Saturday, September 08, 2007

5 Days and Counting...

My first court date is just 5 days away. Can you believe we have never taken this case before the court? We did everything in a separation agreement through our lawyers last time. What a mistake that was. I guess at the time, I didn't have any way of knowing that he would go off his meds, and that things would unfold as they did. I know better now.

Mr. NYC pointed out that Sept 13 is not only my first court appearance, but it is also probably the first day of Ramadan. Let's hope that means that things will go my way. I do have to say that as much as I complain, and as unfair as I've been about my faith (or perhaps ungrateful), that I do honestly believe that God has been right here beside me every step of the way. I know it's an odd thing to say, but the more I fight my faith, and especially all the outwardly signs of it- the hijaab, regular prayers, etc....the more it has brought me to a point where I just know that everything, both the good and the bad happens for a reason. There are just some things that you cannot complain about because...well, because life isn't over yet, so we still don't know how things will actually unfold. The story isn't finished, and so what sometimes seems like the end of the rope may actually end up being just the middle. You never know where you will end up, or why you will end up there. Just trust that you were somehow meant to experience the journey. That's what life is, a journey, right?

Keep me in your prayers for Thursday...

On another note, I had the weirdest "find" the other day. I opened up an old box (I have no idea where it came from) and in it I found a diary. My diary. It dates back to the year before I married my ex, and it only has about 10 entries in it. The sad thing is that it actually shows my state of mind, what I experienced, and how I felt about it. I wrote about a month before my marriage that I was so disappointed that my parents weren't as happy as I was about the upcoming wedding, that they thought I could do better. But that one day, when they see how much he loves me, they will know just how great it really was for me, and they would realize that arranged marriages aren't always the answer. Then just a few months later, I wrote about how often the abuse had been occurring after our marriage, and how shocked/miserable/isolated I was. It took just a few months- less than 6 for him to take a hopeful young girl and make her so isolated, so alone that she had nobody left to turn to.

Reading that diary was a weird feeling. It was like watching my life in slow motion. I mean, I know that I was shocked when it all happened. What I didn't recall is that I actually contemplated leaving. I seem to have forgotten so much from back then, that it is all mostly a blur. I felt a bit ...stupid reading the diary entry. I was talking about how logically there was no way out of this mess but death or divorce, and how death is never an option as a Muslim woman, so it would have to be divorce (unless he killed me). No I'm not kidding. That's what it said, that I was fully aware that if I didn't divorce him, I would end up getting killed. And this was all written within the first few months of my marriage.

Reading it was weird. Afterwards, I asked myself what the heck I was thinking. I mean, this was written before I had the kids. Why didn't I leave before they came into the picture? What was I waiting for? Or did I have no intentions of leaving?

It's almost like I was reading a stranger's diary. Honestly. I couldn't fully understand the thought process of this girl. I felt sorry for her. And it was ME.

This was one of those weird eerie experiences where you are watching your life and you can't change it...

Fitting that I found it right before we go to court huh?

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