أَعُوذُ بِٱللَّهِ مِنَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ ٱلرَّجِيمِ، بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ
Every tale has an origin, a collection of experiences from which one's self can be defined, both by choice and by decree. My tale of wayfaring began around '96, and it went like this.
In a middle school classroom, there it was, an ordinary day like any other. Without warning, a girl comes in, and yells to everyone who would listen that her friend (my Primera) has a crush on me. There, this is the little pebble being thrown in the pond from whence all the ripples would emanate. Soon after, I resolved to muster the courage to say something to this Primera. I was walking up one flight of stairs, while she was walking down; I turned around and asked her for her email, and the rest followed. It was an interesting relationship, founded in a wholesome intent of marrying her, for my personal prime directive/nature did not want a simple, bondless, merely boyfriend-girlfriend kind of connection. I wanted permanence, in the manner that did not simply see the fulfillment of my need at the time but for all times to come (can you breathe that idealism in? yes, that's the easy brightness of youth).
This connection lasted until my junior year in high school. I had heard something from mutual acquaintances (ever up to their shenanigans, causing mischief lol) about my Primera, and so I brought it up with her (on AIM, good times). She said, "I can't take this anymore, it's over", and that ladies and gents, was how it went. Of course, it doesn't end there. For one, mi Primera would tell me later that it wasn't actually her who was chatting that day, rather someone who she'd let access her account (people..don't share social media info...it ain't good). However, what I felt at that moment of forced disconnection was not an emotion I could or would overlook, it was real, even if its human precursor was not authentic.
If it's hard to see how much impact, from what I've said so far, this Primera had on my life, then what's to come should correct any misconception. Another thing I'd later learn: one of my beacons was mi Primera's friend way back when. In this way, so many roots of mine began with her, but I have never minded this interconnected web that my life has been. Because the intertwining goes even further. My Gift, I found her through my Primera - and so two of the most precious people in my life found their ties to me through her.
Strange, and poetically done by my Rabb, that the first girl I wanted to marry would be the one who led me to these: a beacon so bright I'd be seeking her for life after life, and the wife who would cross an ocean that she might find her place with me in our journey through this life.
The irony is not lost on me. Various layers of it, but it is the qadr of Allah and He does what He wills.
Perhaps it is especially important to mention she was when I started writing, before I began blogging...yep, mi Primera was the precursor, as I started on plain old paper, and sometimes on any random surface I could find (like a few lines on the back of a empty pizza box 😁 ). With her, the flow of thought and emotion began.
It is true though that my nature, my idealism, tried since the beginning to find its roots in her, but it could not find that resonance. Something she once said to me when we were young: "I believe in morals, I just don't act on them." As can be imagined, this was so hard for me to understand, and part of me was held behind a gate from her, because to me, if I believed something, it was incumbent that I try to manifest it, act on it. If I professed faith, faith had to be pursued, period (note: faith/belief is one of those things that can never be determined to be held for/by one's self in certainty, as in the quality of iman being true; it's something only one's Creator can judge). My nature was not the kind to internalize something it would not act on or accept, something that did not match my fitrah.
As adults, life certainly played its part in our choices and the roads we took and how we got to where we are today. There was a moment, back in 2019, where I experienced from mi Primera, an untoward reaction of vitriol that no one else has ever directed to me before, a reaction that was as a result of my concern for her (imagine, caring for someone and then having that thrown back in your face - not uncommon, I know). As she's noted to me since more than once, my perception and the nature of our bond wasn't quite the same after that. I wouldn't disagree. It is also true a few of the other choices she's made puzzle me to no end, and that makes this particular era of divergence feel sharper.
However, I would not let that stop me, iA. I have known much in life of being parted from my beloved, willingly or not, and of course, as humans we are, facing disappointment in one way or another.
That is to say, just because the distance between us is pronounced for now, does not mean it will remain that way forever. Even if mi Primera changes her mind, as she has now and again, and decides her life and Eternity are better pursued without myself. What could I say to such a thought? What I am, who I try to be, means I can never turn my back on my beacons, no matter which way the winds of time blow.
Each of us, every human being, will find at the end of our lives the sum of the choices we made. I will seek my beloved the same way as I long have: within perfection itself in our Garden; inshaAllah I can somehow be again someone of brightness for her, for today and Tomorrow.
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