't be here if not for you, after all. You should be proud of that."

She's running out of breath, so she just bites her lip and says nothing, skipping over the rope. Sharon starts stretching, quietly. Someone's in the kitchen, frying something noisefully. Natasha stops, finding she kind of wants to talk. If it works for Pepper and Sharon and everyone else, really, why not for her? "I just- I don't know if- No, I guess that's too much."

"No, no, tell me," Sharon encourages. "Anything. Won't tell anyone else, promise."

Natasha sighs and goes to stuff the rope away, avoiding eye contact. "Maybe it's dumb but- what if he just wants sex?"

It's out, as cringy as it is. "Oh," Sharon remarks, pushing up and sweeping a fashionable escaped strand of hair back. "Oh. No, that's not dumb. Not at all. He's a vampire, after all."

Natasha snorts absent-mindedly. Right. "Maybe not all vampire."

"This job takes a lot," Sharon goes on. "Physically and mentally and- just, how it changes you. But there's gotta be limits. And sleeping with a vampire is one of those, I'd say."

Oh. Now she feels- every time she tries to do the same things as everyone else, the normal things, she ends up feeling bad about herself, like she's different, almost in human. "Forget about it."

"No, no, that's a totally real concern," Sharon interrupts. "You shouldn't feel that, just because he's helping us, that you have to do everything to keep him hooked. No one can ask that of you. Draw a line. And for him, just… just keep him at arm's length, as much as possible, without totally driving him away, of course."

Turns out Sharon is way more cynical than she looks. "No, really, forget about it. Come on, get in the ring."

Natasha holds the ropes up for her. "I'm glad you're talking to me, though," Sharon remarks, climbing through. "So, what are we doing?"

Natasha shrugs, feeling more comfortable. "Dunno. You have some training, right? Not a total beginner?" Sharon nods. "Okay, then let's just go. Hit me."

Sharon breathes deeply, taking a fighting stance. She strikes out with a hit and a kick, but Natasha grabs her leg, pulls it up and throws her down. Sharon hits the ground hard. Natasha doesn't waste time, moving to side control, pinning her opponent to the ground from the side of her torso, applying weight to her chest, slamming her chin up so that she can't bite- oh, tapping out. Shit. She gets up quickly. "Oh, sorry. You okay?"

"Yeah," Sharon rasps out, rubbing her jaw. "Wow, you really don't pull your punches."

"Habit," Natasha admits, pulling her up. "Vampire's way stronger, way faster, can't take any chances."

"No, you're right," Sharon agrees. "Did you do that a lot?"

Natasha shrugs. "In the beginning, when we didn't yet know what would work… we just broke them down, physically, incapacitate them, then cut off their head, burn them, all that. Wasn't very refined. Didn't have good tools either."

"Sounds brutal," Sharon remarks.

"Certainly," Natasha confirms. "Wanna go on?"

"Oh yeah," Sharon says. "Don't wanna get eaten by vampires after all."

"Uh, hey," Natasha remarks. "Can I ask you something weird?"

"Great start," Sam comments, licking his finger. "Why, what is it?"

"Do you think I should pray?" Natasha asks, picking around her salad. "Even if I don't believe? Or is that blasphemous?"

Sam chuckles. "I don't know. Do you feel like praying?"

"I definitely feel like I should do something," she replies. "Something that's not… running around and killing things, you know? Something pure ."

"Try cooking," Sam suggests. "No, really. Praying is kind of like talking to Allah, and if you don't believe in that, it's probably weird. Or meditation. Everyone's different."

Natasha snorts. "Thanks, I already spend enough time sitting around and thinking, I don't need more of that."

"So you need a hobby?" Sam asks. "To keep busy?"

"I guess I wanna- something that feels better," Natasha explains. "Something that makes me feel better, about myself and all."

"I get it, it's grinding," Sam allows. "Yeah, you can try praying, if you want, no harm in that. But maybe you already know something that lifts your mood and you just forgot?"

"Maybe," Natasha admits. "I'll think about it. Uh, sun's going down, I guess I should leave you to it."

Sam snorts, grabbing his plate. "Wow. Are you the sharia police now?"

"No, no, I just don't wanna- I don't wanna keep you from it, really," Natasha repeats. "Think I'll go upstairs again, take a nap."

"Good idea," Sam remarks. "Sleeping is definitely keeping me sane."

She doesn't actually sleep, just lies awake staring at the ceiling, mulling over the intractable uneasy feeling, so the knock doesn't startle her. "Yes."

"Your friend doesn't wanna submit to more tests," Tony's voice says. "You need to get down here and make him."

Anger bubbles up in her chest. "I'm not forcing him to do anything."

Tony sighs with exhaustion. "Just come on down. He says he wants to talk to you."

Well, she doesn't want to talk to him, after slamming the door last time, which was totally dumb and overreacting and pointless. Urgh. Hasn't she sufficiently proven she is horrible at this, this whole human shtick? She thought at least this… "Fine. Be down in a few minutes."

She doesn't bother getting dressed, just a t-shirt and sweatpants, combing her hair to one side, and then she shuffles down to the lab. Autopilot. Bruce is talking about some scan he wants to do, trying to calm and reassure a James who's clearly not even listening. Tony is looking as annoyed as he sounded, slouching on a chair arms crossed. "Oh, good that you're here," Bruce exclaims. "We actually found a way we can do the MRI, despite the metal in his arm, and in his teeth, I should add, so you just need to tell-"

"We need to talk," James interrupts.

Great. Phrase she loves to hear. "Fine. Let's talk ."

"Not that door," Tony interjects, tapping one foot. "That way's the ice block."

There's another door, fortunately, though it does have a glass pane. Will have to do. James has a quizzical look as he closes the door behind him. "What does he mean by ice block?"

"Long story," Natasha replies, crossing her arms. Another room with unholy amounts of lab equipment, for God knows what. "So. If it's about the fact that I was shitty to you last time, last night-"

"It's not about that," James interrupts.

"Oh." Somehow, that's worse. "What is it, then?"

"I'm going to leave town," he states. "And so should you. And everyone else, probably."

"What?" Oh, she was so right, he's just going to disappoint her. "Are you crazy?"

"There's another black cloak," James states. "In Prague. Arrived last night. I managed to avoid him so far but it's clear Schmidt sent him either after you or after me, in any case we need to-"

"Are you panicking?" Natasha asks.

"Am I- of course I'm panicking!" James groans. "The game's up and we need to see to it that you get out of it alive, that nobody's hurt because of my dumb-"

"Maybe it's not up," Natasha suggests. "Maybe he was just told to check in with you, see how it's going, that you're still doing as you're told. Then we'd just need to convince him everything is alright and boom, problem solved."

"You don't know him," James points out. "He's not going to leave without you, dead or alive. God, I thought he was in America anyways, that means we have to calculate with even more black cloaks-"

"James," she interrupts again. "I'm not going anywhere. Dead or alive."

"I can't stand the thought of you-" He sighs. "Run. Please. Just run. If you care for me, just a little bit, run."

"That's a real low blow," she remarks.

He rolls his almost white eyes. "I don't want anything to happen to you, doll, and this guy is going to drag you straight to hell and I just can't let that happen. Look, I would have liked to- be with you, really, but the only place you'll be safe is far from all this. Far from me. I can't protect you."

She breathes out. It's not like the prospect of another black cloak leaves her unfazed. "I think- I think we should talk to the others."

"It's not about them," he says. "It's about you. He's after you. Schmidt's after you. They don't understand, or they don't want to believe… but I know you need to run. It'll be hard but you're shrewd, you'll keep them off your tracks. I wish I could help you, I really do, but you'll only be safe far from me."

"No, you don't understand," Natasha returns. "We're a team."

"This is bad," Clint remarks. "Really fucking bad."

"Are you sure it's-" Sharon tries.

"Yes," James snaps. "I'm sure. Absolutely fucking sure."

"Well, there's only one real solution," Sam remarks. "And I don't say this lightly, but we have to kill him. Simple as that."

"Nowhere near fucking easy, though," Tony replies. "Unless he's, like, the weakest black cloak in existence."

"He's not," James states coldly.

Clint groans. "If we don't kill him, he'll abduct Nat," Sam points out. "Or he'll tell Schmidt what's really going on, and then we have all black cloaks crushing down on us. When is your deadline again?"

"About 25 days," Natasha says. "And we're nowhere near ready."

"If we'll ever be," Tony mutters.

"Maybe we could convince him it's all right without Natasha?" Sharon suggests. "If she stays in here? He couldn't break in, right?"

"I can break in," James states coldly. "So Pierce can also break in."

"Seems we're back at killing him," Fury remarks. "Are you up for that?"

"Me?" James asks incredulously. "I'm- I don't know. He's strong. Maybe. It's a toss-up."

"And you don't want to risk that," Tony accuses.

"I don't give a fuck about dying," James returns coldly. "But if he kills me, Natalia's time is up. That's why she needs to run, right fucking now."

"I'm not going anywhere," Natasha repeats. "We always calculated we had to kill some amount of black cloaks at the end of this. This is only one. We'll kill him, as quietly as possible, without James' help, so that no one gets suspicious. And then we proceed as planned."

"We could upgrade the tower security," Bruce remarks. "We made you a mask and goggles and a hood, so you'd be safe from it. And then we could stay in until we're ready."

"This may be a bad idea," Pepper suggests. "But why don't you just talk to him, find out what his orders are?"

"Talk to him?" James repeats surprised. "What the hell would I tell him why this is taking so long?"

"Same thing you told the Castle," Natasha replies. "I'm stubborn as hell. That's pretty evident."

"Is Schmidt going to get suspicious?" Sam asks. "If his guy doesn't return in the next three weeks?"

James breathes out. "I don't know. Maybe not. Probably not. It's likely he'll just stay on until the deadline and then drag her to Schmidt, whether she wants to or not. Communication with Schmidt is difficult. I guess I could… ask Pierce."

"Different question," Sharon throws in. "Who's going out tonight? Are we still doing that?"

Clint groans. "Sam and I were supposed to. But I'm not very keen on dying, unlike certain other people."

"But we haven't seen the black cloak yet," Sharon argues. "And he probably knows that. So if we start holing up in here now, it's suspicious because we don't officially know yet."

"I don't think he'll randomly attack you," James says. "Not his style. But I could follow you, if you want, and distract him if he makes a move."

Clint clearly doesn't like putting his life in James' vampire hands. "Good enough for me," Sam states.

"I could… teach you some stuff," James suggests hesitantly. "What works against vampires. If you are really going to kill Pierce."

"You couldn't have done that earlier?" Tony questions.

James snorts. "Let's be honest, you just would have used it to kill me."

Silence. "Maybe," Fury acknowledges. "What changed?"

"I don't give a fuck anymore," James states coldly. "I want Natalia to get out of this alive. That's all I care about at this point."

"No one's dying on my watch," Fury returns. "Especially not Romanoff."

"What tricks, though?" Pepper asks, leaning on the table. "I'm curious."

"There's a few," James replies, nostrils flaring lightly. Yeah, he smells the blood. "Electricity, for instance."

"I thought electricity doesn't work," Tony points out.

"It doesn't kill a vampire," James acknowledges. "But it knocks out our senses, at a certain intensity. It's very painful and disorienting."

Tony grins widely. "Oh, I'd love to try that."

"Wilson, Barton," Fury interjects. "Are you ready to go out?"

Clint shrugs, Sam nods. "Guess we have to," Clint says. "I'd appreciate the backup, though."

"If you come back before sunrise and stay the day, I promise I'll stop Tony from electrocuting you," Natasha suggests to James.

"Oh yeah," Sam agrees. "There's a lot to talk about."

#blood and stone #buckynat #vampire au #natasha romanoff #black widow #bucky barnes #winter soldier #my writing #fanfic

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jewish-privilege · 5 years

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One of Wenzel Michalski’s early recollections of growing up in southern Germany in the 1970s was of his father, Franz, giving him some advice: “Don’t tell anyone that you’re Jewish.” Franz and his mother and his little brother had survived the Holocaust by traveling across swaths of Eastern and Central Europe to hide from the Gestapo, and after the war, his experiences back in Germany suggested that, though the Nazis had been defeated, the anti-Semitism that was intrinsic to their ideology had not. This became clear to Franz when his teachers in Berlin cast stealthily malicious glances at him when Jewish characters — such as Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” — came up in literature. “Eh, Michalski, this exactly pertains to you,” he recalls one teacher telling him through a clenched smile. Many years later, when he worked as an animal-feed trader in Hamburg, he didn’t tell friends that he was Jewish and held his tongue when he heard them make anti-Semitic comments. And so Franz told his son Wenzel that things would go easier for him if he remained quiet about being Jewish. “The moment you say it, things will become very awkward.”

As a teenager, Wenzel defied his father’s advice and told a close friend. That friend quickly told his mother, and the next time Wenzel saw her, she reacted quite strongly, hugging him and kissing his face: “Wenzel! Oh, my Wenzel!” Now a stocky, bearded 56-year-old, Wenzel recalled the moment to me on a recent Saturday afternoon. He raised the pitch of his voice as he continued to mimic her: “You people! You are the most intelligent! The most sensitive! You are the best pianists in the world! And the best poets!” In his normal voice again, he added, “Then I understood what my father meant.”

Wenzel Michalski is now the director of Human Rights Watch for Germany. He and his wife, Gemma, an outgoing British expat, live in a cavernous apartment building in the west of Berlin. In their kitchen, Gemma told me that after arriving in Germany in 1989, she often got a strangely defensive reaction when she told people she was Jewish; they would tell her they didn’t feel responsible for the Holocaust or would defend their grandparents as not having perpetrated it. And so, to avoid conversations like these, she, too, stayed quiet about being Jewish.

Recently, the Michalskis’ youngest son became the third generation of the family to learn that telling people he is Jewish could cause problems. The boy — whose parents asked that he be called by one of his middle names, Solomon, to protect his privacy — had attended a Jewish primary school in Berlin. But he didn’t want to stay in such a homogeneous school for good, so just before he turned 14, he transferred to a public school that was representative of Germany’s new diversity — a place, as Gemma described it, where he “could have friends with names like Hassan and Ahmed.”

The first few days there seemed to go well. Solomon, an affable kid with an easy smile, bonded with one classmate over their common affection for rap music. That classmate introduced him to a German-Turkish rapper who would rap about “Allah and stuff,” Solomon told me. In return, he introduced the classmate to American and British rap. Solomon had a feeling they would end up being best friends. On the fourth day, when Solomon was in ethics class, the teachers asked the students what houses of worship they had been to. One student mentioned a mosque. Another mentioned a church. Solomon raised his hand and said he’d been to a synagogue. There was a strange silence, Solomon later recalled. One teacher asked how he had encountered a synagogue.

“I’m Jewish,” Solomon said.

“Everyone was shocked, especially the teachers,” Solomon later told me about this moment. After class, a teacher told Solomon that he was “very brave.” Solomon was perplexed. As Gemma explained: “He didn’t know that you’re not meant to tell anyone.”

