I apologize for not having written. If you’ve held out for this long, you’re a real trooper of a reader, and I appreciate it.
I’ve spent the last month and change digesting. So much was happening all the time, and in a way I felt incapacitated in terms of writing. I wanted to, but I wasn’t sure what to say or how to put it. I was afraid of revealing too much of myself (a shocking declaration for a blogger such as myself, I know). I had to just sit for a minute or a month, and see what came out at the end. It was the culmination of a much larger, much longer process. And I will say this, and hope that it is enough, and not too much:
This year has been fascinating for me. So much has changed, and in so many ways I have come into myself and grown into my Islam. But it’s been a mixed bag. Part of that growing has been a broadening, and much of what I have encountered – thoughts, feelings, deeds – I thought I had left behind forever when I came to Islam. But eventually we are who we are. It may come under the heading of one religion, one philosophy, one world view that is coherent; but embracing something so comprehensive does not mean that we embody that idea fully. As much as we’d all like it to be different, this is, if nothing else, a process.
Maybe I was a better Muslim a year ago, or two years ago. It’s hard to say. When you take pieces of yourself – memories, ideas, longings, tendencies – and pack them away in a far, cobweby corner of your identity, is that goodness? So many of the things or ideas I embraced were not whole, were not wholly mine. I was not myself. The intoxication of a whole new way of being – a chance to reinvent myself at 23! It was all that mattered, and maybe I took that chance too much, maybe I went too far.
When I was contemplating returning to the States from Egypt, I thought it would be more difficult than it turned out to be. I thought that I had become someone different: a postmodern ascetic, taking refuge in an urban desert from the social high of a colder, more verdant city. But I came back and went out every weekend again, and loved people again, and loved them more. I hadn’t changed at all. I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
If I had to name this year, if it had to be one thing, it would be me falling into myself. I’ve unpacked everything that I tucked away in shame or zeal, and I’m in the process of going through it all: this I want to keep, this I can do without. But at last I am doing the real work of being a Muslim, I think. I feel that I went on a very long, two-year vacation, and now I’ve come back to my apartment, my storage space, and I’m going through all of the boxes. I’m deciding which ones deserve to come along for the long haul, and which can go to the recycling. I thought that I had already done this work, but it was the illusion of an escapist. The real deal doesn’t happen overnight. It’s never been that way, and it never will be. People change slowly; we may successfully reinvent ourselves, but it happens in slow, sedimentary time, not in the lightening mood that accompanies that first, inescapable “aha.”
And so for the first time in a long time I feel authentic. I feel Muslim, I feel deeply that this is who I am, and I also feel that I haven’t cut off any proverbial limbs in order to feel that. It’s not an either/or anymore. I’m tempted to call it “healthy” or “wholesome” but I think I might be dipping a toe into a pool that is a little too new-agey for me. I’ll stick with authentic. But that means that I’m stuck with myself, and I’m not so sure how I feel about that. I want to crawl back under the covers and come back out after my spirit has successfully slain my self. Can’t somebody else take care of this unruly thing that is my personality?
If sin is a fable, then so am I. I’m taking me, with a massive dose of tawba. God alone knows what the right choice is.
