It has been almost one year since I last published a post. For a while I blamed it on the balancing act of two jobs with an intensive M.B.A. program. And though juggling all those in the midst of trying to sustain some sense of a social life and attempting to date is indeed a challenge to maintaining constant writing, I realized there was something else.
Despite experiencing back to back to trauma—from the death of my father, followed by sexual assault, the pandemic, the death of my grandmother, the death of my kitten, the death of my grandfather, and two really toxic relationships (one with a boy and another with a PhD. program)—I managed to keep going until 2022.
“Last year was the worst year of my life,” I found myself telling my mom one day over coffee. “I’ve been through multiple ringers, but what I saw revealed to me last year was my breaking point and I feel defeated. Like what’s the point?” My mom’s facial expression was another reminder of one of a million reasons I never want to have children. How do you respond to those types of questions from your children? How do you protect them from the communities that should have been the villages raising them?
Someone recently asked me if something had happened to trigger my departure from all social media and I laughed. “What didn’t happen?” Aside from the chronic harassment (sexual or otherwise), my growing blocked list, and consistently learning that most of my male “allies” were anything but, I grew exhausted. Deleting my accounts, especially Instagram, was difficult. Some of my posts were pieces of my heart, poetry from my soul, authenticity I couldn’t muster any other way. As I scrolled through everything, I contemplated which ones to save before realizing it’s a take it or leave it situation. I either let it all go or I put up with the ugly that comes with being present in this network. Painfully, but intentionally, I chose the first one and said goodbye to the posts commemorating my father. The posts that vulnerably called out the insidious normalization of domestic violence. The posts that unapologetically told men the truths of their behaviors that they still don’t want to hear. The posts that celebrated strength and resilience. And the ever-so-cliche food posts that sprinkle all our grids.
In an instant, I was 2,057 contacts short. But there was something freeing about that. No more judgment. No more hate. No more falsified support—better yet, no more daily reminders of minimal support. It took about a month before I was able to detoxify my mind from the “Is this Instagram worthy?” mentality whenever I saw something I considered photographing. It took about a week to realize how much more time I had to read books (for fun), to exercise, or to just relax. But it also took about a year before I realized that social media had unknowingly been an outlet to keep me consistently writing and expressing.
I had three distinct moments last year with three different male friends that were painfully eye opening. One I knew for about 13 years, another I knew for about 6 years, and the last I knew for about 1.5 years. I’ll spare the details of each story because the bottom line is that each unknowingly revealed how they really felt—what their mindsets are actually like—and I came to the ugly conclusion that there is a generalizable core to males. Possibly from the patriarchy and its inevitable indoctrination. No matter how much unlearning supposedly happens, boys seem to continue being boys because it will forever work in their favor. They can get away with it and calling them out about it only backfires, and I am exhausted.
Every time I opened up a new page to write, I closed my laptop and moved on to something else. Any time I picked up a pen to write, I laid it back down and binged another docu-series (I’m not too mad about this, as I have learned a lot about various global incidents I wouldn’t have known about otherwise). But, ironically, I kept remembering something my ex-husband said to me on our first date. He had apparently read every single blog article I ever published beforehand to get to know more about me after we met a month earlier. “Writing is your oxygen,” he started. “No one should ever take that from you. It’s your life.” When I heard him say that, I genuinely believed he understood me. I didn’t realize it was all part of the grooming process.
He was right, though. Writing is my lifeline. Without it, I die a very painful (metaphorical) death, and maybe that is the goal. I know it was definitely his goal because the first time I suffocated was under his care. I couldn’t write a single article or poem and it destroyed me. The moment I left him however, oof! The floodgates opened and I felt resurrected like never before.
My second rising is long overdue, and while I know a part of my blank pages came from the many voices of men who worked tirelessly to silence me last year (in conjunction with the quietness of most women who do absolutely nothing to support me), I have also chosen to reframe the hiatus. I am allowed to be exhausted. This world is merciless to women, especially Arab and visibly Muslim ones who were not raised to be less than. The last words I ever heard my dad say to me were, “Keep tapping into your potential because I want you to see what I see.” Less than 24 hours later, he suffered a stroke triggered by complications from his brain tumor removal surgery and I was never able to hear his voice again.
I needed this year to recuperate. To immerse myself in one of the most incredible revolutionizing business programs I blessedly got accepted into. To focus on my physical health and learn how to better express myself verbally instead of only in writing. To regain my understanding of time and its forgotten value. On a disaster of a date last year, the guy (who had known me as a friend for a few years) said, “I don’t understand why you’re getting an M.B.A. It’s so off-brand for you.” I still don’t understand what is so off-brand with me furthering my education, but without hesitation I replied, “Well in business, we call that rebranding.” And I believe that’s what this past year has been.
Despite the little deaths from not writing the way I wanted to, God has been giving me the little fires to light back up the way I need to. In honor of this return, I thought it was time to elevate my platform and move to a new space. So welcome to Lady Narrator 2.0 on Substack! To celebrate, I’m preparing for National Blog Posting Month this November, where the goal is to post something daily. I’m looking forward to what this new path unfolds, but I guarantee, it will remain along the lines of Lady Narrator’s authentic, unapologetic, necessary voice.