The following day, Solomon brought brownies to school for his birthday. He was giving them out during lunch when the boy he had hoped would be his best friend informed him that there were a lot of Muslim students at the school who used the word “Jew” as an insult. Solomon wondered whether his friend included himself in this category, and so after school, he asked for clarification. The boy put his arm around Solomon’s shoulders and told him that, though he was a “real babo” — Kurdish slang for “boss” — they couldn’t be friends, because Jews and Muslims could not be friends. The classmate then rattled off a series of anti-Semitic comments, according to Solomon: that Jews were murderers, only interested in money.

Over the next few months, Solomon was bullied in an increasingly aggressive fashion. One day, he returned home with a large bruise from a punch on the back. On another occasion, Solomon was walking home and stopped into a bakery. When he emerged, he found one of his tormentors pointing what looked like a handgun at him. Solomon’s heart raced. The boy pulled the trigger. Click. The gun turned out to be a fake. But it gave Solomon the scare of his life.

When Solomon first told his parents about the bullying, they resolved to turn it into a teaching moment. They arranged to have Wenzel’s father visit the school to share his story about escaping the Gestapo. But the bullying worsened, Gemma told me, and they felt the school did not do nearly enough to confront the problem. The Michalskis went public with their story in 2017, sharing it with media outlets in order to spark what they viewed as a much-needed discussion about anti-Semitism in German schools. Since then, dozens of cases of anti-Semitic bullying in schools have come to light, including one case last year at the German-American school where my own son attends first grade, in which, according to local news reports, students tormented a ninth grader, for months, chanting things like “Off to Auschwitz in a freight train.” Under criticism for its handling of the case, the administration released a statement saying it regretted the school’s initial response but was taking action and having “intensive talks” with the educational staff.

...For the Michalskis, all this was evidence that German society never truly reckoned with anti-Semitism after the war. Germany had restored synagogues and built memorials to the victims of the Holocaust, Wenzel said: “So for a lot of mainstream, middle-class people, that means: ‘We’ve done it. We dealt with anti-Semitism.’ But nobody really dealt with it within the families. The big, the hard, the painful questions were never asked.” In Wenzel’s view, the Muslim students who tormented his child were acting in an environment that was already suffused with native anti-Semitism. “A lot of conservative politicians now say, ‘Oh, the Muslims are importing their anti-Semitism to our wonderful, anti-anti-Semitic culture,’ ” he said. “That’s bull. They’re trying to politicize this.”

Jewish life in Germany was never fully extinguished. After the Nazi genocide of six million Jews, some 20,000 Jewish displaced persons from Eastern Europe ended up settling permanently in West Germany, joining an unknown number of the roughly 15,000 surviving German Jews who still remained in the country after the war. The new German political class rejected, in speeches and in the law, the rabid anti-Semitism that had been foundational to Nazism — measures considered not only to be morally imperative but necessary to re-establish German legitimacy on the international stage. This change, however, did not necessarily reflect an immediate conversion in longstanding anti-Semitic attitudes on the ground. In the decades that followed, a desire among many Germans to deflect or repress guilt for the Holocaust led to a new form of antipathy toward Jews — a phenomenon that came to be known as “secondary anti-Semitism,” in which Germans resent Jews for reminding them of their guilt, reversing the victim and perpetrator roles. “It seems the Germans will never forgive us Auschwitz,” Hilde Walter, a German-Jewish journalist, was quoted as saying in 1968.

Holocaust commemoration in West Germany increasingly became an affair of the state and civic groups, giving rise to a prevailing erinnerungskultur, or “culture of remembrance,” that today is most prominently illustrated by the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a funereal 4.7-acre site near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, inaugurated in 2005. But even as Germany’s remembrance culture has been held up as an international model of how to confront the horrors of the past, it has not been universally supported at home. According to a 2015 Anti-Defamation League survey, 51 percent of Germans believe that it is “probably true” that “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust”; 30 percent agreed with the statement “People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.”

...The exact nature of the anti-Semitic threat — and indeed, whether it rises to the level of an existential threat at all — is intensely debated within Germany’s Jewish community. Many see the greatest peril as coming from an emboldened extreme right that is hostile to both Muslims and Jews, as the recent shootings by white supremacists in synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, Calif., and mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, horrifically illustrated. Multiple surveys suggest that anti-Muslim attitudes in Germany and other European countries are more widespread than anti-Semitism. At the same time, a number of surveys show that Muslims in Germany and other European countries are more likely to hold anti-Semitic views than the overall population. The 2015 Anti-Defamation League survey, for instance, found that 56 percent of Muslims in Germany harbored anti-Semitic attitudes, compared with 16 percent for the overall population. Conservative Jews see the political left as unwilling to name this problem out of reluctance to further marginalize an already marginalized group or because of leftist anti-Zionism. The far right, anti-Islam A.f.D. — the very political party that, for its relativizing of Nazi crimes, many Jews find most noxious — has sought to exploit these divisions and now portrays itself as a defender of Germany’s Jews against what it depicts as the Muslim threat.

...The early signs are mixed. Sigmount Königsberg is the anti-Semitism commissioner for Berlin’s Jewish Community, the organization that oversees synagogues and other aspects of local Jewish life. At a cafe next to the domed New Synagogue, which was spared destruction during the pogroms of November 1938, Königsberg, an affable 58-year-old, told me his mother had been liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and had intended to move to Paris. Instead, she became stranded in the German border town of Saarbrücken, and she soon met Königsberg’s father, also a Holocaust survivor. Like other Jewish families, they were ambivalent about remaining in Germany. Königsberg employed an often-used metaphor to describe this unsettledness: Until the 1980s, he said, German Jews “sat on a packed suitcase.” After East and West Germany reunified, many Jews feared a nationalist revival. Despite a wave of racist attacks on immigrants, that revival did not seem to materialize. In fact, the European Union, which was created to temper those impulses, was ascendant. Jews felt more secure, Königsberg told me: “We unpacked the suitcase and stored it in the cellar.”

Now, he believed, that sense of security has eroded. People aren’t heading for the exits yet, he said, but they are starting to think, Where did I put that suitcase?

...[Felix Klein, Germany’s first federal Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism] listed several things the German government should be doing at the federal and state levels to fight anti-Semitism; chief among them was training teachers and the police simply to recognize it. He also said school books should include more lessons about Jewish contributions to Germany. “We only started to talk about Jews when the Nazi period came up in our history lesson,” he said. “We didn’t speak about Jewish life before that, and we didn’t speak about Jewish life after.”

The rise of anti-Semitic acts, Klein told me, was not just a matter of rising hate but a rising willingness to express it. This was because of social media, he said, as well as the A.f.D. and its “brutalization” of the political discourse. There are also the challenges that are caused by anti-Semitism from Muslims, he said, though, he added, according to criminal statistics, this was not the main problem...

He added that the existing statistics should not be used as a pretext “to avoid a discussion regarding anti-Semitism from Muslims.” I asked him if there was any fear that such a conversation would raise tensions between minority groups instead of protecting them. “I think there is a fear,” he said. “This is why I think the right strategy is to denounce any form of anti-Semitism, regardless of the numbers. I don’t want to start a discussion about which one is more problematic or more dangerous than the other.”

He leaned in to underscore this point. “You should not start this discussion, because then you start using one political group against the other. We should not do that.”

...Last year, two-dozen Jewish A.f.D. supporters founded a group called “Jews in the A.f.D.,” or J.A.f.D., asserting, in a “statement of principles,” that it is the only party willing to “thematize Muslim hatred of Jews without trivializing it.” In response, the Central Council of Jews in Germany and 41 other Jewish organizations released a joint statement condemning the A.f.D. as racist and anti-Semitic and warned Jews not to fall for its “apparent concern” for their safety. “We won’t allow ourselves to be instrumentalized by the A.f.D.,” the statement read. “No, the A.f.D. is a danger to Jewish life in Germany.”

On a Sunday afternoon last October, J.A.f.D. held its inaugural event in a gymnasium on the outskirts of the Hessian city of Wiesbaden. A J.A.f.D. supporter in the crowd of attendees, who wore a yarmulke and a Star of David necklace that dangled outside his shirt next to an A.f.D. pin, told me, in a strong Russian accent, that he had emigrated from Moscow in the early 1990s. As reporters gathered around him, he rattled off a series of claims often recited at far-right political gatherings: Muslim immigrants come from an “absolutely alien” culture. They would “bring Shariah law” and “rape” to Germany. When a reporter from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung tried to get his name, the man refused to give it. He didn’t trust the lügenpresse — “the lying press” — he said, using a phrase that, long preceding “fake news,” had been deployed by propagandists in Nazi Germany to spread conspiracy theories about newspapers controlled by “world Jewry.”

...The Fraenkelufer Synagogue sits on Berlin’s Landwehr Canal, a snaking, several-mile-long waterway that meets the city’s major river, the Spree, on each end. In September 1945, according to a Chicago Sun reporter, the canal still stank of decayed corpses when 400 Jewish survivors and about 30 American Jewish soldiers gathered for the first postwar synagogue service in Berlin. The main neo-Classical sanctuary that had once stood at the site sat in ruins, but a Jewish-American lieutenant stationed in Berlin named Harry Nowalsky, who could see the synagogue from his bedroom window, had made it a personal mission to restore a smaller, still-intact sanctuary in time for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. On the cool holiday evening, the congregants, as one reporter wrote, “sang songs of Israel with tear-stained faces.”

...Fraenkelufer Synagogue would not exist today without immigration. After the war, Jews from Eastern Europe formed a small congregation. After 1989, Jews from the former Soviet Union joined, but by the turn of the millennium, the congregation had dwindled. That began to change several years ago, with the immigration of young Jews from around the world to the neighborhood, including some of the thousands of Israelis who have migrated to Berlin in recent years — many of whom lean to the political left and are troubled by Israel’s rightward political shift...

One evening last summer, three generations of the Michalski family — Wenzel and Gemma, Wenzel’s father, Franz, and his mother, Petra, as well as Solomon’s siblings — sat in a row at an English-language theater in Berlin to watch Solomon, now 16 and enrolled in a new private school, perform in a play inspired by his experience with anti-Semitic bullying.

The play began with a scene in a classroom where an assignment was written on the board: “Tribalism Divides Communities — Elucidate.” The teenagers portrayed two tribes, the Whoozis and the Whatzits, who, because of ancient rivalries, fight. Eventually, everyone falls to the floor and perishes in a final battle. But then everyone slowly rises.

“So that’s it?” one tribe member said. “Everyone dies in the end?”

“That sucks,” another said.

“Yes, but it’s realistic,” another said.

Solomon had the last line.

“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not leaving until we get this right.”

After the play, Gemma told me that she didn’t hold grudges against the kids who bullied her son. “I didn’t give up on those kids,” she said. “The school gave up on those kids.” The attitude from many of the teachers, she said, was: “You can’t talk to them; they’re just Muslims.” This revealed a troubling unwillingness to stand up for, as she put it, “life in a liberal, tolerant democracy for everyone, beyond racism.”

I asked Solomon if he had thought much about anti-Semitism before the bullying episodes. He told me about a trip he took with his grandparents just before the bullying began. They visited the places in Poland, the Czech Republic and eastern Germany where his grandfather had hidden from the Gestapo. “That really opened my mind,” he told me. “I knew about my grandpa’s experiences, but I just, you know, felt really proud to be Jewish after that trip. Then after this whole thing happened, it makes me even more proud to be Jewish. I wouldn’t say I feel more religious. But it’s just the identity, the ethnic background of being Jewish and walking in Berlin as a Jewish boy.” His mother later told me that she found it sad that her son had formed a stronger sense of tribal identity based on the experience of mistreatment. She had not wanted him to forge his identity in fear. “I wanted him to be free,” she said.

Solomon told me that he was happy at his new school. He had made new friends of diverse backgrounds, and they had formed a band called the Minorities. Still, he added, he did not feel free to express his newfound Jewish identity in public. He had wanted to wear a Star of David necklace, he told me, but he and his parents had decided that this was not a good idea. The necklace could be exposed if someone were to pull his shirt back. “The thing is,” he said, “it’s still really dangerous. I mean, it’s not like, ‘O.K., everything is fine now.’ ”

[Read James Angelos’s excellent piece in The New York Times Magazine.]

#long post #germany #antisemitism #islamophobia

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fil-jannah · 5 years

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"Stop looking for a secret cheat code to get close to Allah. It's not it. Master the ordinary things. There is no trick. Allah is too merciful for Him to be a secret. Like for you to have to travel to another country and study. Or do something no one else knows. Don't try different things. Master the ordinary.

Perfect your prayers. Perfect your fasting. Help peel away the layers so you are more conscious of Allah with your heart. That is the best you could do for yourself. Allah made the pillars the most important things. So let's not move on to bigger and better things. It's a rouse, a trick from Shaytaan. And the returns on it are not what you think." - Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy

I've been thinking about these words for a bit. Because I've been staring at these different Arabic courses - figuring that I really need to learn sarf and nahw, and I want to buy those huge sets of Hadith books - you know the ones - they look like Quran Mushaf's, hardcover, a few in a set, they match so well together on a bookshelf, and all the big masjids have them. And I've got one of them, the Riyadh as Salih, but it's all in Arabic. And I don't want to buy them in the hopes of one day learning - because I don't want to be what Allah describes in the Quran "a donkey carrying a load of books", just carrying and not benefiting.

So I want to learn Arabic. Really badly. Not the few classes I took at Undergrad, nor the one-month intensive, and the online classes I barely had time to do. But just something with contemporary American teachers that won't cost me an arm and a leg.

But what the sheikh said really dawned on me.

Why do I want that set of books, just to read. And still my prayers, my fard - is not complete. My prayers lack khushoo. I don't remember the last time I had complete khushoo in every second of my prayer. Sure - it'll come at sujood, it'll come when the recitation are verses of love or harshness. It'll come when I miss my parents, when I think of my families needs, or just want ease from Allah. But not in every single movement. Especially not when I'm taking a ten minute break at work and praying asr on a timer. Especially not when I'm home from my commute from work, praying quickly so I can cook some food in time to eat. Or mornings where I just want to lay in bed, so in my thashahudd, I forget if I'm still praying or done praying and just sitting. This is how bad my fard is.

So how is it that I wish to go to Azhar or even Texas to learn. How is it that I want to be able to read the Quran without translation and feel like I need classes. When I haven't fixed the fard.

This reminder came at a perfect time for me - as I was wishing these classes were affordable and doable. That this Ramadan - the habit I want to make - is one that is not an additional thing - not a nafl or sunnah - but a fard - the fard of khushoo.

So this month - it's okay if you do not have time for the katm of the Quran, or podcasts, seerah, hadiths, youtube.

You are all praying your salaah anyway.

So let's really really pray it right.

Let's change our salaah.

Let's master salaah.

Slowing down wudhu so it is better, so the tip of my nose gets water, the sides by my ears get water, and I know I am doing something for my fard, conscious that no other nation does the entire act of wudhu. That it is only because of our imaan in Allah that we make wudhu. Had we not had imaan, we would not make wudhu, because no one is really watching us in the bathroom in our homes.

