I know that a lot of women unknowingly enter into marriages with similar types of men, and that I was lucky and all that.
But I never imagined that something like that could ever happen to me.

“You eat with your left hand?
That’s haram.
How could your parents let you do that?”

We were all girls like you once.
I was a young girl just like you before marrying your father.
We all went through the same things.
We’d just play sports and take a cold shower.

I have no space.
I’m always tired.
I try to blend in.
But I always face the same issue:
I do what people want me to do,
Just to avoid problems.
social pressure

Noha and I are old friends.
Right before she and I started wearing the hijab, we went to rent a beach house.
Our hair was down and we were wearing summer clothes.
I can’t begin to tell you how well they treated us.
They were very respectful.

Whenever I see my grandma, she grabs my finger and asks me the same question every time,
“When are you going to make me happy?”
“You’re not happy?”
“No.”
“How can I make you happy?”
“By getting married.”
“But what about my own happiness?”

The heroine of my story, is a 34-year-old female.
Unmarried, beautiful, highly educated with a PhD, well-mannered, and open-minded.
Her major sin, which she will keep paying for throughout her life, is that she is over 30 and unmarried.

I was on my way to school like any other day,
When I found everyone making fun of me because I was wearing pants and a t-shirt that were bigger in size than their clothes.
I weighed more than them.
I don’t know how this whole thing started.
bullying, body image, beauty standards, social pressure

I once fell down the stairs and broke my leg.
My leg was extremely swollen when I went to the hospital.
It was just my luck that the doctor who examined me was the type who avoided looking at women.

I was an active child when I was young.
I did gymnastics and never skipped a lesson.
However, I wasn't blessed when puberty hit me,
As I gained an enormous amount of weight.
body image, social stigma, social pressure, bullying