Isle of Skye

My enneagram email today asks me: "As you approach the start of a New Year, reflect back on the past one to see how you've grown and what issues still block your way to a deeper transformation. Has there been a theme during this past year and do you see a pattern for your future challenges?" God, what the heck is with all this deep thinking, soul searching, pattern breaking, feeling emotions but not wallowing in them? Walking home today from Morden, and I passed the same fences from my childhood. I would swipe my hand over them and get splinters. The same trees I'd smile at. The same houses I wished I lived in, because the people seemed to belong, to be more "together" and to be "happier" than what my own reality was. I would like to be that child again. Shrug off all the burdens, the stress, the pricking sense of foreboding, that the house of cards will fall to the floor if I relax. Whoa, back in that pattern again, I see. On Groovesha...

Je ne dois pas m'expliquer à personne. I don't have to bend over backwards so as to not offend. I can swear as much as I bloody well want to. I don't have my hands bound to my neck with chains, nor are my legs shackled to a wall inside a Khoja-run mosque. I don't have to initiate any more emails, online chat sessions, texts or phone calls. (Prank calls, my ass.) And I don't have to respond to them either, and eat up my pay-as-you-go credit. I don't have to bleed my heart and soul dry for an emotionally frigid piece of meat. I don't have to make up the perfect relationship in my head while completely rejecting and avoiding what was real because of my neuroses and fears and anger. I can satisfy my highly idealistic and romantic daydreams without touching reality (or a man) for a while longer.  I don't have to send you metta or reiki or take out your I Ching anymore. I can call and label you whatever I want: wanker, man-boy, mama's boy...

http://www.spirit21.co.uk/2010/12/the-trouble-with-marriage/ Shelina Zahra Janmohamed Most young people aspire to a mutually fulfilling relationship in marriage, but this can sometimes take longer than they might like and throw up significant challenges. The lack of community standing for unmarried individuals is one such challenge. The unmarried are seen as children yet to acquire maturity. This is evidenced in simple words such as the reference to the unmarried as ‘the boy’ and ‘the girl’ rather than as grown men and women. In particular, a woman in many Muslim communities only seems to acquire social standing after her marriage. She is advised that she will be given her freedoms once she has arrived in her husband’s home and becomes her husband’s responsibility. Single women must remain cautious of what they say and do because any unrestrained word or action will affect their marriage prospects. It’s almost as though she isn’t a real person if she’s unmarried. Bu...

Your Type Four EnneaThought for December 23rd Make this Affirmation today: "I now affirm that I am free of the damage of my past." Everything to do with the fucked up man-boy is now officially and permanently in the past . Exactly 4 months since he first sneakily charmed his way into my life. I set myself free from all attachments in this life and all previous and future lives. Thou art a toxic boy and thou ruineth my self-esteem. Thou art not good for me. Addiction, obsession, passive-aggressiveness and violence and anger: not good in a relationship. Up and down from the get go. Rukhsana sent you a message. Rukhsana Ahad 21 December 2010 at 22:18 can u please leave imran alone and find a new person in ur life otherwise please get back with him your choice....thanx Rukhsana sent you a message. Rukhsana Ahad 21 December 2010 at 22:19 why are u prank calling him? Me prank call you? HA! Khush fehmiyan, chhote bachhe. You should be so lucky. How utterly f...

The past year has been as challenging as the previous two. All of our lives, we all face challenges, but this year... It's just shown me things don't come easily. Faith. Love. Trust. Abundance. Clarity. Knowledge. True love. True friendship. Equanimity. Closure. Understanding. Peace. Flow. Confidence. Trust in God, faith in Islam. Not for me; I've resisted for so long, the patterns are hard to break. Maybe I just don't like losing. Maybe, in my head, it just makes sense that pieces should fall into place seamlessly. I want to be in a place whereby people, and love, and humanity and life doesn't scare me into stillness and inaction. I want to be able to move forth, trust and know that He has my back. I want my faith in my deen Islam back. But that's what I want. Only You know what I need. It just seems a little dysfunctional that I had proclaimed all those years ago: I am never going to marry and I don't want any children. Why? I'm...

I had stopped thinking about him, I had reached some sort of finality. Closure was upon me. Then it is the 9th of Muharram, and I start re-reading the emails we sent each other. I am a masochist, I chose the one he wrote about the girl who was obviously one of his soul mates and so he felt he had lost someone and was to "never to forget the past" etc. I then think of him on Ashura, of all the days, while at the mosque: first, I wonder where he's doing his commemoration (at Stanmore?) and secondly, I want to go to Iraq this year (he said he would take me, not seriously of course, he never was serious). And then I think, I'll email him and tell him when I go. And get him a nice ring, a small, classy one, not like the big-ass one he currently wears. No matter what my dearest best friend says about him and I not meaning to be life partners and spouses, and that I didn't really want the relationship to work out, that it was my experimenting and experiencing life...

From the book Maqtal al Hussayn by al-Musawi al-Muqarram Oh Allah, You are my confidant in every distress and my hope in every difficulty In everything that has come down on me, You are my trust and (means of) my preparedness How often have there been moments, in which   the heart is weakened and the solution is not found and the friend abandons while the enemy gloats in which I have come to You, and complained to You, hoping from no-one else Then You removed it and saved me from it. You are the Guardian of every blessing and the Ultimate of every hope.