Of slowing down Surah Fatiha - each letter has a right, I am reciting words that changed the fabric of humanity, words of Allah Himself. Serving my mother through this recitation because she was the one who taught me this surah - let me recite it slow enough so she gets her due rewards from Allah.

Conscious of the surahs, remember the verses impacting real people, remembering how the verses have impacted me. Yes - even the small ones. How Surah Duha comforted me during really dark times. How Sharh used to be a surah that was only a caption on facebook pictures until I as an adult decided to memorize it. How Lahab hurt the ones who hurt the Prophet SAW and how patient our Prophet SAW was with their abhorrent words. How Allah sent birds and stones to kill an army in Surah Fil, so Allah is capable of anything I can possibly want. How Surah Nasr was hard for me when I was little because I always messed it up with Surah Lahab and my mom would patiently fix me time and time again until someone taught me the trick on how to remember the last verse of Lahab.

So saying the surah, not swiftly, but with contemplation.

Going to rukoo, knowing fully that we don't do rukoo for anyone but Allah. You would never bow even half-way that way for a human.

In sujood, placing our forehead on the ground, humbled, staying there one second longer than usual, one second longer than the amount of time it takes to say glory be to the most high.

Remembering that we are PRESENT for others - We listen carefully when our supervisors give us instructions, we listen intently when our friend shares an important story. Is God not deserving of our attention, more than the fleeting seconds?

Allah will hold me accountable for my fard first.

He will ask me of salaah, before He asks about the coursework, degrees, and hijab.

He will ask you of your salaah.

If there are insufficiencies, He will ask of your sunnah and nafl rakats to fulfill them.

I just don't want to be asked ya rabb.

I will try so hard, that I will look down, and beg you not even to ask me. And you will see that I have tried.

May this Ramadan be one of changing our salaahs. Forever.

- Drops of Knowledge

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nihalsjourney · 4 years

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Not wearing my hijab anymore

We’ve entered a new decade, it’s 2020. To be honest I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Eve and the hype around it, which is why I waited with a new blogpost. I think it’s nice to look back on some things, one of them being my very first blogpost on here. (link) December 8, 2015 was my very first day without hijab. I can still feel the stress and anxiety of that day. After that, I never talked about it anymore because I still felt guilt and shame. It’s been four years and I feel like I’m able to talk about this past chapter in my life much better.

So we’re going waaaaay back, beyond those 4 years!

My mother is Dutch and my father is Turkish, my mother converted to Islam 24 years ago. When my parents had my brothers and I, baba (father) felt a stronger sense of practicing Islam better as well as raising us with our Turkish identity. Seeing as how Dutch society forces immigrants to assimilate rather than to integrate. The thought and fear of us losing our Turkish identity really stressed him out.

Being in an interracial relationship asks for more different responsibilities I think. My mother and baba were integrating in each other’s culture, learning one another’s language while working hard and raising us with best of both worlds.

As we got older our parents signed us up to an Islamic elementary school. With a school bus we’d go in the early morning from Valkenswaard to Eindhoven. There were both Muslim and non-Muslim faculty. My personal experience wasn’t great, I was already dealing with depression, anxiety, and trauma. I don’t remember a lot from what I learned because I dissociated quite often. It was difficult for me to learn because unfortunately we were taught Islam from a cultural perspective and fear inducing. To me Allah seemed like a big angry man and I refused to believe that.

I remember that all female teachers wore a hijab. Muslim or not. The girls also wore a hijab starting very young. After school they would take it off, others didn’t. I remember one time after gym class that I didn’t put my hijab back on. One of the male teachers who saw us on our way back to class shamed me for it. Looking back it was so awful how at first the girls didn’t even bother or noticed. But once the teacher said something about it they started whispering loudly to each other ‘haram’ ‘she didn’t put her hijab back on!’.

There was this unspoken rule that a girl should wear her hijab ‘full time’ when she’s 12. We’d ask each other, ‘When will you wear your hijab?’ ‘If you don’t start wearing it now you never will!!’ ‘Wearing your hijab at 16 or 18 is too late, you should wear it when you’re at least 12!’ Alhamdulillah (thank God) I can say that my parents never forced me.

I switched schools when I was 8, it wasn’t an Islamic school but I still kept wearing my hijab to school as force of habit. Once I turned either 10, 11 or 12 years old I started wearing my hijab. After age of 12 I had to switch schools again, this time a dominantly white school. From the maybe 200 students, there were 5 students of colour, 4 of them Muslim and I being the only one wearing a hijab. I was facing a lot of discrimination and Islamophobia already and it only got worse from then on. The majority of white people questioned me about every single little thing, my hijab, Islam, if I sympathize with terrorists, if my father came here for money and if I was oppressed. ‘When did you start to realize you wanted to wear your hijab?’ ‘Did you feel ready?’ ‘So you’re Muslim, right? What do you think of ISIS?’ The older I got, I hoped that the questions would stop but they never did. I had very little knowledge, yet people thought I did because of my hijab. Like I was a living, walking human museum or encyclopedia.

I started to question myself. Did I feel ready? Do I understand what wearing the hijab means? Can I justify myself to Allah for wearing my hijab though the intention of wearing it is non-existent?

It made my heart hurt so much because I had to face reality. I didn’t have an answer. At first I tried reading and researching more about Islam, but back then there was very little willingness of me to do so. I tried to move on despite feeling unhappy, guilty and confused. When I was 18 I decided to talk to my mother about it. She said she had always been worried that I never made my decision to wear my hijab consciously because I was so young. Together with my mother I began brainstorming for ideas and options. Such as trying to wear my hijab in different styles to see it makes any difference and talking with a few women who had taken their hijab off. When I listened to their stories I felt scared. Clueless of what I should do, standing at a cross roads having no idea which path to take.

Once I decided that I wanted to stop wearing my hijab, I talked with my baba. He was very confused and upset. He always tried to protect us from the Western world, so he was worried that it influenced my choice. I told him it didn’t. Although he didn’t agree with my decision he emphasized that he will always be there for me and love me. That’s all I needed to hear. I knew that baba needed his time to get used to things.

Sometimes I still think that I have to explain to others that I used to wear a hijab. Specifically to sisters who wear it. Because I understand all too well what it’s like to be a visible target of Islamophobic violence. There has become such a huge shift in my daily life that sometimes I feel like the odd one out when I’m with Muslim women (who wear the hijab).

Talking about a huge shift in my daily life. In the beginning especially, I noticed how Muslims and non-Muslims were now treating me differently. Whenever I’d greet a sister ‘Assalaam aleikum’, (peace be upon you) she’d look me up and down disapprovingly and wouldn’t return my greeting. It felt awful, I stopped greeting anyone all at once to give myself some sense of security because I was feeling so vulnerable back then. Instead, non-Muslim (majority white) people started to happily greet me. It was mind boggling.

Like it was some sort of game, I’d keep track of all these differences. How in the past people wouldn’t sit next to me in public transport even when it was busy, to by passers saying ‘Allahu akbar’ or ‘terrorist’ under their breath when walking past me, getting checked by security a lot faster or accused of stealing, always being refused when applying for a job (in my city, Eindhoven, discrimination on the job market is very high) etc.

When I have to show my ID, that has a picture of me with my hijab on, people always feel the need to tell me ‘You look prettier without hijab!’. When that happens I get a, what Dutch Iranian artist Saman Amini calls in the play ‘A Seat at The Table’, racial freeze. Cashing in the comment, reacting with a fake smile and getting back to my day. Not allowing myself to feel the hurt or the frustration.

It has definitely been a struggle the first year or two. I had to adjust to how society was treating me, nobody sees my hijab but sometimes I still feel like I wear it. A lot of my life experiences before taking it off were based around my hijab. And as I’m writing, realising it now, hurts. Wearing the hijab since a young age, I was basically robbed of my childhood and sure that may sound dramatic but it’s reality. It impacted my quality of life because I was an easy target for Islamophobic violence both verbal and non-verbal.

I got to see first-hand what it’s like to be treated both with and without hijab by non-Muslim and Muslims. Whether I’m a bad Muslim or a well ‘integrated’ (read assimilated) immigrant.

We still teach girls to judge other girls. In my time we’d judge those who chose not to wear their hijab (yet) or who wore their hijab the ‘wrong’ way. As I got older I started to realise how toxic this behaviour is. But I find that this way of thinking is still deeply rooted. Because I still have some moments that when I see a sister with a hijab showing hair, my first thought is ‘Oh My GoD sHe Is ShOwInG hEr HaIr!! AYIB!!’ it’s been happening a lot less. But when it does I mentally slap myself in the face and remind myself of how toxic that way of thinking is because it does not contribute to anything positive. The judgement I had towards myself and others has lessened immensely. I’ve become a stronger person and learned so much (I’m still learning!!). All the things I named and more, I had to experience. Before I was so caught up with myself. Trying to survive. Now I able to make room in my heart for others to heal.

I look back to these past four years a lot. Feeling thankful and amazed. Never before did I have such a close relationship with Allah and myself. Honestly, I feel ashamed when I say the following. So may Allah forgive me for my ignorance and wrong doings, may He accept my good deeds, prayers and efforts of learning…

I never prayed, sometimes during Ramadan. Like I said, I forgot what I learned as a kid because of dissociating. When someone tried to teach me about Islam I didn’t have the space to listen, my mind never saved the information. Alhamdulillah, with its ups and downs, the past four years I have now been saving the knowledge I learn about Islam. I’m praying 5 times a day, reading translations of the Quran, going to lectures with an open heart and mind. Soaking up all the information I can get my hands on, eager to learn.

I’m not saying this to brag. But to stress that once again, I had to go through these things to grow through them. I had to experience all of this in order to become the person I am today. A better version of myself. Because with this experience and knowledge I am able to stand even stronger on my feet.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that my experiences I shared above, especially the negative ones have nothing to do with Islam. It’s man-made culture. Please see religion separate from its people.

Also there is unfortunately still way too little awareness of how children mimic our words and (misogynistic) behaviour. Pretty much everything I named in my story I learned from aunties, uncles and the girls around me. So especially to us women, I hope that we can start to truly uplift each other and not tear each other down any longer.

Thank you so much for taking your time to read this. A Dutch version of this blog post will soon follow.

Take care, peace and blessings upon you all! Much love,

Nihâl

#Nihâl's Journey #nihalsjourney #Journey #Muslim #Hijab #Hijabi #Spirituality #Personal growth

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doomedandstoned · 5 years

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Closer To The End (part III)

I contend that human beings are not suited for the world we've fashioned for ourselves. Cases of anxiety and depression are practically ubiquitous, and suicide in all age groups is once again on the rise. Some will suffer mental afflictions that last years -- perhaps even for a lifetime. This is the third and final part of my story.

~By Billy Goate~

Cover art by Ruso Tsig additional art by Karl Briullov

I'm so tired of hearing that I'm wrong Everyone laughs at me, why me? I'm so tired of being pushed around I feel like I've been betrayed

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We take each other's love, forget to give back Isn't it a pity, how we break each other's hearts I know we're only human and not to blame But who the hell are you to cause so much pain Why...

MEDICATION

My parents have been anti-establishment for as long as I can remember. In the climate of the 1980s, the institutions of the day were being called seriously into question. One of them was the authoritarian nature of public education (there's a reason why Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" resonated so strongly with people). It's no surprise that my family got caught up in the first wave of the homeschooling movement. Other areas of modern life began to be called into question, as well, taking the family down a dark, windy road that led into conspiracy culture, extreme libertarianism, and religious dogmatism.

This distrust of the "experts" put us at odds with the medical establishment, too. "Doctors only know how to do two things," mom would often proclaim loudly in one of her famous rants, "cut you open or prescribe you pills." Natural medicine held the keys to recovery from all ills, be it cancer or the common cold. "All those chemicals aren’t good for your body," she insisted. "God put everything we need for healing in the ground." I’m not here to knock naturopathy (I was an ardent follower of this way of life for years) nor my mother for her convictions, but there are some things that can’t be cured by Saint John's Wort and herbal tea -- major depression being one of them.

At one point, my anxiety, melancholy, and a generalized feeling of social isolation reached such a heightened state I turned to hypnotism, enamored by an obscure radio program hosted by Roy Masters and his Foundation for Human Understanding. I was too young to understand the significance of most of the bullshit he was spewing, but it was the comprehensive approach to life that appealed to me. I wanted answers -- all of them. About the only thing I got out of it, though, was learning how to make my own arm go numb through self-hypnosis.

Later, I'd get caught up in a movement of Biblical counseling that rejected psychiatry altogether. "Christ has given us all things we need for life and godliness," says the holy writ, ergo we need none other than Jesus to cure our mental ills. Furthermore, the thesis said, since "God has not given us a spirit of fear" it must mean that the root of depression and anxiety is ultimately sin against God. The answer? Confess your sins and walk by faith, not by sight. In short, pray the sadness away. All of this had limited effectiveness in coping with the claustrophobic cloud of melancholy that was constantly with me.

Cough & Windhand: Reflection of the Negative by Windhand

The stigma of psychiatry and modern medicine kept me from treating my depression for damn near a decade. Somewhere in my late twenties, after a prolonged and particularly dark depressive spell, I decided to talk to my medical doctor about antidepressants. He started me on the industry standard, the well-known and well-marketed Prozac, which became a household name in the '90s. I took the first dose at bedtime and when I woke up, I was seriously hating the daylight. Feeling extraordinarily fatigued, all I wanted to do was sleep. I called in a rare sick day from work. The next day I was feeling groggy, but well enough to return. Giving it the good ol' college try, I took Prozac for several weeks as directed, but the side-effects just weren't worth it for me. That’s when I was referred to my first psychiatrist.

It was a weird feeling sitting in the waiting room for my appointment. I felt like I’d joined the ranks of the fragile, broken, and confused, perhaps even the insane. It was hard for me to see myself sharing anything in common with the others that shared the tiny lobby. The psychiatrist who greeted me looked like a regular chucklehead -- you know, one of those sidekicks from a sitcom that's not coming to me now. (It just came to me: Glen from the Tom Green Show.) A paunchy man in his 30s with wavy dirty blonde hair parted to the side donning wire-rimmed glasses, the shrink pulled out a notebook and started asking me about my background, while he busily took notes. Turned out, the man was very methodical in his approach. Over the course of the year, we cycled through all kinds of drugs -- Paxil, Effexor, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, Zoloft, and a lot of other names I'm not remembering, before finally settling on Cymbalta.

Certainly, this was something I didn't want to share with my coworkers, much less mom and dad. The first time I told my brother I was taking antidepressants, he was outraged. “You don’t need that stuff in your body. You don’t need pills to feel good.” I don’t know what it is about antidepressant medication that offends people so badly, but some people feel it is their personal mission in life to get you off of them. Why all the evangelical fervor? Are they secretly afraid they are "nuts," too? It’s not like I’m trying to get everyone else to take my medication, but suddenly these people, well-meaning or not, are trying to get you off of your meds.

I’ve seen YouTube videos from a guy claiming that God has cured him of his bipolar disorder and he flushed all his pills down the toilet (bad idea, by the way). Then a month later, he comes back online crying uncontrollably, talking about how he feels like God is testing him and asking viewers to pray to stop Satan’s onslaught. Moral of the story: It's dangerous to let people's religious opinions and untested hunches drive the agenda for our mental health.

