Self-reflection

Patience is indeed a virtue that has brought forth wonderful gifts in the form of experienced knowledge and challenges to apply that knowledge and grow

The last couple of days for me has been very self-reflective. I had a couple of episodes where I lost myself completely-I felt like I dived in head first into a whirlpool of hopelessness, unhappiness and numbness. I felt like letting go and that giving up was the only option. Fortunately, I have wonderful support and I was made aware every moment that I wasn’t alone and that my struggle is worth living for.

Upon calming down, I realized that I have so much to be grateful for. I am so lucky. I am one of those that got away for good and I want to use this good to help those who need it and help prevent harm to people with all the energy I have.

This new awakening in me opened my eyes and mind to realize that there is no good coming from self-pitying – wishing I didn’t have these memories that plunge me in a black hole of misery. I am trying to accept it. It happened. I realize that patience is indeed a virtue that has brought forth wonderful gifts in the form of experienced knowledge and challenges to apply that knowledge and grow. I have to move on. I have to step forward instead of sit in the same place wondering how different my life and my mental health would have been had I not had lived experiences of abuse and assault.

I have been thinking a lot more of those strong people who are still living those experiences. I want to help them. I want them to know that they deserve better and I want them to get it.

These self-reflection has driven me to research more, to keep learning and understand. A few days before my breakdowns, I had read a quarter of the way of Samra Zafar’s “A Good Wife”. The patterns of behaviour and conversations she had lived through revived memories of my own lived experience. Each time I had flashback of memories because of her life story I felt like I was being stabbed in my heart and hammered on my head. I thought someone had written my story, my mother’s story. I felt hopeless and hurt about my life and put the book away.

It took me a few weeks after to pick the book up, I puckered up the courage to read Samra Zafar’s life till the end. I needed to know how she survived. I needed to feel like I am not alone – that people like mother are not alone. I read the book within a day and felt a new sense of enlightenment and glow of hope. Samra Zafar’s patience and dedication to her education and self-growth seeded in me a new mission. I immediately rested the book on my coffee table and started looking up research on family violence and sexual assault in my laptop. I am learning and understanding critically. I know within these lived stories and within these diligent research done by experts, there is an answer. There is a way that will help bring an end to violence and assault completely. There will be a world where no being in the world will suffer silently. There will be peace and understanding, and endless love and open-mindedness. A world where negativity will be mitigated through integrity, open communication, affirmation and positive changes.

There is a world like this. It is somewhere in the future, it just needs some hard-work and dedication to get there. I am on it right now.