“It’s just not that easy for me not to feel” I said, trying to make conversation with a work colleague while we wait for everyone else who’s late to our curation meeting.

I’d meant that I have historically proven to have high tolerance for anesthetics. A week before I hadn’t been able to go through with a wisdom tooth removal operation because the anesthetic hadn’t worked on me and I could feel much of the drilling going on in my mouth. (fun).

Like just about anyone with stitches in their mouth and no tooth removed, I was furious. Why was it harder for me? Why couldn’t I do whatever other adults seem to be able to do?

And it didn’t make it any better, having a bunch of people tell me “I wish I was there with you, it would have definitely been different”. It wasn’t that I was scared because I was alone. I was scared because I was scared.

Eventually I came to terms with the circumstances that lead to that result, but I still looked at it as a stand alone case, and it wasn’t until I, for the sake of being polite, carried on some small talk with that work colleague, that I put the pieces together.

I have never fully been comfortable with the idea of being a girl. Growing up, it felt like that thing they hand out to you, and all you have to do is carry it through life. Everything was decided, everything was known; a long list of personality traits and inclinations. How constraining? It meant that whoever I decided to be was always going to be a byproduct of who I already am. There was nothing to discover, nothing to explore. I’m a girl, how different can I possibly be?

My parents certainly didn’t raise me this way, but I did watch TV, and I did go to school, I was familiar with cultural sarcasm, and punchlines. Even when no one was saying it, it was in the air. And I was constantly on the edge of my seat anticipating it.

So I tried the good old trick of being a boy, dressing like a boy, speaking like a boy, sitting like a boy, just for the sake of spiking controversy and flirting with the limits. I enjoyed being unpredictable and different, but that wasn’t the answer either. I still needed to find myself, a self that I could truly relate to and not just one that added a twist to every ridiculously homogenous group. Only what I found was problematic.

A big chunk of it was in sync with the stereotypical perception of what a girl is like.

It turns out, I’m the kind that cries at both happy and sad movies, and pays attention to the tiniest bit of detail, the kind that relies more on gut-feeling than objective analysis and sticks with brands she resonates with over brands that have smarter products, the kind that doesn’t like walking away or giving up or changing routines. I’m an emotional person.

For the longest time I hated it. I’d hide it and maintain two parallel universes, one where only I existed and only I was aware I’m emotional, and another where my behavior and interactions with others were coated with sarcastic mockery and a cold attitude. That way, I figured, I could keep my social behavior in line with my personal values. I gave everything I have to prove that I couldn’t be shaped, that I am who I choose to be and not who I was born to be. “I’m more than my hormones” I argued, even when there was no argument to begin with.

It was definitely hard to keep up the act especially having had to go through so many life changes in a short period of time. When I got my first full-time job there was a whole new level of pressure. I realized that I have a radar for conflict. I can sense when it’s about to happen. Something in people’s tones, their body language, how they’re seated, and even their eye movement. Sometimes I just know as soon as someone walks into a room that it will happen. And being originally someone who avoids conflict unless it’s strictly necessary to reach a specific goal, the anticipation would eat me up every time. Instead of feeling pressured or anxious during a 10 minute argument, I’d feel anxious 30 minutes ahead of that, and potentially an hour or two after, until I cool down.

I couldn’t disregard people’s feelings, even the ones I completely disagreed with or even disrespected. I carried some of their anger with me when we parted ways. It would give me headaches, chest pain, it would keep me up at night, even when I knew that I was standing up for what I believed and knew was correct. Even when others were jerks/sexists/ageists/offensive/disrespectful, I still carried the weight of their anger. In the room, while it happens, I’d do what’s right for me, but as soon as I walk out, nothing rational makes sense, just anxiety, just burdening emotion.

I learned later that I’m an anxious personality, and it wasn’t long before I started reading more into what that meant and getting the professional help I needed. If I’d wanted to keep up with a crazy life of full-time studies and a full-time job, that was the only way. I had to understand what I was feeling, both psychologically and physically.