I'm very reluctant these days to talk to anyone about my depression, because of all the rush to judgement involved. Ironically, it's this breakdown of community that I believe is at the heart of much of our mental health issues as a society. Look at the comments on any confessional video addressing burnout, depression, or anxiety and you'll find everyone is suddenly an expert who knows so well the precise and perfect solution to your problems. Well-meaning or not, it's incredibly annoying and I'd rather not have trouble with it. Hell, it took me two years to finish this article.

Depressed people are often viewed with the same cynical dismissiveness ascribed to angsty hormonal teens. "It's just a phase, you'll get through it," you're told with the reassuring wave of a hand. Besides, they remind you, "Happiness is a choice!" Because they are feeling chipper today, they have little patience for you dampening their mood. Others call you edgy when you say the pressures of life are so great that you feel like just turning off the lights on all of it. Still others will view you as selfish for leaving the family reunion early (or not wanting to participate in holidays at all). When you spend the whole weekend in bed sleeping, they'll accuse you of being indulgent, not realizing sleep gives you a respite from the hurt, guilt, and regret of painful memories or the misery of an unstable home life. Or the well-meaning "It Gets Better!" It doesn't always get better as life moves on.

Then there are those who try to talk you off your meds, entirely (cue: the ridiculously overwrought Facebook posts). We've all been privy to those conversations that strike a conspiratorial tone about how it was really the pharmaceutical companies that led to Chris Cornell's death. "You should just get off the stuff," they argue -- be it from noble intentions or just pride from clinging to an opinion they've stubbornly invested in.

Then there are those who are convinced that since Jesus (or Buddha, Allah Oprah, Jordan Peterson or juicing) gave them an escape from their depression, certainly it is the universal cure for all that ails you. Understand that I was a committed Christian for decades. I know what it is like to feel spiritually serene and I value many of the things the church gave me as a young adult, namely the fellowship, tolerance, and love. I know the feeling of peace that comes from believing in someone who reigns over the chaos and cares about your every need -- an ultimate being who will make sense of the nonsense one day.

I don't wish to diminish anyone's faith or diminish your personal experiences. The fact is, however, that major depression is as much a physical illness as cancer is. Certainly, there are transitional feelings of unhappiness, emptiness, and despair that come from facing situations that seem out of one's control -- the nightmare roommate, being laid off from a job, losing a loved one. It's also true that in most cases, this sadness can be overcome by a new perspective, trying better strategies, or simply allowing the passage of time to do its healing work. Depression can be impacted by one's beliefs, but there is a kind of depression that exists independently of one's perspective on life.

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES

Apart from this series of articles (which took me a good two years to publish), I've stopped sharing my depression with other people. It's annoying, because most people don't know how to listen and empathize. They want to jump in with a solution that, if implemented by nightfall, just might make a difference by daybreak. It's just more hassle than it's worth. Over time, I've gone from being someone with an intense need to belong, to not caring what people think about me at all. I'll often go out of my way to avoid anything deeper than transactional relationships. Once a social butterfly, you'll find me quite the hermit these days. As a consequence, while I was once open to sharing my feelings of loneliness and despair, I rarely mention them any more on social media and practically never to my IRL friends. I would be the last person to call a suicide hotline, by the way. Judge me if you wish, but I'm just being honest. If you want to know what is going on in the head of a severely depressed person with suicidal ideation, here's a least one brain you can peer into.

There's a general consensus that suicide is a selfish decision, even a cowardly act. This was a casual opinion of my own for years, as well. Not until suicide touches someone in your life -- or when you enter its despondent realm yourself -- does the ridiculousness of that notion becomes apparent. Understand that for a person to commit suicide, they have to overcome the brain's own strong predilection for self-preservation. It's not so easy to take the step of ending your life. Something has gone terribly wrong with the brain's ability to convincingly cry, "STOP!" for that to happen.

In my worst bout of depression, following the demise of long-term relationship, I reached the point where every waking moment was sheer misery. Some call this anhedonia -- the inability to feel pleasure. Normally, when we are feeling blue, we seek out something to stimulate our pleasure receptors. That's why ice cream, chocolate, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are popular go-tos for the bummed out. For me, it's always been music and movies. On this particular week, though, I had somehow lost the capacity to find any joy whatsoever in the usual pastimes. Anything that attempted to pacify my mood met with my contempt. The only thing I could do to escape the agony of just being alive and conscious was to sleep...and sleep I did. At first 8 hours a night, up from my usual 7. Then it advanced to 9, 10, 11, 12 hours. When dawn came, a wave of misery washed over my mind again.

Once, I woke up feeling so despondent that I knew with absolute clarity that I could end my life. Today, I could actually do it. Immediately upon this realization, I wept bitterly. I've not cried like that before or since. If anything, I've become more stoic about the idea of suicide. Don't get me wrong, my internal sense of self-preservation is still quite strong. The problem is that in moments of severe depression, that instinct is dampened. You'll do just about anything just to get rid of the feeling of misery making it unbearable to be awake.

DOOM AWAKENING

One of the most important developments in treating my depression, besides medication and therapy, was the discovery of doom. There's an old expression that misery loves company. I don't know about you, but when I listen to music it's not generally to cheer me up. No, I want my tunes to have a certain level of commiseration with what I'm feeling and going through at the time. When I discovered (quite by accident) Saint Vitus, I knew I'd found my soul food. I can't fully explain that eureka moment when Dave Chandler belted out that first downtuned note on the guitars on "Born Too Late" or when Wino joined with plaintive lyrics for "I Bleed Black." This resonated with me powerfully. It brought chills. This was medicine for my weary head, a kind of mental morphine to dull the pain. I'd come to the Roseland Theater for Down and left with Saint Vitus.

As a funny aside, my roommate (who accompanied me to the show) and I rehashed the bands of the night, giving our two cents on this or that. One thing he said still makes me smile a little inside. "What did you think of Saint Vitus?" I asked. "I don't think they're the kind of band that will withstand the test of time," he remarked. "Well," I rejoined, "they have been playing now for over 30 years and were the co-headliners on a national tour, so their sound must be resonating with a good number of people." Sure, it wasn't for everyone, but on that night my doom had come.

Every song on 'Born Too Late' (1986) so perfectly captures the malaise of the deeply wounded soul, not just in lyrics but in the whole vibe. There's a thick, smoky haze permeating the record and it reminds me a lot of what it feels like after you've poured out your heart until you've got no more tears left to cry. Come on, don't pretend you're so macho that normal human emotions elude you. It's hard to put doom into words, but I'll try: on the one hand you feel emotionally exhausted because you've emptied out all those pent up feelings of loss, fear, regret, and frustration, on the other hand there's a feeling of "reset" and it often makes things much clearer to sort through. For me, when I've exhausted all my emotional resources, I'm left with a feeling of blithe acceptance. A sense of being dealt a set of cards by the impartial hand of fate. That's the kind of vibe that Saint Vitus captures perfectly for me on this record.

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I spent entire weekends on those long, wonderful rabbit trails of discovery. "Dying Inside" led me to Trouble's "The Tempter" with its oh-so-tragic central riff. Lyrically, the songs I was running across could not have been more apropos.

Pentagram, The Skull, and Candlemass were not lingering far behind. Then came the more recent monoliths of doom: Electric Wizard, Windhand, High on Fire, Burning Witch, Khanate, Pilgrim, Serpentine Path, Usnea, Demon Lung, Ancient VVisdom, Dopelord, and the NOLA sludge scene, along with lesser known but equally as powerful acts like Undersmile, Shepherd's Crook, Reptile Master, Purple Hill Witch, Witchthroat Serpent, March Funèbre, Beldam, Hooded Priest, Regress, and 71TONMAN (listen to the Spotify playlist).

Doom metal spoke to me with a sharp realism that I connected with immediately. When you have no strength left to get angry at the world, you switch your listening habits from Car Bomb to Cough. You can say, I suppose, that doom was my salvation. It kept me hanging on a little while longer. The salve of those slow, low riffs gave me a strange feeling of consolation. "We know life sucks, too. Welcome to reality." It's like being awakened to the Matrix, but feeling there's not a damned thing you can do to change any of it. Your fate is sealed. It's an honesty that is both refreshing and freeing, I suppose, though one does wish to reclaim the notion of hope.

Believe it or not, even after writing all of this, optimism is my default mode. When I'm feeling well, and even when my depression is at low levels, the needle always leans towards inspiration, creativity, even a mischievous sense of humor and an aw, shucks smile that people tend to notice. I don't want to be depressed. The problem is that severe depression can make you feel, illusion or not, like you're paralyzed from doing anything about it.

As I've experienced more and more cuts and scrapes of life, I've become increasingly numb to it all, like the massive build-up of scar tissue. Things that upset me easily in the past might still hurt, but I've come to expect them, so they have the impact of a dull table knife. Perhaps I'm becoming a nihilist, despite my optimistic tendencies. It's hard not to be. Don't worry about me, though. If anything, I want to stick around to see what's going to happen next. It's the inborn curiosity we all have inside of us -- the same thing that I imagine kept Stephen Hawking going for decades after being wrecked by a disease that cruelly mangled his body into its famously misshapen form, stealing away his most basic expressive freedoms -- save for the power of his eyes and the thoughts behind them.

I've also made a deliberate attempt to pursue treatment (both psychiatric and psychological care) for my depression, which I urge you to do if you are likewise laboring under its crushing weight. The perspective of time, coupled with a remedy for mind and body can have a significant impact on your perspective, if not your life circumstances.

THE WINDY ROAD AHEAD

Learn from your mistakes, don't dwell on them. Repeated affirmations like this one may seem trite, but they are ultimately true. You can be free from the chains of guilt and move forward, as one performer puts it, "from strength to strength."

Don't kill yourself (literally or metaphorically) for someone else or for someone else's decisions. It may bum you out that a roomie decided to take your money and run or that you were rebuffed by a long-time crush or made jobless through corporate-wide cuts. You don't own that, they do.

Walks

Get off the couch, move that bod. Something as simple as a walk down the block or a drive out of town can do wonders for your perspective. As a homeschool teen living under the strict rule of a radical fundamentalist household in rural East Texas, my one salvation were those long walks in the open field -- especially when my parents started having loud, intense fights related to my mom's own mental health. I sorted through so many of life's problems (most of which seemed much larger then than they do now) through those solitary, hour-long strolls.

I really miss that where I live now, in a more congested neighborhood, so I have to find other ways of getting away from it all (getting up and out a half-hour before the other walkers, for instance, helps). Even if I don't want to rustle myself awake and move around to do as simple a task as taking out the trash, sometimes the feeling...let me revise that...quite often the feeling follows after the decision has been made and the body is in motion.

Projects

Another piece of advice I have for coping with depression is to channel your frustrations in projects. When I'm depressed, I throw myself into my work. Hell, Doomed & Stoned started because I needed a project to pour myself into. My counselor asked me once, "If you woke up tomorrow without depression, what would be different about your world?"

She encouraged me to start with the things that were in my immediate vicinity. "Well, there wouldn't be mail strewn all over the floor. My dirty clothes would be in the hamper, my clean clothes folded and put away. I'd take the time to cook myself a meal, instead of running out the door eating a quick bite out of some package."

Good, let's make a list and start there. Do at least one of the things on your list between now and the time we meet again next week.

Talks

Despite my isolationist ways, I begrudgingly admit that talking often helps, too. Though I'm an introvert and am horrified at the idea of sharing my feelings with others, I've reached points in my depression where I was compelled to tell others about it. It's as natural to do that as to cry out when your body is experiencing jolting pain. I'm one of those verbal processors that tends to sort through my problems by talking to someone else. Often, pride or shame or lack of trust gets in the way of sharing with our family and friends, so at the very least the much talked about Suicide Prevention Hotline could actually help you gain perspective on your situation.

Journals

If you don't talk, at least journal. Again, I'm not a journaler and this is the first time in almost three decades that I've written about anything related to my depression. Role play with me. You're a scientist studying the human psyche. How would you describe those feelings you call depression? When I was first asked to describe it to a counselor, I found myself at a loss for words. She helped me with prompts:

Can you tell me what it feels like?

"I walk around feeling like a dark, thick raincloud is hovering all around me all the time."

Do you feel it in a part of your body?

"Well, yeah, I guess. The head. And the chest. It feels like there's pressure building from all around me, like my head is going to explode. My heart feels like it's going to leap out of my chest."

What's happening around you when these feelings arise?

I'd then go on to detail some recent happenings. She'd press me further to describe the kinds of thoughts racing through my head in these situations. All of this was really helpful in getting me to define this nebulous, gray malaise that was following me everywhere I went.

I don't keep a journal, per se. Something about it feels needlessly egotistical, a vain attempt to reinforce the illusion in our YouTube fame crazy world that my life is worth discovering and remembering at some point in the distant future. And yet, writing down one's thoughts can be another effective way of untangling that anxious ball of feelings that keeps me from thinking rationally about the depression I'm feeling.

Today is my birthday, but I couldn't care less. It's not about getting old. I stopped caring about that 10 years ago. It's something about celebration, specifically when the attention is on me. I can't adequately describe how contemptuous I find it. My last birthday was spent alone in an empty house and a bottle of Scotch, catching up with past seasons of Game of Thrones. I was so glad it was over and the happy birthday wishes stopped. There's nothing special about this day for me.

At some point, my family stopped celebrating birthdays and holidays. I'm not sure when it happened or why. Certainly not for religious reasons, more probably for financial ones. I grew up in a family that barely scraped by, so birthdays seemed a luxury we couldn't afford. Now, it just feels indulgent. More than that, it feels sad. It reminds me of all the disappointments, hurts, and failures of the past year. It's not as though it's all bad, of course. If nothing else my birthday gives the illusion that a chapter has turned, with new possibilities for the future. I also have to come to terms with how many people out there actually seem to care about me, maybe even love me.

And later that day, I forced myself to go to a show I was quite enthused about, but didn't factor in depression being the party pooper.

I can't account for what it is that comes over me. There are people here that genuinely like me, who probably even want to get to know me better, but I push them away. Not so much directly, but indirectly, by excusing myself to use the restroom and then changing my mind midway and just leaving the venue -- without even the courtesy of a "goodbye" to friends or a "great show" to the bands. I feel awful about it afterwards, but in that moment it's like a flood of emotional pain washes over me and it feels like I'm carrying an anchor chained around my neck. I feel the great urge to find my way to unlit corners. To look busy and preoccupied. Would it hurt me to say hello? To smile? Perhaps not, but right now my psyche is tingling like some kind of Spidey Sense telling me, "Get out of here! Just get your shit and leave...NOW."

As dour and hopeless as that may feel, just the act of writing it down afforded me a release, which incidentally I did not feel until the writing was all said and done.

Hope, a new beginning Time, time to start living Just like just before we died

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Hurt, falling through fingers Trust, trust in the feeling There's something left inside There's no going back to the place we started from.

