Story of My Jihad – SDC Student # 3

The hardest part of my story was starting it. Often poetry and song lyrics emphasize that childhood is a good time, and people usually want to relive it. But my story is the opposite, it was the period of extreme defenselessness for me. I was very young when I was sexually abused by someone in my family. Looking back, it feels like I lost my childhood. Children are a blessing given by Allah and raising them is a responsibility. When I was not able to protect myself and was passing through the years of innocence, someone violated my boundaries, and I still live in the shadow of the incident.  It impacted me physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally. In an instant, my childhood was ripped from me. As a child and even now, I often feel like I am stuck with almost no one to hold me or love me through the pain or realities of my life.

And during this period, when I looked up to those who were my protectors, my parents, they were never able to see my pain because of their differences and disputes. Seeing abuse at the hands of someone who were supposed to support and protect me when the world had let me down. Most of my memories were of a loud angry household. My most vivid childhood memories were of my father abusing my mother, insulting and humiliating her in front of others. I have moved forward, but that doesn’t mean I have forgotten the damage that was done to my soul. My spirit was crushed and no one was there for me. So instead of living my teenage years with the craziness that being a teenager includes I spent that time feeling very bad about myself, blaming myself for the constant abuse I was being subjected to.  After the continuous abuse, I started isolating myself from my family and friends. I used to find it difficult to concentrate in school and had problems remembering stuff. I felt myself as a fearful, under confident and loser human being.  Always a person who portrayed to the outside world that I was living a normal healthy family life like them and meanwhile I stopped being happy, and playful.  A confusion and constant fear that something will happen now, that there will be a fight between my parents and I have to be prepared for the aftermath of it.

Life is pretty okay now, in fact, you could say life is good. I did my Master’s and I am sound professionally.  However, there are deeper scars I hide that has shaken my confidence and self-esteem as a person. In all this chaos one thing which remained with me was my ‘dosti’ with Allah tallah. From a very young age, when I did not even had pehchan of Allah, I had inclined towards the worship of Allah. I had a lot of faith in creator, but somewhere or the other as I grew older, rebellion inside me started to rise.  Terms and conditions had started to come between me and Allah tallah.  I was beginning to believe the path to freedom, to the illusion of free will and to the rebellion like me that was the path to escape.  I felt that I deserve all this. I have made many sacrifices and I did not accept the delays from my Allah.  I did drugs and had worst experiences through dating apps. My self-esteem was so low that I made myself accept the fact that I would never have healthy connections, and I am made for dysfunctional intimate relationships and friendships.

Meanwhile there was constant feeling as if Allah had removed me from the list of His servants.  Parents and the world have failed me, above all the dearest Zaat (Allah), have expelled me from HIS love. During all this, there was definitely a feeling that what I was doing, I did not belong there.  I was rejecting my inner voice.  I was forcing myself to feel artificial freedom by placing myself in a fake scenario.  I started to feel that Allah Ta’ala did not like me and He did not bless me, so I will now be a disobedient bunda.

I stopped talking to Allah.  And because my core, my heart, was familiar with HIS love in childhood, it sought ways to connect it back to Allah.  Many opportunities came to reconnect and I lost. Self-development course became the reason to return to Allah, to cry in front of Allah.  The good news is that today I surround myself with beautiful and loving people who fill my world with yaad of ALLAH. In this, Allah’s plan was to send such people in my life who helped me to rebuild the ties with Allah. This course redirected me to every question that I was asking.  Allah didn’t leave me, Allah kept me strong throughout when I was going through a difficult period in my life. Allah made me able to be composed even when I was broken.  Allah had placed an influence in my tone so that people continued to be calmed by my speech or Zaat.  It was me who had stopped seeing things from this angle.  Coming back to Allah, expressing my guilt, love, and anger, was unexplainable. Feeling that I have ultimate Zaat with me, who has all the power. Why I was looking for things outside when all it needed was just a simple conversation between Allah and me. Whoever is reading this Please even if you are upset with Allah, tell HIM. But don’t cut ties with HIM. KEEP ASKING HIM!!

However, through this darkness, I emerged with a strengthened heart. I discovered an inner resilience that I never knew I possessed. Each hardship taught me invaluable lessons and helped me to understand my own strength. I now understand that my test is not being put upon me by a random being, but by the Almighty Allah, who is closer to us than our jugular vein. It is due to my traumas that prompts deep self-reflection and introspection, leading to a search for meaning and purpose. While the shadows of my past will always be a part of me, they do not define me. Instead, they have propelled me toward a brighter future.

Whatever heedlessness I was engaging in, the test made me realize I have no one, no one at all, but Him. 

The challenge is to remember to ride the wave without getting lost in the pain for too long; we also need to remember that pain is part of the journey and we have no choice but to go through it. And regardless of how broken you may sometimes feel, don’t forget that you are whole just the way you are.