Outside of work, I also developed emotional connections with everyone around me. It always happened so fast, like a junk food service, you didn’t have to wait, I was always ready for you. I didn’t want to disappoint friends who call me up to chat, or that family member who expects us to bond this one time of the year we meet, and not even the coffee shop cashier who speaks to me in Swedish and expects that I don’t shift to English. I had feelings for all those, a feeling of commitment, I needed to deliver something to them, something they expected.

I hated that. I wished I was more badass, I wanted to walk away faster, and never look back. I wanted to be colder, bolder.

But this one time, a friend of mine told me something I didn’t explicitly know about myself. She said something like “I don’t think there are many people who feel that much”. It was sweet. I started thinking, what if that maybe wasn’t the curse of my whole life? If it was possible to be both a girl and emotional, without one being the result of another, and even if it was, I have nothing to prove to people. I shouldn’t need to explain.

At work, I came across “The Feeling of What Happens”, a neurology book that explores cases where “emotion” helped ground people suffering amnesia. The author of the book conducted several experiments and it turns out that even when people completely forget information about those around them, their minds will still hold on to emotions. So for example one of the cases didn’t recognize her own daughter, but she expressed love towards a photo that the doctors showed her. She knew that that girl was someone dear to her, she just couldn’t tell why. Emotion can in many cases keep us alive, conscious and sane. It’s definitely not a curse.

When I sat in that dentist’s chair, I wasn’t ready to let go. I wanted to know what was going to happen, I clawed my way back into feeling, because it’s not that easy for me not to feel. And that is okay.

I am a girl, the kind that cries at both happy and sad movies, and pays attention to details, the kind that’s loving and caring and passionate. But I’m also my own person. I’ll “aw” at what people cringe at and cringe at what people “aw” at. I’ll open jars and crack my neck, but struggle with whistling and painting my nails properly. I’ll express femininity in very particular ways that I find myself most comfortable in, sometimes that’ll be a floral dress, and other times, that’ll be an oversized checked suit. I know that now, and I accept that.

There’s no shame in that.

The What

I had started breathing heavily, pushing myself towards the end of yet another uphill road, when it hit me; I had been running for over 3 kilometers in heel boots so I can catch a doctor’s appointment to start a treatment for my tension and stress issues, and yet on my way to that appointment, I had felt more stressed than any other time in my whole life.

It all started when I woke up with a terrible migraine last week, I assumed it was just another random one that would eventually go away once I have breakfast coupled with coffee, but it didn’t. I wore it to work, and then to a 2 hour meeting, I wore it with much pride and idiocy thinking I was stronger than it, when I was it.

I walked out on that meeting as soon as I noticed my breath slowing down, and for the first time in the history of me feeling like my head is about to explode, I was worried.

I did not know where to go or who to call. I did not find in me enough energy to explain what I was feeling to anyone, it was eating me up, so I decided that only a pharmacist wouldn’t blame me for overworking and driving myself off the edge, once I told her that my body was slowly crashing.

I grabbed the spray she claimed was extremely strong, and took it right there in the pharmacy before I even paid for it. She said it was meant to go through the nose and directly onto the migraine cells to make it all go away, but she also told me that if that did not happen, then it probably was not a migraine and that I needed to go see a doctor.

The How

It was not a migraine. Once I got home I slept without even changing my clothes and hours later, when I woke up, I could still feel the heaviness, I could still feel the weight. And all I could think of was that it just wasn’t the right time. I had so much going on, and it just wasn’t the right time to sit back and stare at the ceiling until all of it was over.

I felt like pleading, I felt like asking my body not to give up on me just yet, I wanted it to hold it together, just a little further, so I can get things right again, but it didn’t really seem like this was up for discussion. Never in my life have I felt more disconnected from it, like we were fighting entirely different battles, mine was against the surrounding circumstances and my body’s was against my poor short-sighted choices.

When I did go to the doctor, I learned that I have what she called tension headaches. With some exercises she could spot the tension in my shoulders, neck and back. She asked if I had long suffered pain in that particular area and like an idiot, I said “yes, just like every other person with a desk job”. But I wasn’t like every other person, I was more. I had neglected the issue for years and now it was coming back in the form of unavoidable headaches. She recommended that I book an appointment with a chiropractor and a physiotherapist immediately and so I did.

