My Soft Rebellion

To be hard on yourself when you’ve already suffered so much is just evil

I have a deep love for myself now. I don’t know when it started, especially since for much of my life, I couldn’t stand who I was.

I remember sitting in my guidance counselor’s office in the tenth grade, sobbing, repeating over and over: “I just despise everything about me.”

I grew up in a traditional Muslim household—strict, but maybe a “medium strict” on the spectrum lmao. I could wear capris until sixth grade, listen to Britney Spears, watch Disney movies, and, if I had enough supervision, go to the park across the street—as long as I was home in time to pray.

My father was brilliant, funny, and passionate about history and music. But his temper was larger than all of that, and his inability to see his own worth seeped into my life in painful ways.

My mother, nine years younger than him, is observant, humble, and quietly strong. She mostly followed his lead, but a part of me still wishes she had fought harder. Though, she’s still the silent force that held our home together when it could have easily collapsed.

The real trouble was the pressure. Pressure to perform in every area—religion, school, beauty, character. I wasn’t allowed to disappoint.

That meant being a righteous Muslim girl (indoors, modest), an academic star (best grades), athletic and fit (one of the boys), socially confident (assertive but never aggressive), and any other role my parents admired in someone else’s child and decided I should embody.

Falling short brought punishment, which only made the pressure heavier. I became hypervigilant—constantly monitoring myself, correcting mistakes before anyone noticed, never present because I was always “on.”

It made me an excellent problem-solver. Even now, I can course-correct like a pro. But it came at the cost of my peace. Each day became a loop of: How do I stay safe? How do I get love? Why did I mess that up—how do I make sure it never happens again?

But at the end of the day, with irrational, unhealthy people comes an irrational and unhealthy environment—it didn’t matter how much I morphed; I was never going to make them happy. I can see now how much of their own insecurities were projected onto me.

The hardest part was the the consistent battle to not give in to my spiteful thoughts—about me, about them, about the world. 

To not listen to the voice that was looking at myself like a stupid endless project that was always going to need fixing. And when I presented myself—all put together with nails and duct tape—I knew I was never going to be enough anyways.

It was a voice of self-dehumanization. A willing participation in colonization. A way to keep us small and motionless. An evil, systemic breakdown of autonomy. A way to continue the cycle of generations before me. 

I didn’t even know what I hated about myself—I just knew I did. One childhood memory unlocked the root of it, or at least the beginning. 

I was around five years old. At school, we had these little red notebooks where we practiced writing our names. I adored mine. I’d chatter away with my table group as I filled the pages, then flip through them proudly when I finished early, admiring my progress like artwork. 

One afternoon, my teacher casually mentioned to my parents that I was left-handed. She’d noticed I never used my right hand to write. She said it with a charming smile, like sharing a quirky fact about a dolphin one would find interesting and voice at the dinner table later. 

That night, my parents seemed more distant than usual, their expressions stern, their movements sharp and stiff.

After dinner, they sat me down at the table. A pencil. A notebook. I could sense ripe anger in the air. A chappal (a sandal) placed close by. 

At first they just wanted me to write with my right hand. Then they noticed my struggle, I noticed their disappointment. I scrawled my name over and over, clumsy and crooked. Each mistake was met with a smack, which resulted in more mistakes. Tears blurring my vision, sullying the page, making my pencil marks smudge. 

It was painful, realizing they couldn’t accept me as I was. They hadn’t yet learned the language of self-love, or the art of celebrating uniqueness. Even if those traits were frowned upon culturally, a child should still have been cherished. But they weren’t capable of that then.

And so I bore the brunt of it all. 

I do not justify the abuse I faced, I just view it from a place of compassion. Why? Because sometimes I feel their anger in my veins. When my cat is yelling all night, I disgustingly think, goddamn what would I do to just get you to fucking shut it. And then I am revolted with myself, quickly get up, pick up my cat and kiss his cheek. I do this thing where I move super abruptly around my cat to see if he flinches – he never does. Ever. I know I am not repeating my parents mistakes and I never will. But it is in me, it’s in my blood, and I’ve had to do the work to make sure it never sees the light of day. They never did this work, they didn’t know how, they were never taught, never had the resources and were always in extreme survival. 

They were ill in ways they didn’t realize were possible. They are not the same now. My father and mother have both said sorry, apologized for their behaviour when I was growing up, but have done so in ways that still feel empty.

I don’t know if they will ever, fully, be able to reconcile their actions when they were in extreme survival – that is without magic mushrooms or something lmao. A part of me doesn’t even want them to go through that, I can’t imagine having to face myself with their memories. My own were hard enough.

This story used to bring such violent, guttural tears to my eyes.

One night, on a whim, I pulled out a notebook and grabbed a pen and started writing my name with my left hand, again and again and again.

I was a psychotic, wailing mess, writing, “rida, rida, rida” crookedly into a notebook over my knee, blankets and pillows thrown about, body vibrating with years of pent-up desire to use my left hand. Electricity buzzing through my fingertips with rebellion, with love. 

After my series of moments, a softness entered my body, like a tired, squeezed-out sponge that was ready for a nap. A relief, a lightness, humour almost. A: “lool what was that? I’m so silly.”

I always am shocked by my own healing – it’s always very odd from the outside. But maybe it’s not odd, maybe that’s just conditioning again. Animals shake violently to let out their tension after stressful moments – I just needed to do that, even if it was decades later. 

You just don’t realize how much is inside of you until you let it out, and then it starts to make you wonder about all of the rest of the crap you’re probably carrying with you.

Compassion is derived from acknowledgement and recognition. It comes from knowing that I have suffered and yet, I tried, and tried my damn best.

The day after my right-hand training as a child, no one apologized to me; in fact, everyone pretended it didn’t happen at all. We all ate breakfast together, I shoved down my pain and I went to school.

It became a pit of despair I could never address, and I just continued trudging forward through life, ignoring reality as well. All while being just a little girl who wanted to be loved, accepted and honoured in the exact way I came to this earth.

There were many years where I believed I didn’t deserve to live a beautiful life, nor did I believe I had the ability to. I was carrying so much and I thought it was my fault that I wasn’t good at carrying it.

It wasn’t until I got space from my past that I started to realize these voices weren’t mine and they were holding me back. That was when I started to see how much all of this had truly affected me. I wasn’t a bad participant of life—I was a fucking relentless contestant if anything. 

My self-scrutinization was a curse I was determined to break.

We can’t have compassion for ourselves when we think we should continue to suck it up—to be perfect in circumstances that literally no human should ever have to go through. I see now this is the mentality my parents were raised with as well: to find safety and gratitude in a foxhole rather than prioritize joy and abundance.

When you see yourself, everything you’ve done, accomplished, and been through, and how in spite of that, you still try to radiate lightness, you can’t help but look at yourself with the kind of compassion that comes straight from God.

With that compassion comes a wave of compassion for the rest of the world as well, because good Lord, all of us are just trying our best, aren’t we? We move forward and forward and forward even though it hurts so much.

Shit’s fucked. But breathtakingly beautiful, ain’t it?