Allah swt blessed me. The stores of His unbounded rizq affects my life in many ways more than I could ever could imagine. I thank Him for all that He bestowed upon me and upon His believers. I thank Him for the blessings that I know of, and also for the ones I don’t know. What does it mean to be a grateful person? And how is that different from the person who is thankful?

Let’s shift our focus for a minute. I’m currently watching a k-drama called “Run On.” There’s a scene in episode 5 where Oh Mi-Joo (the main female character of the story) translates an article about the kid who got assaulted by his peers. He says he wasn’t afraid of the assault; rather, it was not being able to run away from it. Actually, let me just quote him directly: “Being assaulted was frightening. But not being able to run away was even more terrifying.” These lines are so relatable. They pack a heavy punch. When my dad dumped the garbage can on me, and when he said hurtful words to me and about me, and when he shouted at my face that he wanted to kick me out of the house even though he knew I had no money to rent my own place, I wasn’t thinking about how bad it was.

I understand that this makes me sound worryingly dense, but I genuinely wasn’t very concerned about the abuse. The abuse was already there; it was evident. It already happened. What he was doing to me was clear to me and everyone in the house. I just wanted to leave, and exist somewhere far away from him. But I couldn’t, because I didn’t have any money. My top concerns were: how can I make sure that I never experience this ever again by anyone, and how do I make money from some fulfilling work I can do so I can leave this place?

I reflected a lot. I realized that a life without Allah swt is a dull one that is also full of mischief and resentment, and I didn’t want that for myself. That whole experience, along with other things that happened, made me realize that I need Allah. I desperately need Allah in my life, and that with Him, I could go through the most fulfilling journey of my life. I went to the Qur’an. This time around, I wasn’t the same person when I picked up the Qur’an. A fresh new set of eyes were looking at the ayaat, and they were filled with tears of love. I felt so stupid for not having turned to that glorious book; it had the answers to every single problem, big and small, that has ever faced humans in this world.

Then, I thought about what I liked doing the most, and it was writing and reading and existing recluse in the palaces I have constructed over the years inside my mind. Writing on this blog thrice a week, and writing books that tell stories that I have created from mere imagination, and recording episodes every Tuesday for my podcast- that’s helping me. I get to deeply venture into myself and emerge with something. And I try my best for that something to be something that God and His Messenger (pbuh) would not only approve of, but smile at! May Allah swt help me make the most out of my writing. May my inquisitions and my writing and my reading and my living and my breathing be solely for the Most Merciful’s sake. Ameen.

The truth is: I’m not fond of my father. I hate the way he wakes my family up in the morning for fajr. It’s not the waking us up for fajr that I’m opposed to. May Allah grant him immense khair and ajr for doing so. It’s the way he does it that makes me instantaneously furious and filled to the brim with rage and frustration. For a man who prays the five daily prayers on time, along with the sunnah prayers and the night prayer, you’d think that Allah swt would grant him a softness that reflects in the way he approaches his family. In reality, he’s far from soft. And he’s only human; I get that he’s not perfect. But, subhan’Allah, I sometimes wonder if it’d kill him to say a nice word every once in a while.

For a long time, I’d wake up in the morning with hate. I hated him, and I hated praying. I hated how he forced us all to pray together. I hated his lectures because the volume of his voice would get louder and louder as he went on speaking. I don’t exactly remember the moment I stopped praying for Allah and started praying for my father. Nevertheless, it was an unfortunate decision made by my mixed feelings of fear and hate and resentment towards my father. He dragged us all to pray fajr with him and would then proceed to leave the house for the next 23 hours to work. Yes, I know that we needed the money and he had to work. But… I don’t know. I don’t know if he thought that forcing us to pray would make us love Allah or love prayer. I know that it certainly didn’t help me. I think this topic needs to be addressed on a deeper level. I’m currently making it sound simpler than it actually was. Insha’Allah I will delve into it more someday.

I want to leave this on a different note and ask: What if I pushed the limits of my abilities? Would disregarding my mental, spiritual, and physical wellbeing bring about greatness? Would disrespecting myself help push humanity forward a little? In the end, those very same humans that I would have forsaken my life for would tut-tut me with their tongues. Poor Umulkhair, her love of writing drove her to an extreme that she couldn’t ever possibly return from.

فِي أَمَانِ اللَّهِ