I told myself I would set things right. I would take good care of myself, I would make peace with my body and I would take the time to understand it better.

The next day, I pushed myself out of bed at 6:30 to do Yoga before I headed to work, and I had breakfast in front of the window with Lebanese Singer Fairuz in the background. I decided that waking up and rushing to the street in 15 minutes tops just wasn’t convenient for me anymore. I hated seeing people first thing in the morning, so I decided not to.

But the next day I did not wake up for yoga or Fairuz and I had to have a banana on the road because there was no time for breakfast and that peace I had made, went down the drain in no time.

Today I missed the chiropractor’s appointment because I left work late for it, I did not account for the fact that I would of course get lost on my way there, and I did not even wear shoes that I could run in, if I do get lost. So it isn’t just that I failed myself, yet again, but rather that I didn’t even know myself enough, to do it in the right shoes.

I ask myself, why do I do that? why do I fall in the same patterns on and on and on? I can’t be that stupid, my GPA and accomplishments at work can beg to differ. So why is it that I am so inconsiderate with my own self?

Like anything else in my life, I need to write it to make sense of it, so here I am writing this to understand why it happens, hoping my brain will sneak me a peek into the mess that is my thought process.

The Why

Why I didn’t make it to the clinic today isn’t just because I was late, but rather because I wasn’t seeing things right. When I first got off the bus, I knew that the clinic was 8 minutes away from that stop, because I had checked on the internet beforehand. And yet when I checked my Google maps app, it said that the street I was looking for was 21 minutes away. If I had stopped to think how come, I would have realized that there are two streets with the same name and I was heading for the wrong one. But I didn’t see that, because I was too focused on the fact that it was me against the 21 minutes, it was me against the uncomfortable boots. I rushed towards the challenge without asking myself if this is in fact a battle I need to fight.

This isn’t about a clinic appointment that I had to pay for even though I never made it there, or the fact that I still have shoulder pain and headaches. This is about a certain pattern, that I and probably others are following.

Expecting that everything will go wrong in your life, and feeling determined to fix it, can actually put your brain into fight mode twenty four seven hours a day. And fight mode is not always smart mode. You don’t always want to fight fate and circumstances and racist sexist hypocrites, maybe just the latter.

And that applies to everything else in life. The things that disappoint you, the people that fail you, the losses that break you, they are not always worth you consuming your energy so wholeheartedly.

I most likely won’t do Yoga in the morning tomorrow still, but I won’t transport a huge lamp onto 2 train rides and a bus just because I think I can take it. Just when you thought the photo will go unexplained, here I am.

Bottom line is, I will save myself for another fight, and so should you.

It had been a stressful day at work, when I went to the cake place around the corner with my friend to work on our take-home exam for the night. I did what I always do; paid to get a sugar coma, took my order-number and went to sit at our favorite spot upstairs. When the waiter came later with my cake, it was again a different person than the one I had ordered from and yet he was able to match the cake with the face so smoothly without needing to call out for the order-number. I grinned, it wasn’t the first time.

I leaned over to my friend and said, “Do you know what these people do every time?”

He asked “What?”

“The guy I order from downstairs tells the waiters to go look for the girl in the headscarf and give her the cake. They don’t need to call my order number, they already know how to find me”

“Huh”

“Racist,” I say jokingly.

“It is not, I wonder how they let you write political papers at all!” My friend says teasing for the fact that I tend to over-accuse everyone of racism and sexism including my own self. And well, I can’t really argue with that, it has been a silly habit of mine lately. But this, this was different. I was genuinely bothered by the fact that these waiters continuously choose to break their deeply rooted patterns just because they see something different about me. Why couldn’t they just call out one more fucking number? I wondered for the rest of the night, as I continued to see them call out numbers for all other customers but myself.

