Between panic and peace, between dreams and divine trust – a raw reflection on love, and learning to embrace the person you’re becoming
By Sobia Khatoon
I did not wake up on my twenty-fifth birthday with excitement. No madness in the streets, no confetti and theatrical revelation. It is rather a dull density, an unfamiliar pain that time is passing quickly than I thought. I have already lived a quarter of my life, and it does not seem like a celebration, but rather a checkpoint. Of course, there is gratitude, gratitude to the life I was granted, gratitude to the roof over my head, gratitude to the people I love, gratitude to the moments that are being woven into memories, but it does not necessarily stop that low murmur of panic that I feel rising when I acknowledge that I do know so little about life.
The twenty-five years seem to be an in-between stage, as I stand on a bridge, facing backwards at what I was and ahead at what I am yet to become. I am never concerned with career ladders or great milestones in life; I am concerned about the smaller part of the question: have I loved enough? Have I given enough? And have I really become the person I would like to be? At twenty-five, I still have to figure out how to fold a bedsheet correctly or not to confuse the colours in the laundry. And still, washing clothes, ironing, cleaning my room, these little, simple things provide me with a weird sort of happiness. To some people, laundry is a hassle, whereas to me, it is relaxing, absurd and grotesque. The smell of clean clothes, the harmony of neatly folded shirts, even the small fights with socks disappearing without a trace of them, it is ridiculous, and it makes me smile.
Nothing melts my heart like the individuals who have stood by my side. I have accomplished more in my life through my relationships with my family, friends, teachers, and strangers who became kind to me. Huraira prompted me to cook, and I wish one day I would be able to become a hundredth part of her talent. Farkhanda, who drives so confidently and effortlessly, was a silent push to me by her example, and before I met her, I never thought I would learn to drive before twenty-five. Now I do, and it makes me feel a kind of pride which is entirely mine. These little moments are what the little things of my life, combined with any vast lesson I have ever heard, make more than those lessons.
My twenty-fifth year is accompanied by peace and panic as the two roommates who quarrel occasionally but cannot live without each other. It causes me to panic when I even think of marriage, but not obsessively, because somewhere in the back of my mind, I have envisaged a completely different life after I have done it (may Allah bring my visualisations into reality). But there is comedy in my panic, as I am pacing my room, as I think of all the ways things might be different, and how most of it is not in my control and laugh at myself because I am overthinking. In the meantime I am holding myself together with petty pleasures and comforts: chattering away to please people, watching CID again and again though I have seen it a hundred times, writing in my journal, taking thousands of pictures, window shopping without spending any money and adorning tiny sections of my surrounding – without which I feel no sense of rhythm, no sense of comfort, and no sense of pleasure in a life otherwise so unpredictable.
The concept of forgiveness and gratitude has insidiously woven itself into my existence. I have been forgiven by the fact that it is only the more days that I hold on to anger and that I have believed that Allah is the one who sees all the things, and will bring justice to it in his own time. I am thankful that, despite feeling anxious, sad, or lost, there are simple, consistent mercies that keep me on my feet: the fact that my body functions, the fact that I am getting up each morning, the fact that my parents are close by even when the world is shaken. These are not my achievements that I show and my virtues that I can score; these are the things that allow me to breathe through life, the things I bear not only pain nor joy, but also the things that make me feel a stronger attachment to God. They form my worldview, as they remind me that all the hardships, all the mansions, all the silent pleasures are observed, attended to, and interwoven into a greater, more godlike pattern.
I cry a lot. I also cry when I am really happy, when I am worried, when a memory comes to mind or even when I am not doing anything, but just because I feel. It is not a weakness to me to cry; it is a way of dealing with the world I hold within. My little gratuities are stupid but holy: placing the books in my collection so that the beloved ones can be separated, discovering a broken cup somewhere in the trunk of my grandmother and deciding where it is going to be at once, getting the books because of their covers when I have not read them in the least, and taking a thousand photographs of the same street or myself because they are evidence that I was, at that place.
All this, the laughter I cajole myself into giving to get my parents smiling, the little idiosyncrasies, the over responsiveness, the compulsive tidying, the production of a million and ten thousand photos, the giddiness of my habits, makes me up: a sloppy little bug, a sweet little bug, a stubborn little bug, an ever-inquisitive little bug, good little bug.
And when this chapter ends, it is not a neat success, but some silent trust: that I am going to see panic, I will weep, my life will be unreliable, but thankfulness, prayer, laughter, the simple, ridiculous joys of everyday life will continue to move me forward with 1000 lighter heart, some kind smile, and a belief that there is always something about divine care. And I hope, most truly, that I shall be able to come back to this place, twenty-five years later, in my fiftyth year, with more writing, more iman, more lessons to teach, fewer regrets, many beautiful experiences that I shall have, and a heart that has loved and laughed even more passionately. And on the day that day, can I be as dishevelled, chatty, overthought, overfeeling, and charmingly disorganised as I am today – since, frankly speaking, once I lose the power to fixate on socks, love people and take excessive photos of myself, what will I write about?
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