Odd how that one word can encompass so many subtle threads of feeling. Odd how that word explains why I've become a hermit since 11 November 2010. Odd how that prevents me from going to a Hussayniyah, where I might find some peace and salvation. Odd how I can feel it and still FB stalk people. Still go on for hours in unproductive activities rather than improving my lot. But it is this very shame (with a sense of pride) that will prevent me from succumbing to whatever it was that held such an all encompassing hold over my reason, my self pride and my dignity. Never again.

My friend Fatima's father died today in Karachi, just a few days after they had removed a brain tumor and he was recovering well. She's only 24. I always get too emotional and I usually don't know what to say or how to say it. I might have to do Ashura at Stanmore this year. Might. Because I have to go and visit her in North London. The majlis would be on Thursday night, most probably. Meaning, I'd have to stay over at Uncle Murtaza's house overnight and then Ashura is the next day. I dunno. This sucks. Now I've got to stop being self indulgent and figure out how best to be a good friend to her. I'm one of the few people here who are her friends from back home. Think. How to be there for a friend when their father has just died and they are 8 1/2 months pregnant? OUCH. This is the third (or fourth) death in their family this year. Her uncle died in the plane crash in Islamabad 5 months ago. Someone died a month or so before that. BAD YEAR ...

... is that I've re-possessed my deceptive self. I now edit my emails again as I once did before. I haven't spoken to anyone in quite some time - surprisingly - when was the last time I spoke to a friend on the phone? Last Wednesday. Yes. Last Wednesday. Sad little Suki. But I was successful in not talking about myself. Or about the nebulous quality of my feelings. Wasn't so successful on Thursday. When I met a friend. But at least only spoke about it for perhaps 15% of the entire meeting. I am once again dissimulating, dissembling, pretending, hiding, keeping my secrets close within. I shall become invisible, not invincible. But invisible is what I was in the past and it served me well. I shall cease to exist somehow. And when I do, the feelings will stop. The pain will stop. I will stop. The heart is deceitful above all things. I had my mind, but lost it completely. Along with the stupid phantom emotion that I cared for someone. Or rather, that the feeling...

I've been racking my brain for the lessons to learn: the real lessons, not the airy fairy, "oh I'm in love with a figment of my imagination because my self-esteem is really that low that I'd believe my own feelings of union and then, this was verified by whatsoever Sidra told me about him being a soul mate. So I made that the reason for pursuing him, and taking all the rubbish he's fed me and, furthermore, asking for more and "counselling" him when he disposed of me like a wet-wipe and hoping against hope.. for what?" I fear men (the male species) I hate men (the male species) I will do anything to harm myself, to self-sabotage. Subconsciously, of course. I have extremely, extremely low self-esteem I should not trust people so easily, or tell them that I trust them. Or trust them full stop. Or tell them everything. It's just my notion, my mental fabrication. No basis in truth. Boundaries must be set and maintained. I will not even begin lo...

... was born today. So in her honour, here is a poem: I'm Nobody! Who Are You? by Emily Dickinson. I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us - don't tell! They'd advertise - you know! How dreary to be somebody! How public like a frog To tell one's name the livelong day To an admiring bog! You know it is a sad day in the life of Sukaina, who used to love books and reading, when she's gone to the library on two separate occasions, trawled all the fiction and non-fiction isles for some sort of book to occupy her mind from all the other distractions which have taken over her life... and not a single book appealed to her. Well, the second time, she ended up in the kids section and reading Dora and Have a Bath and Big Bear and Little Bear and Mum and Mommy hard back books and chuckling. Ahhh, yeh zindagi.... kitni argh-inducing hai.

Today's tarot says: Love: The 5 of Pentacles is not a particularly happy indicator when it comes to love questions, unfortunately. You may have your eye on someone who you feel is not treating you the way they should. It may be that you need to stop fantasizing about this person entirely. This card can be very much a card of feeling left out in the cold.  It's important to remember that there is never only one person that we can be with and have a soul-level, happy, meaningful relationship.  When love is right, you don't have to do back flips to make it work. True say. I knew it shouldn't have been that hard to make it work. In spite of my messing up countless of times. A mute sphinx is and shall remain a mute sphinx - acting like a Valley Girl on speed does not change that, and acting like a doped, emotionally manipulative, bipolar psycho-bitch has just lowered yourself immensely in your own estimation and has not changed his decisions or his thoughts or his f...

This is what I finally wrote yesterday, 3 minutes before the library computer shut down :p "Hmm... interesting. Thanks for the compliment :) Two days and I still don't have a reply. Argh. I write my stuff in pages and you shut me up in two sentences. Argh. :p So, instead, I shall wish you Eid Mubarak for Eid e Mubahila, belated Eid Mubarak for Eid e Ghadir and... obviously, a belated Happy Birthday. 27 years old. Hmm... lol. It's also two weeks today since your cousin died. How's your aunt coping? His wife? And you? And your family? Email me. Don't like the formatting here." I checked an hour ago - he's read it. No email from him. Hence I cried a little just now. Does it really have to be this confusing and lame-assed? Also, what the heck do you want, Sukaina? What is it that you want? God. Help me. Please. I need some kind of resolution. If it's high hopes, illusion and imagination and fantasy, TELL ME! If he's the real deal and al...

I read the message on Tuesday and I still don't know what to say in reply. Because I don't know what he means. Or how I FEEL. I am SCARED and SCARRED. And my intuition is in the crapper today. Allah, help me for the sake of your Chosen 5. It's Thursday, it's Eid e Mubahila etc etc. HELP ME!