I had a burning desire to be exactly like everyone else. There was absolutely no reason for them to break a system they go over every single minute of their working hours just because they could set me apart from the rest. But even if I had a point, it was a ridiculous thing to get angry about, after all a girl who got a very nice cake, worth the calories and all, wasn’t to be that sad. Something was itchy though, something was wrong.

I spent the ride home thinking what that readiness to spot and attack came from. And then it hit me; on some days, I just wake up not feeling like being the elephant in every room.

For starters, people need to understand that a woman who has decided to wear a headscarf is not exclusively a woman who signed up for standing out from every single crowd. This does not equal that, because you can argue that in some countries wearing a headscarf is common, which makes you actually blend in rather than stand out. So you can’t tell me that I asked for it. We are after all human beings and we sometimes prefer getting lost between crowds, without sharp eyes monitoring our every move.

I was in a class-room the other day and a fellow-student was presenting an article about the Middle-East that was in our literature. The author had argued in that paper that one of the reasons why democratization has not made its way through the Middle-East is because Islam creates a hostile environment for democracy. As soon as those exact words were mouthed by the student, who was only a messenger in that particular case, all heads turned facing me.

“Dude, duh! I am not Islam,” I wish I had said to their curious eyes.

It was this on edge attitude that was driving me crazy. As shocking as it might seem to some, when I am in class, at the cake place or at work, I am not filling in for Islam! I am just here on my own behalf, I am not endorsing a specific religion while swallowing calories I will regret the next day. When I am having cake, I am not the Muslim girl having cake, I am just a girl having cake, for as long as my eating doesn’t involve any spiritual worshiping, I shall not be categorized in this manner. When I am in class learning about politics, I am not the Muslim girl taking notes and asking questions, I am a student enjoying the privilege of learning and I shall again not be categorized in this manner.

This brings us to a rather controversial question; Do Muslims want to be referred to as only Muslims at all contexts and times? Well, that is a nice thesis-question, for those interested go ahead and research because I sure as hell can’t speak for all Muslims.

I on the one hand would rather not be perceived in that one-dimensional manner. Religion is and will continue to be an essential part of my being, but that does not mean it is all of it. For one thing I am not an ideal Muslim, in fact, my fallouts are more than I can count. So it becomes inaccurate to associate me at all times with a religion I am still stumbling to get a full-grip of. It is just not who I am, and not even who I am trying to be.

I understand that at times I will approach matters sacredly, and at other times I will approach them secularly. After all, I am a Muslim on the praying mat, I am a woman in the face of oppressive societies, I am a writer for the love of creativity, I am a student for the quest of knowledge, I am a team-player at work, I am a hardcore Mo Salah fan at every liver pool game, I am so much and it does not all root back to being a Muslim. And while I choose to wear a headscarf, that doesn’t mean that Muslim mode is on. It is as simple as the way I choose to dress, a commitment that I have made a long time ago for more sophisticated reasons than a waiter mastering the art of delivering orders without having to call out numbers.

If we ever let the cake-incident go, as hard as it might seem for a tease like myself, we can address more serious matters. There has been a narrative of “She is a Muslim, and she does so and so…” or “She wears a headscarf but she thinks so and so….”

And despite sleeping through lots of my English classes, I am quite sure that to make associations using conjunctions like “and” and “but” there needs to be some sort of correlation whether positive or negative, or at least so I have been told. And this, honestly seems like saying Peter is Swedish and he owns socks. Jessica is white and she owns a book on quantum physics. And so you get what I mean, which basically is; What the fuck dude?

“When I am in class, at the cake place or at work, I am not filling in for Islam! I am just here on my own behalf”

Women like myself can’t live and breathe to break stereotypes in people’s minds. I realize some of the things I do or ideas I believe in could feel or actually be uncommon, but I don’t do them or think them to break the bloody stereotype. I can’t be framed in the exact same narrative for as long as I exist. I can’t have the other parts of my being dismissed for the sake of a catchy headline or a wowing opener for an ice-breaker story. Sometimes I want to be a woman, a student, a stupid fat cake-eater, sometimes I would like people to see past the headscarf and look at me for a second, and see whatever is there to be seen.

