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I hate looking back and reminiscing over the past… mostly because there aren’t that many good memories. What’s amplified in my head is the bad stuff. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this way. Whatever I remember about my past is not that good. Many people tend to think about the bad stuff. People call them pessimists because these types of people have been burned in the past and thus have the bandwidth to conceptualize and bring to light the tons of different ways life could go wrong. I wouldn’t call them pessimists, though. I think they’re really good at pattern recognition and that enables them to be strategic; and that is something that most people don’t have.
I moved around a lot throughout my twenty three years of living. One thing that I’ve noticed common in my experience is this: you can only see what you choose to see. I, for example, from a very early age began to constantly worry about disasters and how one day, everything in my life would randomly turn upside down. I never really questioned why I thought that way. Something related to this is my being afraid every time my mother called my name. I was constantly petrified, and it was irrational. Whenever she shouted my name across the house, I had this feeling that there was something off about the way she called my name. Like I was done for. Khalas. I’d think that’s it. Today’s the day she found out that I’m not real. Or that she found out something bad about me and wants to disown me. I was ten years old when I was thinking this way. Her calling my name signalled danger to me, so I’d immediately stop what I was doing. I’d rush over to her side and ask her what she needed, only for her to ask about something trivial and non-dangerous at all. I’d feel relief whenever that happened, but the existential dread never subsided. Every time she called my name, I was afraid, until eventually my fear sort of went quiet.
In my early years, I never really deemed myself a human. Or at least, a good enough, functional human. I believed that I was a fraud, a huge error waiting to be found out. I noticed how my siblings were much better at this whole life thing so early. When I was about four or five years old, I noticed how one of my sisters was really good at making jokes and how everyone in the house laughed whenever she’d make one. There’s this one specific memory that’s still vivid in my mind. We were all in the small living room and my sister said something funny and everyone was having fun. I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted my presence to be appreciated and to be seen and noticed and for them to smile and laugh because of me. So, I tried being funny. I remember saying something and shifting my voice and body to be this clown-ish jester. One of my brothers said stop, you’re not as funny as her.
People like to call it imposter syndrome nowadays when people feel fraudulent and out of place when it comes to their school or jobs. Their minds make them perceive that they don’t belong or even deserve to be where they are. For a very long time, I felt like a failed human. Not in the oh my god I suck and I’m ugly and I’m fat and I’m a loser way, but more so that I just did not know what I was doing and why I was here, on this planet. Well, to be honest, I did sometimes feel like an absolute loner who had no life, and that didn’t help. I was incredibly focused on the why of matters. Why am I here? Why was I chosen to exist? Why was I born specifically into this family and not another one? Why can’t I be as charming as my sisters? Focusing on the why when I knew that I wasn’t going to get the answers I needed was self-defeating. Nobody alive could give me the answers I needed, and I was this stupid brooding teenager whose imaan in Allah was practically nonexistent.
The point is, I’m here. I’m alive. I’m the one who’s running this body and mind. Instead of focusing on getting answers to questions that are unanswerable unless it’s Allah the one I’m asking, I should focus on what’s here. I’m alive, let’s start there. My life was bumpy, and there were horrible times, and there were also good times. I should let both of them go, because just like everyone else, my story will end with me in a grave. I must expend all of my efforts into that which will aid me in my life after this life. I need to tighten my hold on God and His words because they are the Truth. Disasters are difficulties are inevitable. Planning ahead so that I don’t suffer at my own hands is prudent. Nevertheless, if Allah has ordained that something awful and dreadful befall me, then I know that nothing can stop that event from happening.
Adversity, as bad as it is, shouldn’t be avoided. The lessons I learned the best were the horrible ones. It took many horrible situations for me to finally say yeah no, I don’t want this to happen ever again in my life. I would analyze what got me to the unacceptable position I found myself in, and I decided to never take those same steps again. I once desired to be friends with this girl because this guy I had a crush on called me a loner with no friends. I thought that girl was so cool. I think it’s called having a friendship crush when you admire and want to be friends with someone. She was so pretty, allahuma barik, and had so many friends, many of them cool like her. I prayed and said ya Allah, please please pleaseeee let me be friends with her. A year later, Allah swt granted me my request. I recognized it at the time that Allah gave me what I wanted and I was so happy. Because He answered my prayers, I believed in Him more. We ended up taking the same class and sat beside each other and we got to know each other and we ultimately hung out.
In the span of a year, she completely shifted to the point where she turned out to have a bad influence on me. I knew that, and yet I still chose to stick around her; that is, until she eventually ghosted me. We were living completely different lives, and I wanted to continue to act oblivious to that fact. I wanted us to continue being friends, despite my knowing that she was doing unlawful things. I wanted to be accepted by her. I didn’t care about the bad stuff that she was doing. I just know that I wanted to be considered cool like her.
That entire time, I was projecting this idea of coolness onto her because I believed that she trumped me in what I thought I lacked. I thought I was weird. I thought I wasn’t cool, whatever that means. Plus, the one person I liked called me a loner, verbatim. I wanted to prove him wrong. The worst thing about this entire thing is that even after he called me a loner, I still continued to have my little crush on him. So that’s one really difficult lesson I went through in this life. I know I won’t go back to that way of existing because the part of me that desired to be liked and wanted by others is gone now. Authenticity beats attachment a thousand times over.
Know, dear reader, that I’m not chasing friendship anymore. If someone comes into my life and we click and most importantly, that person naturally makes me want to be closer to Allah, then that’s perfect. If not, then it’s goodbye forever. I’m pretty lax when it comes to people entering my life, but I’m stricter when it comes to choosing who gets to stay long term. I know how beautiful friendship is because I’ve tasted its sweetness before. So don’t be mistaken in thinking that I’m shunting people away from me. I’m not. I pray that Allah allows me to both love and seek love from those that love Him, and that His love and mercy flows to me until the end of time.
That whole experience where I got ghosted by the bad influence girl and believing that I was a loner because my crush said so was incredibly instructive. I learnt that I should have a backbone. I learnt that I didn’t deserve to be with someone who viewed me so negatively, neither platonically nor romantically. I learnt that I should’ve really listened to Allah and His messenger’s commands when it came to seeking love from the opposite gender. I learnt to never attach to whoever comes my way because I’m lonely. I learnt that loneliness is the human condition. I also learnt that I have a preponderance to liking and desiring people, things, and situations that are harmful to me. I learnt that was willing to ignore that I was putting myself and my akhirah at risk for the sake of people who’d be of no help to me on the Day of Judgement. Alhamdulilah for all that I learnt. I continue to pray that Allah never allows me to slip back to my earlier ways because they were of jahiliyyah. Ameen.