ONE MORE THING

For those of you who are wondering what you can do for a friend, family member, coworker or just someone you know casually from shows you both frequent, I couldn't say it better than one of my longtime fellow travelers in doom, who offered up this advice:

"While it's all very well and fucking dandy that there are so many people telling those who are struggling to reach out to them, I don't think people are quite understanding just how mental illness works sometimes. People quite often don't reach out, because those that are suffering from mental illness, at times, feel like they are a burden by unloading their shit onto someone else, despite the invitation to do so. It's generally the same concept that leads on to suicide.

I obviously can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself when I say the last thing I want to do is reach out to anyone because I feel like I am a burden and everyone would be better off without me -- and that is ultimately why I don't reach out. The point that I'm trying to get at is if you see someone struggling YOU reach the fuck out. If you don't see someone who used to be around, YOU reach the fuck out. Think about it. It's not that hard."

Well said and completely on the mark. At the same time, if you're feeling alone and uncared for, you may look at people’s lack of inquiry as more confirmation that you are worthless trash. You may interpret a busy person's slight as utter rejection. Don't worry about what others may or may not think of you. You need to take care of you, for you. The future is fickle. Your fortunes can change on a dime, so why base your self-worth and your decision about whether to live or die by how you feel right now? Ride it out, seek out help, get a game plan in play.

I say this as someone who knows how hard it can be to get mental health. I was double insured -- through my employer and the Veterans Administration -- and I couldn't get a god damned psychiatric appointment to reevaluate and adjust my meds. I called all over town trying to get in with someone. "Sorry, we're not accepting new patients" was the universal refrain. The VA would just be too many month's wait, I told myself, based upon how long it has taken me in the past to get a conventional medical appointment. In desperation, I called up my primary care doctor who asked if I was suicidal. For the first time in my life, I knew with full certainty the answer was yes. The more miserable I felt, the more I contemplated dying. If I did it, it would be something quick and sudden, I would daydream in my most despondent moment. "You need to check yourself into the hospital now," she told me adamantly. I did exactly that. I walked into the ER and told them I was suicidal. They led me to a room, had me take off all my clothes, and put on a hospital gown. I stayed in a padded room waiting for a social worker to see me. It was a desperate move, but it did pay off in getting me fast-tracked to see a psychiatrist.

One thing I learned about medication from my new psychiatrist (because he was very caring, very careful, and hence very effective at his job) is that everyone’s brain chemistry is uniquely different. There can be other issues impacting mood, too, such as thyroid, environmental stressors, sleep problems, vitamin deficiencies, and so on. Again, it’s often hard to see whether the cart is leading the horse or the horse is leading the cart, in terms of the mind-body connection. Long story short, this doctor adjusted my meds to near perfection to get me through the rare summer-long depression I was experiencing.

Just a few months later, he got hired away to work for the County and I was left back in the same boat once again. I got a great referral, but didn't realize until bills came in I couldn't pay that the doctor was out of my insurance network. Believe me, many people prefer to go without care entirely than to go into debt and I was one of them (truthfully, I still am). I went another year until I couldn't take it anymore and this time in my desperation reached back out to the VA. Surprisingly, they saw me within a week and prioritized my suicidal depression. I'm now in a good spot as a result, but it was a long, windy, uncertain road getting here. I know it's hard to find help. Sometimes you don't know what's available to you until you knock a little louder and get people's attention.

The older I get, it seems the more stubborn I am, particularly when it comes to reaching out and asking for help. Perhaps I've always been that way and am only now realizing it's become a liability. After taking off three weeks during the holidays to catch up with the many projects that were piling up around me, I realized that my depression was sometimes stronger than my will to power through and do my best work. I would find myself sitting at the computer for hours trying to get started with a story, trying to edit audio for a podcast, trying to prepare a team member's submission for publication, and every time I would find myself coming up against something painful, perhaps similar to the long recognized creative crimp known as writer's block. I describe it as an inhibitor chip in my brain that sends pain signals to my psyche whenever I contemplate moving forward.

Of course, rationally, I know it's all just a matter of the will, right? That's what those who aren't experiencing depression will tell you, at least. They don't want to go to the gym, but they make the choice to do it anyway, so why can't you just "man up" and do what needs to be done? Well, those aren't so much the messages other people give me, as they are my own conscience. The guilt itself from a day coming and going without results adds its own layer of complication to my mood. Thankfully, I have a wonderful counselor who understands and is helping me to tackle this with cognitive strategies. This, coupled with sensible medical treatment, has at least helped me to find "even flow" again.

Finally, you're going to have some bad days where you may even want to be productive, but your body feels like it's in revolt. As a creative person who loves to pour myself into as many projects as I can when I'm feeling good, it can be extraordinarily frustrating to not even feel the will to check email, open a letter, or listen to a stitch of music. Most days, I'm trying to work in concert with my body's natural rhythms. I'm more of a morning person and get my best work done between 8AM and 11AM. Anything after that is going to be hit or miss with diminishing returns. With that in mind, I have to hold back from starting new projects before the ones already on my plate are finished, because when I'm feeling good, I think I can take on the world.

This is all a part of me rediscovering what it's like to feel balanced, bright, and in love with life. It can be frustrating to have that feeling back, only to watch it wither away as the week progresses. Since I have very high expectations of myself, it's natural for me to heap guilt upon guilt for all the missed opportunities, but beating myself up only compounds the problem (it took me a long time to really get this about myself, too). Every day is a struggle, but I've decided I'm staying in the fight for the long haul.

In short: Be patient with yourself. Be fair with yourself. Be good to yourself. Remember, this too shall pass.

"Someday you're going to die, just like some day I'm going to die. But until then, you fight like hell to stay alive, you get that?!"

-- William Holden, The Earthling (1980)

#Closer To The End #Depression #Suicide #Doom #Metal #Saint Vitus #Trouble #Alice in Chains #Windhand #Doomed & Stoned

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brightlycoloredteacups · 5 years

Text

Nearly Dead

Series: Brynhilda’s Saga

Warnings: Violent Imagery

Taggin: @anunhealthydoseofangst @novumlibellum @tiyetiye @salimahbicharara-comun @sammi-faye

Brynhilda looks over a cliff, waves crashing into the rocks. She remembers this cliff, the one near her home. She played here with her brothers while her parents sat and watched in delight. She wraps her arms around herself. “What do you look like mother?” she whispers into the wind, “I can’t remember.”

“Well, I look like this, I think.”

Brynhilda starts, turning around. She stares into hauntingly familiar green eyes. Long black hair cascades over a brilliant red dress, full lips are pulled into a gentle smile. “Mother,” Brynhilda breathes, aware she’s speaking her mother’s language. “My Brynhilda,” She says, opening her arms. Brynhilda rushes to her, letting out a laugh. She can hardly believe it, to see her mother after all this time...Brynhilda squeezes tightly, never wanting to let go. “I’ve missed you.” Brynhilda admits, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You and father, and my brothers.”

“Well maybe if you turned around, you wouldn’t miss us at all.” Came a snide comment. Brynhilda turns from her mother, looking to see five blonde boys staring at her. Her crying worsens, her brothers and father all join in the hug. “I am dead, aren’t I?”

“Well,” her father says, pulling back from her. “You’re nearly dead.” Brynhilda frowns. “What?”

“You are walking in a place between life and death,” He explains. “Your soul is in the balance.” Brynhilda considers his words. “What do I do?” she whispers, not wanting to know the answer. “Tell me what to do.” Brynjar smiles at her. He leans down and presses a kiss to her brow. “If I did that, my Brynhilda, I would be selfish, I’d take you with us.” Brynhilda sniffs, damning the man, “You know only you can make the decision, my daughter” Camila says, wrapping an arm around Brynhilda’s shaking shoulders. Her parents take her to the edge of the cliff. Instead of a sea of water, she sees the men that rose with her from her grave. They’re all looking at her expectantly. “These are our ancestors Bryn,” Her eldest brother tells her. “From the dawn of time to now, to you.” Men, women, children, all of them, grouped in the vast nothingness of the dreamspace. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.” Brynhilda admits, she is wracked with sobs now, “I don’t want to be in pain anymore. I can’t, I can’t go on like this. I’m so sick of being miserable!”

“Aw, shit little sister,” Brynki, the youngest of the boys punches her arm affectionately.

“You’re making the rest of us cry.”

Brynjar takes her shoulders in her hands, looking at her with pride “We walk beside you, in life, in death, always. Pain is nothing more than a temporary state.”

“So is happiness.” Brynhilda whispers, thinking of the wasted time she spent with her family, thinking of Ivar. Brynjar’s face softens, he’s going to say something more, but Brynhilda shakes her head. “I just want you to know that I love you and miss you, every day. The ache in my chest has nestled there permanently. But,” A chant begins, low, powerful, simple. Get up, get up, get up. Brynhilda wipes at her face, takes a deep breath and calms herself. “I am Brynhilda Brynjarsdottir, I am no weakling, I must live so that I may see Boggvir dead. This is what I vowed to Odin. We are a family that never goes back on their vows.” Her family moves away from her, smiling, proud. “Best not to start breaking them now, especially not to the All Father.” Her father says. “Allah keep you safe,” Her mother says. Brynhilda nods, trying not to choke. I will see them again, but now, it is time to get up, get up, get up.

Brynhilda awakens, violently choking on smoke. She cries out weakly, something burning her hand. Sitting up, she pulls her hand to her lap, Ivar’s pendant, heated by the flames burns her. She drops it, unable to withstand the pain. She whimpers, looking around her, no way out, there’s no way out. The flames are too fierce, even for me. A beam falls too close for her liking, she scrambles away, not forgetting Ivar’s necklace.

This is an enemy with no weak points, she realizes. I will die here after all, my vow meaning nothing. A slow bubbling anger settles in her belly. She will die without getting her revenge. She will die a coward, burned alive by Eylaug of all people. Eylaug, the disgusting pig. He will boast about her death, he will get glory. Her rage builds. It builds until she begins to shake. It builds until it fogs her mind. It builds until it blinds her. She’d be damned if she let Eylaug claim her death. She cocks her head back, letting out her signature screech, and runs towards the door, she refuses to go out this way.

Lagertha approaches the building on fire. “What the hell is going on here?” she demands. “The fighting is finished, why are you burning someone’s house?” Eylaug looks at her, making her skin crawl. He is a man that should be put down as soon as possible. She can hardly wait until her alliance with Boggvir comes to an end.

“We have lain to rest a wraith,” Eylaug tells her, throwing his hands out, proud. He spies the Sword of Kings in her hand and bows, adding, “Your majesty.” An unhelpful reminder of just what he did for her. “Brynhilda is dead!” He yells, turning to his men. None of them look as joyful as Eylaug, “We have done what no one said was possible, we have killed Brynhilda the Death-” he is cut off by a terrifying scream.

Lagertha watches as whoever it was trapped within the flames bursts forth in a shower of embers. The wretch is nearly naked, black from soot. She looks about wildly, huffing, green eyes landing on Eylaug. “By Odin,” He whispers, truly terrified. She cocks it’s head back and unleashes yet another unearthly screech, then charges.

Lagertha watches in horror as she tackles Eylaug to the ground, a man easily three times her size. Some men manage to find the courage to react. They rush her, grabbing the back of her shirt and throw her into the air, away from Eylaug before she can do anything more than stun him with a punch to the face. She lands by Lagertha’s feet. Looking up at the newly ordained queen, half crazed. Lagertha raises her sword ready to defend herself, but she’s outmatched by the sheer strength of this animal. It can’t be human, Lagertha thinks as a powerful kick knocks her to the ground and steals her breath. I will die today, this beast will kill me. Lagertha is proved wrong, it seems the girl only cares about the men that trapped her, she turns towards them, poised for battle.

Eylaug is screaming orders at his men, readying them for a fight. Lagertha motions for her own people to stand down, this was not something she wanted to get involved in. They all watch the bloodbath in amazed horror.

It is a sight to see. A sort of peace settles over the woman. You were born in battle, made by the dwarves, a machine to wreak havoc on Midguard, Lagertha thinks, impressed by Brynhilda. She strikes with the deadly accuracy, cutting down man after man. When her sword is not enough, she uses the rest of her body, moving to and fro, avoiding axes and arrows. Her fists more than enough to snap men’s necks. None manage to touch her.

When there are no more men left to attack, she throws the sword to the side, staring at Eylaug. Through the smoke, Brynhilda smiles, her prey is vulnerable, she moves in for the kill. He lets out a terrified scream that chokes off into nothingness as she beats him with her bear hands. It’s disgusting, it’s violent, it’s poetic justice at its finest. When she is done, Eylaug’s head is nothing but pulp. She slides off him, throwing her head to the sky in a sort of reverence, unleashing one last powerful scream.

She turns to the last surviving man, a man too terrified to raise his weapon. She approaches him. He throws down his weapons kneeling, but before he can beg for his life the thing grabs him by the front of his shirt and speaks, “You will go to Boggvir,” She says, “You will tell him Brynhilda yet lives, despite the attempts on her life, and you will tell him I am coming to rip his still beating heart from his chest and eat it. He better pray to the gods for mercy, I will have none.” The man whimpers, nodding. She throws him away. He scampers, leaving his weapons behind, wanting to get away from the the demon as quick as his legs will carry him.

Brynhilda straightens, looks about her, and reaches for the Sword of Kings. Lagertha approaches her. She holds to sword up, distrust plain in her eyes. “That is my sword,” Lagertha states plainly. “It’s in my hand,” Brynhilda counters. The soldiers behind Lagertha ready their weapons. “I could have you killed,” Lagertha continues, hoping to persuade the haughty young thing. Brynhilda merely laughs, then says “You can try,” her men ready their arrows, still she is unafraid, Lagertha liked her. “I’ll tell you what,” Brynhilda says. “You find my weapons and armor, and I will give you your sword back.”

“You don’t make demands of the Queen of Kattegat!” Astrid said, stepping forward. “I make demands of whom I wish. My effects. Now.” Astrid takes another step, but Lagertha stopped her. There was something in the child’s eyes that told her she’d kill the entire town if she had to. “You heard her, find her things.” Lagertha orders, the men hesitate. This is not a woman she wants to make an enemy of. “Now,” she reiterates. Her men disperse. “You look hungry,” Lagertha says, smiling. “Let me get you something to eat.”

Brynhilda has bathed, her things have been returned to her, and now she stands uneasily in front of the new queen of Kattegat. She notes with irritation she hasn’t been fed at all. “Who are you?” Lagertha asks. Brynhilda refuses to answer. Astrid steps up, irritated with her, “Your queen-”

“I have no queen,” Brynhilda informs her calmly. Astrid growls, grabbing her sword. “I’d snap your neck before you could even land a blow,” Brynhilda threatens. She’s in her element, danger surrounds her. She is delighted to see the look of irritation on the new queen’s face. Astrid makes to rush at her, but Lagertha calls her back. Good, at least someone knows what they’re dealing with.

“Where are you going?”

Brynhilda crosses her arms, refusing to answer. “This would go a lot smoother if you simply answered me,” Lagertha tries for a third time. “For you maybe.”

“I could have you locked up.” She points out. “I just barreled my way out of a burning building and killed a man three times my size with my bare hands, what makes you think you could lock me up?”

