“It’s Suffocating Me Being Here. I Can’t Stand The Routine Life I’m In. I Sleep All The Time

Someone’s tone changes for even a split second and it’s like suddenly you can’t focus on anything but for the fact that you MUST have done something to upset them and you need to either fix it or just shut up

I️ Keep Sleeping

i need to stop imagining scenarios in my head that have a -2% chance of actually happening it’s becoming a problem

Fear of being boring

If you were a child who grew up fearing that you’re boring everybody by talking, then it more than likely stemmed from invalidation as a child.

Sometimes as children we find a topic we enjoy, and talk endlessly about it. Most parents might not be wildly enthusiastic on the inside, but they will show interest for the child to validate them. Mine were different, they showed absolutley no interest whatsoever, no matter what the subject of interest was. They behaved as if I was boring them, or they said they were tired, busy or had a headache. Constant invalidation or uninterest was rampant in our house.

To make matters worse, they were fascinated if my brother brought up the same subject, and to this day they both deny their obvious favouritism. And on the rare occassions they did show interest, I found myself questioning the sincerity of their supposed interest. And then it happened. “We’re doing it to be polite”. Those words angrily buzzed like startled wasps in my brain. I was so surprised and hurt that they could lie, after screaming and calling me names for some sneaky lies (“no, I didn’t do anything wrong”). I stopped talking to them about things I liked altogether, not just to them, to everyone.

As a result, if I get carried away with a subject in adulthood, I repeatedly apologise for being boring or uninteresting. And if they do show interest, I always question the sincerity of it. “Are you sure I’m not boring?” “Really? If I am I’ll shut up”. Are two of my most common phrases. Other times I won’t care and I’ll waffle on about what I please. But there’s always a part of me that holds back on too much enthusiasm. I am always second guessing whether someone is genuinely interested in what I have to say. And this, parents, is why you validate your children. Otherwise they’ll grow up thinking everybody secretly hates them and is bored by them.

To the girl we lost to suicide

I can’t stop thinking about you. You committed suicide over the summer but I still can’t accept the fact that you’re gone. You put on a fake smile for everyone and laughed until you cried. Your family misses you, and so do your friends. We had a suicide prevention assembly after what happened, your friends had to get up and leave because they couldn’t stop thinking of you. Everytime I hear your name, my heart breaks a little. It’s hard going through each day not hearing your laughter. The night you decided to end your life you texted your friends, “I love you guys,” but they never thought twice about it because that’s just who you were. You had so much love to give. You were so beautiful, and so loved. We miss you babygirl. Rest easy.

it bothers me so much that people think they can speak about Muslim faith and how Muslims approach their faith and practice of their own religion from people who either don’t know anything about it or know so little that they put every Muslim in the same bag. There are almost 2 billion of us and you think you can speak for all of us and tell us how to practice our own faith??? We’re all so different and we come from so many different backgrounds. You have no right to speak for us or tell us how to be Muslim.

There are Muslims who spend hours praying every day. There are Muslims who barely have the time to pray 5 times a day. There are Muslims who don’t pray. There gay Muslims. There bi Mulsims. There are pan Muslims. There are trans Mulsims. Muslims who are depressed. Muslims who don’t always find solace in their faith. Muslims who doubt every day but still wake up at 3 A.M for fajr. There are Muslims whose happiness lays in reading the Quran every day. There are Muslims who can’t read the Quran. There are Muslims who fast regularly. There are Muslims who don’t fast even during Ramadan. There are people who wear the hijab and people who don’t. There people who choose to have a beard and Muslims who don’t… I could go on forever.

For every Muslim there is a whole story and our religion is not the only thing about us. Whether it matters or not to us, our religion and our practice of it is not yours to dissect and comment upon. And for the Muslim people who do judge their brothers and sisters for these things, it is good to remember that only Allah can judge us and if you try to, it’s considered the highest sin: shirk.

Whatever I do, it’s between me and Allah and no one has the right to lift an eyebrow. Islam is supposed to be a private matter and just because you think you can spot us in a crowd doesn’t mean you get to publicly dismiss us especially if it’s for things you don’t actually know.