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[needingtobeheard]

Listen, everyone meets the love of their lives in different ways. Sometimes you meet through a dating site. Sometimes you meet in a bar.

Sometimes you meet after sitting around her house for 10 years, belittling her due to internalized misogyny and a toxic friend group, until she recruits you into her scheme to murder her husband and you realize that she’s a lot more fun and cool than you realize, and you become friends and THEN you realize you might be gay due to ending up on an accidental date with the cop investigating your opioid business, which, oops, awakens some new and scary feelings for your friend, and you’re starting to feel like she MIGHT return those feelings when your brother tries to strangle her and you swoop into rescue her and hold her bloody hand in a show of love and commitment.

[needingtobeheard]

A part of being an adult is living with regret and not allowing it to consume you. The older you get, the more mistakes you’ve made, opportunities you’ve missed, people you’ve disappointed. And every day you have to remind yourself to be kind and forgiving of yourself. You accept and love the you from the past and understand that it’s all a part of the process. Then you move on and live your best life, knowing now as old as you feel today, you’ll never be this young again.

[needingtobeheard]

It’s Ramadan Again

Ramadan has started. It feels different for me this time around.

For a lot of my life I felt like praying to Allah was dumb. I was never someone who relied on people to help me and the thought of asking some…thing in the sky that I couldn’t see, touch, or hear to help me out felt unrealistic. Sure I’d do the thing that everyone has probably done at one point or another, said a silent prayer in a moment of crisis as a shield. Beyond that I was never interested in the “Alhamdulilah” “Subhanallah” “Ya Allah” said on a daily basis. Or the prayers for myself or family or community. Trusting another being to handle what I couldn’t handle myself. Could never bring myself to supplicate to something that wouldn’t always give me what I wanted anyway.

My faith had less to do with Allah and more to do with the comfort in the ritual. Feeling naked going out without the hijab I had started wearing when I was five years old.  Eating with my right hand. Washing myself after the toilet. The triumph of getting through another long day without food or drink, shared at the table with family. Coming together for Eid salah. All of it was devoid of the context of Allah, done more for the sake of community and less for the soul. Which is why I never prayed, didn’t care for reading the Quran when Hooyo wasn’t breathing down my neck about it, never particularly interested in going to Hajj.

I remember conversations with other Muslims, never the ones I’d consider my best friends, about Allah and his existence and growing up Muslim without faith.

Then, my sister ended up in the hospital, complaining about chest pains and stomach problems. Then, my mom called me from the hospital while I was at work the Friday after the Thanksgiving long weekend to let me know she was doing extremely poorly. Then she died four days after we had traveled to visit her in the hospital she had been in for the past month.

Then I took a flight the next morning with my siblings to go to the funeral of the girl whose messages I’d always taken for granted. Who loved me so dearly and whose attention I’d slightly resented.

Then I entered the room Mama, Hooyo, and our sisters were washing her body in, having to see with my own eyes otherwise I’d never believe it.

Then I prayed the funeral prayer for this girl who should’ve turned 16 in a month, so excited to learn how to drive.

Then we visited her grave that day, and every Saturday we could, feeling like absolute shit that every visit meant another time she’d be left alone.

Then we took our three days of mourning and went back into motion.

I still text her number every now and then, stay up at night reading past conversations between us. I never quite got past the anger stage of grief. Don’t think I ever will.

I think it was a year later that I noticed my relationship with Allah had changed. That I realised I’m comfortable with asking some unseen being for ease, for the safety of my family, for the chance to thrive.

I realised that being able to put my worries and hopes onto someone not human who was always looking out for me one way or another felt more satisfying.

That moving through this world and believing that when we die it’s done wasn’t good enough for me anymore.

That doing all the rituals and believing in Allah meant I would get another chance to see her.

All the practices that I had understood as and that felt cultural to me had deeper meaning with the right intention. The beauty of our religion is that every moment and every movement is an opportunity for worship. For remembrance. An opportunity to draw nearer.

So this Ramadan feels different. It’s not as if my sister had died this past year. I certainly wouldn’t have been possible for me to write those words so frankly a year or even two years after she passed. I guess it took three years for me to reach a point where I would be practicing my religion in a more meaningful way. Not perfect and maybe for the wrong reasons.

 Day 5/?

Playlist add: Baddest Motherfucker in the Beehive - The Delta Riggs

[needingtobeheard]

can't believe it's canon

[needingtobeheard]

You say you fight for the sake of Nassau, for the sake of your men, for the sake of Thomas and his memory. But the truth of the matter is, it isn’t for any of those things. What the fuck do you think I am fighting for? I think you are fighting for the sake of fighting. Because it’s the only state in which you can function. The only way to keep that voice in your head from driving you mad. What are you talking about? What voice? The one telling you to be ashamed of yourself… for having loved him. BONUS:

[needingtobeheard]

― Anne Carson, Euripides

[needingtobeheard]

It's so interesting watching a show where the sitcom hijinks are portrayed as having real consequences. Something played for laughs in a typical sitcom show is given depth, grounded in reality.

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[needingtobeheard]

“People befriend me because they think I’m happy. I’m not even sure why they think I’m happy, but they do. I get distracted, and I laugh, and I turn something on in myself that makes me, maybe, fun to be with. And I’m just— I want you to know up front that I’m false advertising.”

― E. Lockhart, Again Again

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helpppp

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all my crushes on my mutuals are purely platonic. anyway on an unrelated note who doesn’t love a good friends to lovers arc.

[needingtobeheard]

i want soft romantic love. like i want someone to hold my hand or put their arm around me, i want back hugs and i want to cuddle with them as they play with my hair. i want forehead kisses and i want to have picnics with them, i want to put little daisies in their hair, i want to laugh with them until our stomachs hurt. i want to feel loved. i want to dance to cheesy romantic songs or dance in the rain, i want to bake them cookies and listen to them talk about their favourite things. i want us to look at each other and know we’re soulmates. and i desperately yearn to wake up and feel the presence of my beloved near me, thankful that the universe brought us together.

[needingtobeheard]

Does anyone else agree? Is this true to someone or just me?

-Ophelianon.19

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[needingtobeheard]