What I am trying to say here is, question what you really know about a person from a piece of cloth they choose to wear, for that one extra layer that sets them apart from you. Question it, because you might end up realizing you absolutely know nothing at all. Don’ take what you see and run. Sit, listen, think. There is so much to people than how they choose to dress or which God they seemingly believe in, whether it is Allah or Christ or both. Try to understand how they make sense of all that in their own words and minds, for Islam is not the same in the eyes and hearts of its practitioners. Now you do that, and I will tell that waiter that I deserve the right to nod to my order-number just like everyone else, because damn it, I can’t really let it go.

Sometimes, the worst advice someone could give you is to wait, when all you really need to do is make a decision.

“We’ve all been there”

“Just wait”

“We know what you’re going through but we all tolerated that, why shouldn’t you?”

It’s quite ironic how people expect to fall into each others’ footsteps, to beat for the same feels, and urge for the same moves. Sometimes the question is just not if you can actually do it, but more if you want to!

I was 17 going on 18 when I first joined university in Egypt. I had a strong feeling that my life was about to start, and that good things were about to happen. I had promised myself that I would never have to sit in a classroom anymore and hear a professor bullshit without pointing it out, that I would never just “memorize” what comes my way, that I would never settle for some ink on paper that assures everyone but myself that I am indeed a human.

I was finally here to learn what I was absolutely positive about, what I was passionate about. And I wasn’t wrong about my passion, I was just wrong about how to pursue it. It was not long before I realized I was at the wrong places doing all the wrong things. One month in and I knew. But it took me approximately two years and a couple of months to walk away.

Almost everyone felt sorry for the girl who wasted two years of her life and then dropped out and got on a plane to follow some other path. They thought it was wasted time, they did not know that for hesitant people like myself who don’t trust themselves with their career-decisions because they value them too much, this was growing up! Paying my dues! Realizing I have absolutely nothing to lose, because I have already lost!

And walking away never felt easier, because I never felt lighter. When you are deprived of support from those around you, you get to really know how much support you can be to your own self.

“Who is going to hire a dropout?”

“Who is going to marry a dropout and have her raise his kids?”

Yes I got all the trash-talk society could bring and worse.

And here I am, 1 year from that point in time, I am a drop-out with a part-time job, and a full-time dream. And for the first time in my life, I know what it’s like to jump out of bed at 6:00 AM not for the attendance, not for the certificate and not for my parents, but for me.

And my academic life went something like this:

#Paper1: C

“ughhh, of course”

#Paper2: C

“Not again!”

#Paper3: C

“WHAT! now that is unfair”

#Paper4: C

“I am tired, this just isn’t working out”

Don’t get me wrong, this is a story of pain as much as it is one of relief. I have sat down and I have cried, I have wondered if they were all right after all. I mean, what are the odds? They are so many and I am, well I am one. But I have woken up the next day ready to go again, and I have attended lectures, and I have stayed up reading and I have gotten Cs again and again and again. Until one day I got a B and everything changed. And only a few days ago, I got my first A…

And just when I was not looking for a degree, I found one. Yeah, what do you know? Later I learned that I could potentially collect my credits and make up a bachelor with mixed studies.

And I stopped asking myself if they were right, I stopped secretly doubting my choices. One thing I learned along this roller-coaster of a ride is, you can’t take everything if you are not willing to risk everything. If I had not walked away from that shit of a life I had, ready to be a drop out, ready to be potentially jobless, and most-likely single, I would not be where I am today.

And while many wittingly assumed I would be a burden on my parents who would have to weather the storm following my miscalculated decisions, I actually went from being 90% financially supported by my parents to actually affording my own living, education and needs 100%.

And it got me thinking, that maybe, just maybe, the challenges that everyone was pinning on me, were theirs not mine. The dreams they thought would be shattered by my walking away were theirs not mine, and the life they had wished for me was again, theirs not mine.

I am writing this now to tell whoever needs to know, that good things can actually come to those who drop out.

I know it! I am living in it.