That’s it, the look of fearful doubt settles on this imposters face. Could Brynhilda be contained? So far it didn’t seem so. Best not to push my luck, she thinks. No one will come for me if I get into anymore trouble. “I get it,” Brynhilda says, pacing, never turning her back on the queen or the people that surround her. “You want to know if I’m going to cause trouble for you. Despite you aligning yourself with Boggvir, I won’t.” Lagertha opens her mouth, no doubt to say something smart, “I will leave you in peace,” Brynhilda interrupts, “so long as you understand that if you get involved you will die.” Lagertha chances a laugh at this. “I have an army, you fight under no banner.” I’m playing a dangerous game here. I’ve never been good with my words. “There are men that would follow me,” Brynhilda says, sounding much more confident than she felt. “And you are a new queen. People here loved Aslaug, do you think all of them would rise up to help you, the usurper?”

“Queen Lagerther-” another blond woman starts, Brynhilda has to interrupt her. “Enough of this talk!” She barks. “I am leaving, with or without your permission. Get in my way, and you lot burn with Kattegat.”

Lagertha smiles at her, a placating smile. She doesn’t think I’m a threat, I’d love to see her head on a pike. “Really now, what is one small girl with no army of her own going to do?” Brynhilda smirks, “I’m going to conquer a kingdom.”

All things considered, Brynhilda feels lucky. The town was attacked, and she survived, she was nearly burned alive, but she survived, and the new queen allowed her to leave mostly unmolested.

She sits in her cabin, looking at the friends she’s managed to make. Rhona, Vigdis, Sigrid, the healer, how odd to think of these girls as friends. True friends.

They’ve had a trying day, so they sleep away the hours. It’s just as well, Brynhilda goes weak for Rhona’s crying. “I will watch over them,” The healer tells her, cracking open an eye. “You’d better, I’d come back to strangle you if you didn’t.”

“You aren’t used to having friends are you?” Brynhilda smiles. “Not good ones, no.” The old woman chuckles. “Go,” She says. “I will tell them of your love in the morning.” Brynhilda nods, looking at the girls one last time. “Tell them,” Brynhilda stops, unsure of what to say. She wasn’t used to having people that would worry over her. “Tell them I will be back, one day.” With that, she slips into the night

Ivar cracks open an eye, bright sun nearly blinding him. Well, he thinks, smiling, I’m alive. He pats himself down, just to make sure. His hand closes around the trinket Brynhilda had given him. A troll cross. He didn’t know what the hell a troll cross would do for him all the way in England, but it obviously meant something to her, so it was dear to him.

Ivar smiles at the thought of his love, she was going to shit herself when she found out his mother was wrong. His mother would be happy, and he would be able to prove to his brothers he wasn’t some useless thing that had to be carted around all the time.

He half remembers the storm that took them, by surprise. His father had warned all of them that there was a chance it would happen, but no one really believed him. Ivar blamed the boats, they were shoddily made in haste for the journey. But what boat can the most hated man in Kattegat get with so little money?

Ivar looks and shakes his father’s leg, eager to get going. He finds he can’t keep the smile from his face. He made it to England, he will live to see his Brynhilda, and most importantly, he will be able to kill a Saxon for her. He had a feeling things would go well here.

#vikings #ivar the boneless #ivars heathen army #ivar ragnarsson #ivar x oc #ivar x brynhilda #brynhilda

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shashawww · 2 years

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18 April 2022 / 16 Ramadan 1443 AH

Ya Allah,

Again today I am feeling so so so blessed. It almost made me burst into tears on how I can see & feel the blessings that You have bestowed upon me.

As I’m typing this, my eyes is already getting teary. It’s such a humbling & gratifying experience whenever I’m reminded of all these blessings being given to me.

You know the state of my heart, Ya Allah. You know how devastated & shattered my heart used to be – only You know the severity of how heartbroken I am with how things have turned out in my life for the past few months.

And now, eventhough I can still feel the remnants of heartaches from the past, but I feel like with every little blessings & joys that You’ve sent to me everyday – the intensity of the pain is gradually decreasing and just today I realized that it’s actually Your way in helping me to recover from the heartbreak. Day by day, I can feel the hole in my chest getting smaller and smaller.

Thank you, ya Allah. I’m forever grateful and in awe with Your love & mercy. Please never let this feeling of being grateful to You fades away. Please never let me sabotage Your blessings by taking it for granted. Please always let me remember that I’m a flawed human beings with uncountable sins – all the blessings that You have given to me are solely because of Your pure unconditional love towards Your servants. Only due to Your love & mercy, I am able to receive these blessings. Not because I am a good human being.

Alhamdulillah <3

#mypost #genuinely blessed <3

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ramadannotes · 6 years

Text

Day 11: “وصف لي”

Have you heard of it?

It’s a Sudanese Facebook community, much like Craig’s List (does that still exist? I might be old), where folks living in Khartoum post their inquiries on where to get this or that. The range of “this or that” is wide - anything from the best place to fix your Nokia phone, to “I’m looking to buy a newborn Siberian Husky - any sellers?”

A few weeks ago, a man posted asking about where in Khartoum he could find ballet classes in which to enroll his daughter. His post ended with, “When I was her age, I was selling lemons in the souq, lol, how times change!” I chuckled at the observation, and was touched by this father’s desire to make his daughter’s wish come true.

My amusement and admiration, however, was short lived. The comments flowed underneath the post like a raging river of negativity and unnecessary aggression.

“Astaghfirullah, instead of teaching your daughter something useful like Quran, you want to teach her ballet??”

“Where have all the real men gone? This guy actually wants his daughter to become a dancer!” (English doesn’t do the negative connotation of the word رقاصة justice)

The comments became increasingly angry and disrespectful, until this:

“A3uthu billah! [I don’t know you but] this post made me hate you.”

I had to stop reading after that (I don’t know why I never learn to just not read the comments).

That post, like I said, was a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was confused; what about this post made people react this way? How is this man (a stranger to them) wanting to sign his little kid up for dance class a reflection of his masculinity, of his piety, of his decency as a human being? And even if it was, how is that anyone’s business? What gives them - random strangers in a Facebook CLASSIFIEDS group - the right to judge him in this way?

More than that, it was aggravating (though not surprising, unfortunately, this isn’t even the only post in this group that has devolved in this way) to see people use their alleged religiosity as a gateway and tool to be vile and abusive - and for something as petty and insignificant as this. Since when is it Islamic to berate and insult people? Is it not part of the instructions of our deen to be kind, compassionate and respectful to one another?

Last week, as I was reading through surat AlNisa (back when I could actually read), I came across this verse, and it immediately reminded me of that post:

And it has already come down to you in the Book that when you hear the verses of Allah [recited], they are denied [by them] and ridiculed; so do not sit with them until they enter into another conversation. Indeed, you would then be like them. Indeed Allah will gather the hypocrites and disbelievers in Hell all together. [verse 140]

If when folks are ridiculing the actual word of God, we are told to just get up and walk away until they change the subject, what in the name of everything good and holy makes you think that you can curse a man for asking about ballet classes for his kid?

#Ramadan #judgement

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natasha-talks · 3 years

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The Relapse-

4th August 2021; Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.

This is something that is so difficult for me to do. I don't even know how to construct a full sentence. I couldn't find the right word to describe what i'm feeling. Like a baby, who is not able to talk trying to tell her parents that she is in absolute pain - She cries.

I've been feeling this for about a month, i would say. But i kept on being in denial because i've been told so many times that everything is fine to a point i thought i was overthinking. But i'm turning 23 in 6 days and no, my intuitions are always right. Always.

Yesterday, the man that i love most finally said that it's not going to work out. It didn't kill me but something inside me died. It felt like someone poured salts all over your wounds. It was too painful because he gave up on us while i'm still here trying to understand and fix things. I was not sad that he's going to leave me because i understand that this ain't just about me, it's about him too. His feelings matter. But it killed me when he started disrespecting me with "What the hell?" "What the hell is wrong with you?" "Shhhhhhhit" and the list goes on. I have always looked up to him as someone who is mature but yesterday, i felt like i was talking to a different person. It's like i have never known him. I saw the look in his eyes and the only thing i could see was.. nothing. He looked at me as if i am the most horrible person in this world. But i let it slide because i know that he's been dealing with things and i really thought that i've been there for him but the truth is, i am stupid for thinking he would actually notice and appreciate the little things i've done for him when i have actually saw numerous signs that he's not that type. From the things he said about himself to the things he said about other people. It made me realise yesterday that it is a narcissistic behavior. But somehow, it still didn't change the amount of love that i have for him. Because i saw it. I saw it from the very beginning but i still chose him. I chose him, fully and i knew what i was signing up for.

He said that it's me. I am flawed, i know but it's not like i don't want to try and make things better. I kept on asking but i guess, that will never be enough. He said I treated him poorly by not giving comfort. I have told him to teach how he wanted it to be because my way of comforting is different and i have never dealt with people saying that i'm not a good listener or good at giving comfort. But yea, there are so many things that i've done but it will never be seen. I knew it for quite some time and yesterday, he proved me right again. It's when i said i do understand but he quickly cut me off by saying i don't and gave an example. You see, he would focus on the flaws instead of the good things i've done. He didn't notice that talking to him is like having to walk on eggshells. But i'm not complaining, i have never complained because again, i knew what i was signing up for and i love him still up until this very moment and i think i will always love him no matter what he puts me through because i really really let down my walls for this man when i have actually promised myself not to be with anyone. I even brought him back home to meet my parents. My mom was the one who told him that he's the first because i have never been that type.

Yesterday made me realise that he said everything is about me. At first, i almost fell for that but while i was busy crying, it actually made me realise that this relationship was not about me or us. It's about him. When he asked me what did i want him to do for me, i said "Im just looking for respect in this relationship" and he said he wants comfort and peace. He started listing out other things too. If i were to ask, there are so many things that i wanted but i never did because i really really accept him for the way he is. He never gave me comfort, it's always "It's okay, i'm here. We'll get through this together" -- I'm not complaining by the way. The comfort that i need is advise, is for someone to guide me when i'm wrong and have a discussion about it. But again, i have never complained. Whatever that he gave me, i accepted it and i do appreciate it. But it's sad. It's really sad that it's not the same for him.

He told me yesterday that i couldn't let go of my past. To be honest, i have never cared about the people from my past. He told me many times that its a new book and i started to view things differently. I started posting throwbacks when i saw it coming. One of my ways of coping to look back and remind myself that it's possible for me to be happy. Those were all me at my best and how i dealt with things. It got nothing to do about me wanting to be the old Natasha. Because the current Natasha is the one who made it through. Who has been clean for a year and a half. I am proud of her even when nobody else does because i know i did this on my own - of course, with the help of my friends and my extended family members. Arwah atuk left me last Ramadhan and my world changed. It felt like 2018 again. I miss him. I really really do because he gave me comfort that i couldn't have. A person that i can be vulnerable with without having the fear of being judged. But he's gone for good.

He told me yesterday that when things didn't go my way about the pasta panas, i started acting poorly. That was the first argument we had. He's not wrong, i did act poorly even when i know it's not his fault. I know he wants to put me on the good side. But that day, it really broke me because he actually said that he missed me, for the first time the day before and i was so excited to see him. It was never 100% about pasta panas? It's just me wanting to show him that i miss him too. I apologised but he brought it up again yesterday. He brought up so many things to a point i questioned myself, was he lying this whole time? Because he told me he forgave me and it's important to learn and grow.

That's the word. I want to grow and i know that i can always grow alone because i've been there, done that. But i chose to grow with this man because i may not know how to show it according to him, i love him with all of me. It hurts me soooooooooooo bad knowing that he's hurt. Because i never wanted to hurt him. That's why i kept my distance when we first started talking because i knew that i was not healed. I took my time to heal and i came back when i was ready even when i thought he was seeing someone else because of the story he posted. But i tried. I could have always date someone else but the reason why i chose him, it's not only because i thought he's smart. It's because i really prayed for signs and then 27th January came. Things didn't go like how we both expected but yea, i have never stopped praying and it's always him. The signs, it's always leading back to him.

Yesterday, it was the day when i cried the hardest because it was painful. Too painful even when i know i can always get over it but i have no idea, why.. it's painful. From 12pm i was crying over the phone with Danish because i knew somethings not right but he left me in the dark and i couldn't stand wondering what did i do. I couldn't talk to him because he made himself unavailable. Even when he's available, he would say that things were okay. It was never fair. Not for me and for anyone who was put in that situation. I could have done it to him a lot of times but never once it came across my mind to do that to him. I know i mentioned about red flags at the beginning of this post-- "You know it's going to hurt you so bad right when this relationship is over?", he's right. It will hurt me because i love him more but it's never right to say that as if i am not capable of fighting it. Plus, i've been through everything. It will hurt me like hell if this relationship is over but i hope Allah will give me the strength if the day comes. Nauzubillah min zalik. Something that i don't ever want to face is the day that i know it's not going to work out.

Yesterday, i have never prayed hard for things to go back the way it used to be or for things to get way better for the both us. I have never cried to a point i couldn't close my eyes because it's going to hurt my head so much and it felt like my eyes were burning but after an hour of struggling to sleep, i finally slept and i accidentally woke up at 1.52am. I tried sleeping back but i couldn't and at 2.05am, i decided to perform solat tahajjud. I googled how to perform solat tahajjud and i did it. It was my first solat tahajjud. I forgot to mention that, Asr, Maghrib, Isya' and tahajjud, i couldn't control my emotions because of the Kaaba on my praying mat, it reminded me of him. He planned to take me there with him after our nikah. He wants to perform umrah and Hajj with me as a husband and wife. I couldn’t help it. I felt so weak.

My last sujood for Subuh, i poured my heart out to Him. I was shaking, i couldn’t control my emotions. All the prayers i made yesterday, it was all just for us. Not for me, just us. I really really want this to work out and i know that only He can change this. I poured my heart out on the praying mat for Him to soften both of our hearts, for Him to shower us with comfort and peace, for Him to protect us from the evil eye, shaytan, iblis, humans and unwanted diseases, for Him to ease our journey and bless our relationship as we want to make this halal, for Him to shower us with endless rizq and success, for Him to make us a better Muslim, for Him to protect us from the hellfire and place us in the highest rank of Jannah. The rest, it’s between me and Him. I prayed really hard for this.

But hey! Look on the bright side, i performed my first tahajjud. While i was crying to Him, a thought came to me.. Maybe this is a way for Him to remind me that He can give everything that i need, something that i’ve been praying for and He can also take everything away from me in a blink of an eye if i do not practice myself as a good Muslim. Maybe this is a test for me and for him for us to grow stronger and wiser. Suddenly, there’s a voice inside my head telling me to have patience because this is shaytan’s doing. They do know that we want to make things halal and that’s something that they hate so they have made a promise to create chaos in our heads and turn us against each other, in the end, everything will be ruined. I am a firm believer that Allah is the only Protector and He will protect us from all of these.

