Less than three years old
Standing tip-toe-unsteady,
on the neighbours’ old arm-chair. Green, I think.
Fingertips outstretched to the mantelpiece,
to the biscuit tin that lay there.
It was red.
My name, in my mother’s voice, bodiless.
A cautionary tone.
Sounding in the air.
I can hear it.
The thoughts of ‘becoming’
Of stepping into the unknown
With only my faith in Allah
Becoming
Becoming whole
A living embodiment of my self
Fulfilling my destiny,
the person I know I am destined to be
Whose essence I. can. feel.
like the word on the tip of your tongue,
that won’t. quite. come.
Like the dream quickly fading your mind seeks
to recall
The me I was created to be,
Who has lain dormant
For. so. long.
An unrealised being,
like a soul kept on ice
Waiting to. be. born.
My dream- for now and for Then
is to reach and to seek and to grow,
weave together the strands
realise all those plans,
become whole.
May The Only Source of Remedy and Repose
ease my soul
Back then I knew who I was without need to define,
I knew as a child
I knew who I was by the ‘sense’, which was innately mine.
It evades me sometimes
Now when I run on empty and I. Don’t. Have. Time.
Catching glimpses of self at the back. of. my. mind.
Grasping at last straws
Seeking to find
Some ‘sure’ thing to hold onto… to refine
Some life line.
Some way to get back to the peace
Some sign.
To allow me preserve who I knew that I was
once upon. a. time.
‘Who I am’ used to be fixed and delineated clearly; this was not just simply in my ‘mind’ but in my being and in my very certain sense-of-self. This ‘self’ was not a fluid entity, it did not ebb and flow and it was non-negotiable. I was centred and anchored, if always yearning for something out of sight and reach and comprehension. Life has tested what I thought I knew about myself; the complexity and the ‘black and white’, and has left me floundering to understand where I fit in this universal state of ‘being’; which parts are ‘genuinely’ me and how in fact to ‘be’. There are times my head swims; when it seems I have no ‘core’ no ‘central being’ and that I might be washed away or drown. This leaves me almost constantly uneasy and is torturous at times. The longing for clarity, stability and tranquility of ‘mind’ won’t be denied and often sends me spiraling into a vertigo-inducing state. Trying to be the person you think you ought to be can be counterproductive but hard to move away from. Just as you think you’re making progress a glimpse of ‘self’ will flit by the eye-of-your-mind derailing you, reminding you there’s somebody already there and that you are grasping at straws. Continue reading
Before coming to Islam I was a non-practicing Catholic-by-name of two parents who were likewise. I was interested in God from childhood and was overtly aware something was ‘missing’ from at least my early teens… I just didn’t know what exactly that emptiness meant and spent many years looking in all the wrong places.
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