Guilty Conscience

Dear Fatima,

I’ve always known to take the high road in life but for the past 2 years; that hasn’t been the case with me. Growing up in Texas i had very strong opinions about things and never gave in to any sort of peer pressure in all my high school years. I never drank a sip of alcohol, never took a puff of weed, and importantly never had sex. Why is it that I find myself making all these mistakes as i’m older? I guess i stopped caring. My friends have all changed as well. We use to all just play in the neighborhood park, now we only go to the park to hot box in the car. I’ve gone to many parties/clubs and drank til the knot in my heart went away. But the next morning i would wake up only to find my family still suffering from a number of problems. I feel i have more than regular family issues in my home. Last summer, I fell head over heels for this brown guy. He was somewhat religious, prayed whenever he could, always working to support his family, and had the biggest heart i’ve seen so far. The person i started to become after high school had began to be a memory in my head. I was that normal, gullible girl again that didn’t need substances to be happy. He made me forget about the problems at home by just his company. I never loved any man as much as i did with him. The brown guy started to realize that and decided to take advantage of the fact that if he wanted the world i would give it to him in seconds. Just recently, i lost my virginity to him. It was mostly pressure on his end, so i did it to keep him happy. I did it with the intention that it would bring him closer to me but that picture i painted in my head was no where near reality. I’ve had sex with him about 4 times. Each one of those times, i would come home and start to cry. My parents never raised me to become the way i did. Alhamdullah though i’m trying really hard to better myself. But, I sit and think sometimes whats the use if i committed almost every sin in Islam. I find that i’m losing faith. I don’t pray at all; I haven’t in years. Nor have I sat down and opened a Quran. I stopped practicing my religion. It’s Ramadan, the time of year everyone goes to the mosque; but i can’t get myself to make it past the parking lot. I want to go inside the masjid but inside of me fills up with all this guilt. To pray and ask God for forgiveness is what i try to do, but I feel as if i shouldn’t be there and that God is upset at me. I feel so ashamed of what i’ve done over the years. I just don’t know what to do anymore..

Dear “Guilty Conscience”,

Assalamu ‘alaykum,

I want to start off by saying that I just recently responded to others who are feeling similarly to you about how they feel they are falling short [Title of posts: “Feeling Hopeless” and “A struggle for faith”].  Ramadan brings up more of these feelings and sometimes puts our shortcomings on full display to ourselves.  So please read what I wrote to them because I want you to hear the messages I gave to those young people about using the dips in your imaan as motivators for improvement and about the fact that nobody is perfect.

However, you brought up some specific things in your post that I want to focus on in this response, because you are also asking the question “how did I end up here?” not just “can I ever get to where I’d like to be?”

All of the things you describe, drugs, drinking, relationships that become all-important in our lives, and other things that we don’t always think about like emotional eating, watching hours and hours of TV per day, and throwing yourself into work so that you have time for nothing else – all of them are ways to escape something.  That “something” is usually some negative feelings or experiences that you are having in your own life.  You mention this when you refer to “family problems”.  Until those feelings get taken care of, what people find is that they work on the behavior but another one just pops up in its place.  So they realize they drink because it makes them forget their depression, so they stop drinking but don’t also get therapy.  So in a few months they are sober, but they’ve started emotional eating instead.  So the first message is: Seriously think about finding a counselor who can help you with your feelings about the family problems you’ve witnessed or been a part of.  Those experiences would impact anyone in your siutation and they’ve clearly created some feelings in you that you are trying to manage.  Dealing with those feelings will help you not need to look outside of yourself and outside of your relationship with Allah (swt) for “fixing”.  [If you would like us to refer you to a therapist or even just want to talk to someone who cares, please feel free to email us your contact info, including city and state to info@nuryouthforum.org].

The second issue you brought up is the current relationship you are in.  I feel very sad that this young man pressured you into having sex, especially since the way you describe him it appears that he is Muslim and familiar with why having sex before marriage would be inappropriate in your religion and culture.  At the same time, I want you to hear this next part as independent of Islam’s teaching – I’m working with a group that educates people on dating violence in the general community and they often talk about healthy relationships.  If one person pressures the other, or says well I’ll just leave you then, in order to get their way or to get the other person to give up something that is important to them, is not part of a healthy relationship.  So I would recommend that as you get counseling to work on what’s troubling your heart, you also take the time to talk to your counselor about the conflict you are experiencing about having sex with this young man.  You might come to realize that the pressure shows up in other places that you might not have realized, and if you ever want to have a healthy relationship with your future husband, working on how you can give and how you can keep hold of what makes you who you are will be important.

This will probably not be an easy road, because the journeys into our hearts can be the most intimidating.  However, you’ve taken many of the first steps to realize that this is where you need to go next.  Perhaps remembering this hadith will help you as you figure out how to move forward in your journey:

On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said:

“Allah the Almighty said:

‘I am as My servant thinks I am (1). I am with him when he makes mention of Me. If he makes mention of Me to himself, I make mention of him to Myself; and if he makes mention of Me in an assembly, I make mention of him in an assembly better than it. And if he draws near to Me an arm’s length, I draw near to him a fathom’s length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed.”

(1) Another possible rendering of the Arabic is: ‘I am as My servant expects Me to be.’ The meaning is that forgiveness and acceptance of repentance by the Almighty is subject to His servant truly believing that He is forgiving and merciful. However, not to accompany such belief with right action would be to mock the Almighty.

It was related by al-Buhkari (also by Muslim, at-Tirmidhi and Ibn-Majah).

(Reference: http://www.sunnipath.com/library/Hadith/H0005P0000.aspx  – Hadith 15)

wa ‘alaykum salam

  –       Fatima FM

====================================================================