This test is not only to test our faith but it is also to test our patience. I almost gave up but i did not. No matter what he puts me through, i signed up for this and after all the things we’ve been through, i still choose to look at him the same way as i did at the very beginning. He hurt me but it doesn’t that he’s the only one. I hurt him too and i wish to stop, that’s why i kept on asking in order to make this work. Leaving was never an option for me because no matter what, i don’t want to make it a habit because this habit, it will be carried until marriage. When things get rough, you fix and work together against it, not leave. What will happen to the kids if we are unable to control our emotions? I am tired of always being the bigger person and still, not be seen because i do realise that i am surrounded by so many people with a slight narcissistic attitude or worst, some are just purely narcissists.

For this man, he’s not. I don’t blame him. I’ve been telling myself that maybe he is so used to being in a bubble where all of the people around him would always make him feel good and he would always feel like he needs to be good. Maybe i’m wrong and this will probably offend him but i don’t sugar coat things to make someone feel good. But that’s the thing, your partner shouldn’t be the kind of person who needs to always sugar coat things, your partner should be the one who would remind you and slap you with reality. You will never grow if you’re so comfortable not having people going against you, you will never grow if you cannot accept opinions and only want the things that you want without thinking about other people. Relationships should be about two people compromising. I used to do that to people and at the end, they felt so powerful and they threw me away as if i was nothing because they thought they could get everything. Oh by the way, i’m not comparing. He’s not even in the category to be compared with. He told me that i need to do a lot of learning and i admit that but i think he needs it too because the he projects his issues, that’s not the way it should be. Those words, the way he listens- defensive listening, the body language and so many more. It’s a learning process.

5.07pm; I stopped crying because i know that this is what the shaytan would be so happy about. Filled myself with rage, sadness and thoughts i shouldn’t have. But i know i’ve been here for too many times and it is so stupid of me if i would react the same way. I’ve learned a lot and i won’t repeat the same mistakes again.

For now, i’m counting days until Allah grants all of my prayers about us.

I miss him but i respect his space. I know he’s okay without me, this is test for me to fight alone.

Lots of love,

NNS.

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a-kid-named-sutton · 3 years

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Final Reflection

One of the things I enjoyed about the class was bringing in the social media component of the common book posts by using Tumblr. I think this made assignments more relevant and creative and kept us engaged and interacting with one another. Online learning can be tough, and you never really get to know your classmates, but I thought the weekly posts (and the discussions with the essays) were great ways to bring us together as a class. It was cool being able to see and comment on classmates’ work (especially since we can’t see one another in the classroom) and seeing how we all had similar thoughts and reactions to the themes each week. The weekly posts pushed me to dig deeper and find images and links that fit with the weekly theme and really try to post a paragraph that might get my classmates thinking.

There were many themes that I considered for the Common Book project, but the one I decided to focus on was “The Unfair Cultural Expectations of Women” in society. I considered making it even more specific and discussing the unfair treatment in countries that were predominately Muslim, but I wanted to include a few early posts from the assignment and from Under the Udala Trees, where she was Christian or in a Christian culture. I think all the readings and videos share this common theme and really helped me see that all cultures have unfair expectations on women that have led to stereotypes and mistreatment and struggles for equality for women for hundreds or even thousands of years.

One of the common book posts that I wanted to include in this reflection was one of the initial posts, which was a Mr. Clean ad with a white mother and daughter that shows gender roles and gender stereotypes that exist in our society. This was inspired by the Burns reading “Introduction to Global Women’s Studies”. In part of the raising, she discusses assigned roles to women that include being the mom and taking care of the kids and doing household chores. These go hand in hand with my theme of the unfair expectations and specifically the roles/stereotypes that women enjoy cleaning and taking care of the kids. I noticed that the ad has a smiling little girl to show that the unfair and often cruel expectations for women can start at a very early age.

One of the readings that I found interesting and wanted to do a common book post on was the short story “Treatment of Bibi Haldar”. In the story, Bibi faces unfair expectations as a woman where her family should get a dowry and she would become an obedient wife. Women in the Indian culture don’t have a say in the matter in terms of what man they want to marry. These are arranged by the parents and the girls must just go along with this. They lack the freedom to choose a husband or even pursue a future. Unfortunately, she is always sick and unattractive and a girl no man wants to marry because she has seizures and no father, so the husband may not get a valuable dowry. Even though the women in the story try to help her find a husband and to find a cure for her illness, nothing really works, and her culture and society treat her unfairly. She basically has no future in the culture because she cannot cook, clean, or take care of children. She eventually is raped and becomes pregnant, but no one is accused or gets in trouble, which shows how rape and abuse of women is an accepted practice. For this post, I chose an Indian woman protesting rape and abuse of women by men in Indian culture. This has been such an accepted practice for so long and it’s a part of the culture. But allowing women to get raped and not allowing them to find live or choose their own path is an ultimate example of the unfair cultural expectations placed on women.

The book Under the Udala Trees was interesting and one I admit I never heard of or wouldn’t have read if it wasn’t part of the class. But I’m grateful I read it. Things Fall Apart was one of my favorite books, and it helped me better understand and appreciate African culture and the mistreatment of Africans during colonization. Under the Udala helped me learn more about the struggles of young women in Africa and how the Ijeoma had to cope with war, death, the pressures of religion, and her sexuality. These young women had unfair cultural expectations placed upon them. I tried to find Common Book posts that matched her struggles or the struggles of young women in Nigeria and the struggles of the LGBTQ community there. One post I used was an Instagram post of two women who got married and were celebrating their love online. Then a random, Nigerian man decided to post negative comments about their love and criticize homosexuality. He used Christianity to put down their celebration, and this reminded me of the way Ijeomas mom tried to “pray” the homosexuality out of her daughter. Unromantic saw how hypocritical this was since she realized Jesus loves all his children, and I hope the women in the post ignored the harsh criticism and went on with their lives like Ijeoma did in the book. I also found an image of a Nigerian individual that is holding a sign in support of the LGBTQ community. The individual is wearing a traditional African headdress but is wearing men’s clothes. They are likely treated unfairly in Nigerian society and have cultural biases and stereotypes against them, but I appreciate how they are standing up and fighting for equality and fair treatment.

I also was glad that we were required to read Three Sisters of Eve. This gave me a new perspective on Turkish culture and the unfair expectations that women face in that country, both as children and as adults. This was also an interesting look at the cultural and religious pressure placed on girls and women as Peri faced these expectations as a little girl. She then struggled with the expectations of being a mother and an upper-class woman in Istanbul. The image I chose to represent this in the common book project was the image of girls and women at a mosque. In the book. Peri struggled with religion and her understanding of Allah. Her mom put a lot of unfair pressure on her to always pray and live a life that strictly goes along with the Muslim religion. When she goes to pray at a mosque one day, men at the mosque told her she wasn’t welcome, and this showed that men looked down in girls and didn’t think they were worthy of entering the mosque to worship. The image for the project shows women and girls outside worshipping, so it made me wonder if this kind of discrimination and the unfair expectations that women are inferior still exist in Turkey and other Muslim countries.

One of the other aspects in the book that I wanted to discuss through the project was the stereotypes and unfair treatment that Muslim faced after the attacks on America during 9/11. In the book, Peri must deal with this when she is at Oxford when the attacks happen. She already s faces unfair treatment as a Muslim woman trying to get an education and pursue a life that goes against the expectations that the culture puts on women like her. These stereotypes were unfair to all Muslims of people of Arab descent after 9/11 because anyone that looked “Muslim” were treated like terrorists. One of the cultural traditions for Muslim women is that they sometimes have to cover their faces of wear a veil. This probably didn’t help with stereotypes so when people saw women wearing these, they automatically stereotyped these women as terrorists. This idea was also something that was discussed in the in the TedTalks video where Mogahed talks about how difficult it is to be a Muslim woman after 9/11. She uses humor in the presentation and shared things that all women have in common to show that just because she is Muslim that doesn’t mean she is not an American. And this doesn’t mean that because she is Muslim that she’s a terrorist. The image I chose was a Muslim woman wearing a American flag veil. This image represents a few things: American people discriminate against Muslim women for wearing and radical Muslims that think it’s an insult to wear an American flag. The Muslim woman in this image is bring bread by saying I am Muslim but I’m still an American. I love this country just as much as other Americans and just because I have a cultural expectation that requires a veil, this doesn’t mean I’m a terrorist.

In the end, I have learned much, and I am glad that I took the class. I was worried about all the reading and writing involved but I think I found my voice and was able to express my thoughts and feelings accurately as a man living in a male-dominated culture. I was always aware of the double-standards that exist in our society with men and women and know how women and minorities are unfairly treated in our society and culture. And knew of the stereotypes of women and other cultures and had some knowledge of how women are mistreated in Muslim countries, but the readings and TedTalks really opened my eyes to the problems that exist in the world. But most importantly I think I made the connection that this isn’t something that’s just in American or Muslim culture. The mistreatment and discrimination of women in minorities is really a human problem that needs to be addressed and fixed. It can’t happen overnight, but I think classes like this one help students like me come to this realization and consider ways that I can be better and different.

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simplyhasanah · 6 years

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Just exactly a year ago on today’s date, my grandmother was released from the hospital where she had to be hospitalized for almost one month and was bedridden. It was only because she slipped on the floor and fell- exactly on her pelvic, which was found out to be broken. If she was 20-30 years younger, she would’ve been operated instantly but it was because she surpassed the 70 years of age, the doctors said the best thing is to let her be; let it heal by itself. What the hospital could do for her was to monitor her health status, keep her health stable and help her ease her pain.

There were so many priceless lessons that I learned within those months because I was always beside her. Plus, when you’re surrounded by many sick people at the hospital, you’ll feel more grateful and humbled, too. But most of all, you’ll definitely see Allah’s Mercy and Blessings there.

I’ll share some of my writings last year since I wasn’t active in this blog at that time. Here goes:

23rd March 2017

Mudahan baik-baik saja, nek (Please let the news be good for you, grandma). Minta dijauhi daripada perkara yang buruk (May you be kept away from any harm). May Allah grant shifa to you, nek. Aamiin yaa rabbal ‘alamin.

I shared a quote from the book called ‘Mauizhah Hasanah’ by Ustaz Ahmad Dusuki Abdul Rani,

“Apa yang dikumpul takkan menjadi milik melainkan diberikan pada yang memerlukan untuk Allah.” and

in English, it says “What was collected will never be owned unless it was given to the needy for Allah.”

26th March 2017

I posted a photo of my luggage with a caption, ‘Kan belayar…ke hospital.’ Going to travel…to the hospital.

27th March 2017

Earlier last night on 26th March with some of my uncles, aunt, cousins- we were celebrating my cousin, D’s birthday beside Nenek. Definitely one of the nights to remember. ‘Meriah’ (Lively), almost to the max. Balik-balik kana marahi (We’ve been scolded many times) due to the loudness of our voices. But Alhamdulillah.

Nenek’s feeling much better from the last few days. Her willpower is there. Alhamdulillah, thank you and may Allah bless you yang sentiasa mendoakan (those who always pray for her).

Di mana ada kepayahan, di sana Allah permudahkan. Where there is difficulty, in there Allah will give ease.

Di mana ada kesungguhan, di sana Allah memberi jalan. Where there is a will, in there Allah will show the way.

InshaAllah. May Allah continue to grant us good health, guidance and blessings always.

28th March 2017

I shared a photo quote by Dodinsky, “You have an important task in life. If someone feels empty, talk about their worth. If they are lost, help guide them back to their path. If they are weakened, remind them of their strength. If in despair, show them there is always hope. And remember, this undertaking always begin with YOU.”

And I reminded myself and others: Life in this (temporary) Dunya isn’t about serving our lowly nafs (desires). It goes beyond that. When we serve for others, we serve for Allah.

29th March 2017

It’s been almost a week. The doctors said it might take a while to recover. We don’t want to focus on the numbers but we want to make sure Nenek is recovering well. She had been having troubles sleeping at night and even during the day. But she is sleeping soundly now, Alhamdulillah. Mudahan cepat sembuh, nek. (May you recover well, grandma), Aamiin, aamiin..

I posted a photo of my baby nephew: Look who’s visiting! (I remember Nenek was really happy to see him).

31st March 2017

I shared a quote by Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan, “When you find yourself in a position to help someone, be happy! Because Allah is answering that person’s prayer through you.”

1st April 2017

I shared the first three verses of Surah Al-Ankabut,

“Alif Lam Mim. Do men think that they will be left alone on saying, “We believe”, and that they will not be tested? We did test those before them, and God will certainly know those who are true from those who are false.”

Then, I reminded myself and others: Tests are temporary but our reactions and responses during those tests last with Allah; they stay to prove how faithful we are to Him.

I shared an excerpt from the Mauizhah Hasanah book, “Dalam kehidupan kita, suatu masa kita akan merasai kenikmatan yang berterusan. Lama kelamaan, Allah akan menarik nikmat sedikit demi sedikit yang terdapat dan dirasai oleh kita itu.” (In our lives, one day we will experience a continuous enjoyment (ni’mat). Over time, God will take the ni’mat that we have little by little).

I also shared a story from the book, “Ada suatu kisah yang diceritakan oleh seorang sahabat saya. Suatu ketika, beliau menziarahi seorang gurunya. Gurunya itu menghidap pelbagai jenis penyakit, ada kencing manis, darah tinggi dan lain-lain. Ketika beliau menziarahi gurunya, gurunya menghidangkan durian dan memakannya. Sahabat saya ini terkejut, dan bertanya kepada gurunya, “Tok guru makan makanan begini, tak takut mati ke?” Lantas tok gurunya menuding jari ke arah hadapan rumahnya iaitu tanah perkuburan dan berkata, “Itu, di hadapan sana, semua itu berpantang makannya, tapi tetap juga mati.”

In English, it says, "There is a story told by a friend of mine. Once, he visited his teacher. The teacher has various diseases, diabetes, hypertension and others. When he visited his teacher, his teacher served durian and ate it. My friend was surprised, and asked his teacher, “Tok guru ate this kind of food, are you not afraid to die?” Then his teacher pointed his finger at the front of his house, which is the cemetery and said, “There, in front, all (people in cemetery) abstained from eating it, but, still they die.”

2nd April 2017

I shared another excerpt from the book, “Suatu perkara yang boleh diambil daripada intipati ayat ini ialah tatkala kita dicemuh orang, dihina, dikeji atau sebagainya, tanamlah dalam hati kita, kita ada akhirat. Biarlah kita dikhianati orang, asalkan kita bersabar, dan terus bersabar, dan berdoalah moga-moga Allah ganjari syurga kepada kita atas sifat kesabaran itu.”

In English, it says, "One thing that can be taken from the essence of this verse is that when we are being insulted, humiliated, degraded or so, plant (thoughts) in our hearts that we have the hereafter. Let us be betrayed by people, as long as we are patient, and continue to be patient, and pray that God will reward us for the act of being patience.”

I shared a quote by Habib Saggaf bin Mahdi, “The extraordinary person is simple in his speech but great in his action.”

I captured a photo of the hospital’s TV with the lights off with the caption: Watching “IQRA” with Nenek. One of the best teledramas that teaches you so many priceless lessons and gives you powerful reminders. The teledrama looks simple and some might see it as plain, but subhanAllah, they can really wake you.

3rd April 2017

One of the things that made me realise while staying in and going back and forth to the hospital is that Allah can just take one of our blessings, health- away from us…and He SWT can also give it back to us whenever and wherever we are. Below are some thoughts that have been going on in my mind whenever I’m here (in the hospital):

We are powerless without Allah.

One blessing’s taken doesn’t mean we are being ignored, rather the attention is on us. Alhamdulillah ‘ala kulli hal.

If we are truly servants of Allah, we will remember Allah all the time. In good health or in sickness, we will practise Sabr and Shukr.

Race, Ranks, Status will be insignificant. Whoever you are, a poor or a rich person…if you have a sense of pride and ego…sickness is an important lesson to teach you- that whatever you do even if you do things by yourself, you will still need help from others. ‘Help’ from others come from Allah.

Sickness in physical form can be a platform to strengthen our spiritual state. When we feel weak, the only choice is to be strong. Remaining to be weak is not an option. We need to move on if we want to be on Allah’s side.

If Dunya is like a temporary destination, hospitals are like airports for souls. Some have to stay for a while. Some went ahead to the destination according to their own intention and effort in getting their ‘ticket’. We will be sent when the time is right.

Humans are forgetful beings. It is best to always make du’a and prayers to Allah to give us Hidayah and Tawfiq always for these two are the greatest gifts a Muslim can have.

4th April 2017

I shared a quote by SDH, “Don’t be sad dear chosen ones.”

Another quote by Power of Positivity, “The strongest people make time to help others, even when they’re struggling with their own personal problems.” while inserting a reminder for myself and others: Remember Rasulullah SAW and his companions…

5th April 2017

I shared a photo of my grandmother in her purple hijab and pastel coloured baju kurung with a pillow at her back and with her sitting on a wheelchair with a caption: Nenek’s first day exercising at Physiotherapy Department.

I also shared a photo of the word ‘Sabr’. So I just witnessed one of the nurses being rude to us despite trying to cover her rudeness with a forced sweet voice and a forced sweet intonation. But when the manners are rude, they are still rude. No matter what. I nearly lost my temper. Okay, perhaps I lost my temper a bit but I nearly explode. Seriously, this makes me question why you want to become a nurse in the first place. Sesungguhnya, ramai lagi manusia seperti dia. (Actually, there are many others like her). Tapi entah kenapalah marah ku begitu meruap-ruap malam ini. (But why am I filled with so much anger tonight). Ya Allah, grant me patience.

I wrote a ‘rant’: You cannot hide your ugly personality by beautifying your face, your voice or your appearance. Ugly personality comes from a dirty heart. Yes, beauty comes from within.

6th April 2017

I posted a photo of my grandmother trying to walk using the four-legged stick with two physiotherapists holding her from both sides. Captioned ‘Day 2: Syafakillah dear Nenek.’

I shared a photo quote by Simple Reminders, “Never discredit your gut instinct. You are not paranoid. Your body can pick up on bad vibrations. If something deep inside of you says something is not right about a person or situation, trust it.”

7th April 2017

I shared a text post which I’ve written on 7th April 2014:

Now you’re exactly where Allah wants you to be but bear in mind, it is only temporary. Your body will age, your face and skin will deteriorate. Your wealth and status will soon be forgotten but your bad and good deeds will forever be written. But remember, the thing that can erase the bad is a true repentance so long as you keep your iman on perseverance. So what if some people are treating you bad, it’s how you respond with kindness that makes Him be extremely glad. His Pleasures is what you truly seek, not the world and falsehood that are full of deceit. Be mindful, without a sincere intention, all those billion actions won’t make Jannah happen.

I captured a photo of the book called The Art of Doing with a caption: Was gifted this book earlier by The Queen (one of my close friends) and my first impression was, “Are you saying I’m not doing anything?” (insert laughing emojis). So sorry for saying that, Your Majesty, my mental state is a bit unstable at the moment but thank you so much for this book. You really know much much I love reading the How-To books. Jazakillah khairan kathira!

I shared a quote by Rumi, “It’s your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.’

8th April 2017

I shared a photo of my grandmother being held by two physiotherapists while she was holding the four-legged cane with a caption: Day 4. A good improvement, nek.

I shared a quote by Walid Al-Malik, “Duhai anakanda, jika masih banyak merungut dan tidak redha dengan ketentuan takdir juga musibah. Makanya, kamu masih belum benar-benar bertauhid.” In English, it says, "Dear child, if you still have a lot of complains and are not accepting with the fate and misfortunes. That means you still have not practised Tawhid.”

I posted a beautiful photo of the sky and trees outside my house with a caption: Syukur, I get to see His creations once in two or three days these days. Being stuck in one place can be challenging and suffocating. But all that is to train one’s patience. Patience can be practised in two occasions (or more); in dealing with calamity and in dealing with people. I usually struggle with the latter, unfortunately. But as time goes by and as Allah gave me some reminders here and there, I came to realize that sometimes Allah wants to teach us how to be thankful first at the moment when we have the right to become angry, which is also the perfect time to practise patience. One of the main reasons why humans are forgetful, in my observation, is that we forget we have Allah by our side….we forget that it is Allah who made everything possible be it giving lives or taking lives…we forget that it is Allah who gave us all those gifts and blessings, which sometimes were disguised in ordeal and calamities. Another reason why we forget Allah is we are too obsessed with chasing the Dunya, focusing on Dunya more than our Akhirah, astaghfirullah. No matter what we experience, if we remember Allah (remember His Greatness, remember who we are, remember that He always listens, He is the Most Just, the Oft-Forgiving, the Most Merciful…this could go on and on), our hearts will find peace. Alhamdulillah ‘ala kulli hal.

9th April 2017

Just because you don’t see someone working behind your back, it doesn’t mean that they are not doing anything. Be thoughtful. Be considerate. Be kind. Because you know what? Allah sees more than you do.

10th April 2017

After about 2 weeks (and more) staying at the hospital (while taking turns with my sister, G), I finally could take a breather. This means I get to update my daily planner, which is also 2 weeks (and more) behind. Reflecting on the recent events that have been happening within the past few weeks, I seriously feel like I’ve been forced to take a ride on a roller coaster non-stop while trying to remain fixed on my seat, I could not go anywhere or I might be thrown off my seat thus will only cause harm to myself even more. The least that I could do is just to stay calm on my seat but once in a while I might do the opposite- perhaps to make sure that I am still alive. I cried, I smiled, I laughed. I got scared. I got angry. I got depressed. It was one heck of a ride full of emotions, spices of life. I tasted life, I’m still alive, Alhamdulillah.

Now, I feel like I’ve just been released from the 2-week roller coaster ride. It doesn’t feel as dizzy anymore. I guess I am recovering from that emotional and spiritual rides. But then again, as I got out of this ride, I came to discover that the world that I am standing on right now is full of those rides. Perhaps that is just the 10th ride that I’ve taken and who knows how many more rides I need to take until I reach the End…to Him.

Allah knows, Allah knows.

We may not like with what’s being given to us. We may not be comfortable with the tests and trials that await us. We may not understand what good it would do to us right now. But we have to believe. We have to remain tight on His Rope (Faith) that Allah is All-Knowing. He knows what He is doing. He knows what is Best for each of us. So please. Just do our Best, Believe, and He will take care of the Rest. InshaAllah Ta’ala.

***

Lessons from a Cleaner

Me to the Cleaner: “May I ask you to clean and mop the floor?”

Nenek chiming in while lying on the bed: “Yes, the other cleaner before had not done it earlier because there were many people wearing their shoes and forgot to take it off.”

Cleaner: “Sure, will do.”

Me: “I heard there were two people who just passed away.”

Cleaner: “Yes, sister. One passed away at 5:30 PM. Another, at 6:00 PM. Both were elderly people.”

Me: “Wow. How close were the times…”

Cleaner: “Yes… It was as if the Angel couldn’t stop. Once the Angel went to one room, he quickly moved to the room in front of him.”

Me: “SubhanAllah!”

- A long pause -

Me: “Yesterday- Thursday night, the patient next door also passed away. The next day, a new patient came in.”

Cleaner: “Yes, sister. Here it is always full. Every day, there are sick people. Today, there are three rooms empty. But tomorrow it will be filled. Every day, sick people come.”

Me: “Yes…but this is only temporary. Here is Dunya. Everything will be temporary…”

Cleaner: “That is why…in this Life, we need not be full of pride. There’s something Greater.”

Me: “Yes…”

Cleaner: “Alright, I am done.”

Me: “Thank you!”

Cleaner: “You’re welcome.”

11th April 2017

Alhamdulillah, Nenek has finally been discharged today. Couldn’t be more happier. The process of recovering continues… May Allah grant us strength and patience to persevere. Aamiin.

#personal

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fil-jannah · 5 years

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I wanted to mention something about music.

Frankly, people are not mature enough for this discussion. Many folks can’t accept that the huge majority of scholars deemed it impermissible. Conversely, many of those who follow the "haram" opinion don’t realise that the key hadith which the case is built upon aren’t as strong as they could be. Then you have some non-Muslims who can’t imagine what kind of barbaric death-cult would avoid music because music to them is like life itself, indeed perhaps the only source of happiness they have left in this miserable existence we call Little England. Sorry I couldn't resist, I've still got Brexit on my mind. -_-

Anyway, God help you if you consider music haram because you must be the most backward extremist on the planet, and God help you even more if you ever considered it halal because all your other good deeds and orthodoxy might as well be thrown in the bin and you must be boycotted like as you have apostated!

There are way too many emotions in this debate. It’d made Brexit look like a walk in the park. Ok that's the last EU reference I'm going to make, I promise.

So that’s why so many religious folks avoid the subject of music in fear of upsetting their followers. It’s professional suicide basically. But I still want to reflect on the issue because one man’s suicide is surely another man’s martyrdom right? And since when did I care about followers anyway?

Ok so play along with me here:

I want you to put aside all bias, emotions and opinions about music, its scene and its people and imagine a clean slate walking into Ramadhan.

In the UK especially, many mosques are quite central and close to clubs and bars etc. The one where we pray our Tarawih at is very close to this popular karaoke bar. And their whole show starts right at the same time we start our Tarawih prayers. And yes we can all faintly hear it throughout the Prayer. It’s quite an experience I tell you.

I reckon 95% of the tracks that they play from all the old classics I know by heart from my youth, and it only needs a single riff or opening line, even if muffled at very low volume quite far away, for me to immediately connect with that track and subconsciously soak it up.

The interesting thing that came to mind though is this: as soon as that opening line kicks in, so does the young guy who grabs the mic and tries to sing it for the rest of the crowd. Everyone’s usually a bit tipsy and in a party mood so there’s lots of generosity for the rather poor attempt each time, and anyway they all usually knock down a serious amount of drink, food and other activities to create what is for them a brilliant night out. Truly, it was a night of worship for them. Speaking to some of them afterwards, you wouldn’t know any better with shiny happy faces and enchanted eyes as if in rapture itself: the phrases “it was divine”, “we worship this place” and “he’s god” flow freely.

This is their ‘ibadah.

I then reflect upon where I am, standing as part of another audience just next door, with another young guy who also goes forward and grabs the mic and tries to sing for us. Except his singing is not so much focused on creating a great sound but rather for us to hear the actual words that he recites from the Book of God. Most of us are not helped to enhance the experience as we don’t have drink, food or even an understanding of what’s actually being said, forget about whether we think it *sounds* great or not. But we do realise at the end that even though we might not have enjoyed it so much as the karaoke, it was an even more brilliant night out. We might not understand it but it was for the Divine, it felt like worship and it was certainly for God Himself.

This is our ‘ibadah.

Listen, we cannot compare the instant feel-good power that music brings to every single person, versus what the Qur’an does for some people and what the majority wish that it *would* do for them but they just haven’t invested enough time and energy studying it into *letting* it impact them.

Don’t compare, trust me. Music sounds better. That’s what it was created for. The ultimate sound test for ears. That’s why it’s a supreme fitnah for millions. Nothing compares to it so don’t try to fight it. Just accept that it wins and that the Qur’an is instead dealing with a whole different paradigm in getting its message to you direct to your heart and not so much via your ears and serotonin levels.

Obviously there are exceptions amongst people who don’t care for music whatsoever and can listen to the Qur’an 24/7 but they’re called the Awliya’. This doesn’t help the mass majority of Muslims.

However in this dunyawi mis-match, what audience would *you* like to be in?

How many of those who really love music want to be on this side of the wall with us, or the other side of the wall with them, on the 21st night of Ramadhan? Or the 22nd? Or the 2nd? Or indeed any night from the rest of the year surely, because if something is attractive for this month then it should be the same outside this month too, and if something is ugly for this month then does it lose its ugliness afterwards?

It’s amazing that even the most diehard music-head wants to disassociate themselves from that crowd, that culture, that scene, when they stand in prayer listening to the Qur’an even though they feel the other lot sound better and are having more fun.

Why is it that we wouldn’t want to be part of that audience at this exact moment? Why don’t we want to spend the night there? Why wouldn’t we want to die there? Why wouldn’t we want to be raised up and meet God with those same people who were next door?

The answer is simple. Because we are ultimately people of ‘ibadah.

It’s because our fitrah, our innate natural state, can never be suppressed. Our natural state is one of ‘ibadah, we just need to be reminded of it that’s all. When push comes to shove, we all know that we’d rather do what’s *right* as compared to what we might love from our desires. We can never lie to ourselves. Our souls are far too honest for that. The greatest ecstatic moment you have ever experienced listening to your favourite artist's best chorus, is trumped by a single Sajdah that you prolong for more than an auto-pilot three tasbeehs. Once you actually wake up and realise why you're there, tell me now that your heart doesn't tremble!

And that’s why deep down despite whatever we might think, we know the right side from the wrong side, we know who we want to be associated with as opposed to those we’d politely refrain from, we know whom Allah loves and whom Allah will pass by.

It is for this reason why I ask folks to not get caught up too much in the legalities surrounding whether music is halal or haram or whatever. Leave the debates about music and instruments and what is a human voice and what is acapella and what is a sound effect and what is going too far ad infinitum. That only creates people who try to get round it. Once you get involved in technicalities then they’ll make “Muslim” boy bands instead, and “Muslim” sounds, and “Muslim” God knows what. You create the absurdity of copy-cats who sing the same songs but do so “Islamically” whatever that means, whilst the same diseased culture remains. Being obsessed with music is more than just a sound and an instrument. It’s a mindset. And it’s a mindset that doesn’t befit believers.

But you’ll be crucified by the “cultured” elite Muslims for saying any of that so don’t bother. It’s not worth people hating on you over this. I’m gonna say it anyway though cos' I'm cool with it; I eat hate for suhur *and* iftar.

So instead, tell yourself and tell those whom you love: just be honest. Who do you want to *be*, who do you think worships Him like *He* wants to be worshipped and ultimately who do you want to be raised up from?

That’s why I’ll choose the young lads with the mics trying their best on *this* side of the wall, and I’ll let the other lot enjoy themselves on their side.

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