Hello. I’m not writing this to help someone. I’m writing this because I need help and I have nobody to talk about this situation. I have anxiety about my future.
After a few days, I will be 18. I started wearing a headscarf when I was 14. I did it because my parents said, “We will buy an iPhone 5 if you cover your hair, our beautiful girl.” I didn’t even know why I had to wear a headscarf, and I didn’t have a strong belief. Everything was just because I want a telephone.
When I was in 8th grade, my parents told me that I would go to a Quran course to be a hafiz instead of going to high school. I stayed in the course for one year, but I didn’t become a hafiz. I learned the religion, and I decided that I don’t want to be religious. In summer, I was still staying on that course. I decided not to wear a headscarf on the 11th of July in 2016, but I knew that my family won’t approve it. I believed that I would flee when I become 18, so-called. Then I quitted the course, and I started to go to another course. That course was more challenging and more difficult. Those times I was dying to go to school. I wanted to go to high school. I was wondering about it so much, and I didn’t want to study Theology at university, as my mother said. While I was still in that course, I told my mother that I want to go to high school. I love my family, and they love me. They didn’t disappoint me, they supported me and removed me from the course and enrolled in a private school. I had been studying with distance education till that time and failed in 10th grade. I started to go to high school again from 10th grade. Now I’m in the 12th grade. I was still a Muslim when I started high school. The school which I went to was a school that catches modest people’s fancy.
When I started school, I also started to read regular books, which are not religious. Not the prophet’s life or hadiths, but classic novels and philosophy books. Nietzsche, Hawking, etc. I was perceiving the Quran’s meaning differently. The things that I had believed throughout my life sounded like just mythology. Everything was just about believing. Because everything is real as long as you believe in it. If I believe that the unicorns are real, they become real. Religion is just like that. But in those times, I couldn’t confess myself that I don’t believe in religion. In time I started to admit that I don’t have faith. Then I met someone just like me. We are still friends, but she/he doesn’t know my thoughts about religion. She doesn’t know that I don’t have faith in religion. I believe in God, but I’m not good with the idea of religion. I try to show this to my family, but they get upset every time even I do something little. I say that I am Muslim, but they know that we are dissenting too much. My mother sometimes sobbingly cries even if I do nothing. I just don’t think like them and don’t believe in the same religion. If I tell them that I don’t believe in religion, they will get upset. So I’m not going to confess that to them. But how will I say that I don’t want to wear a headscarf anymore?
This year I will take the university entrance exam, and I want to study in the upstate. My parents are against a woman’s going to upstate alone. I won’t take any economic support. But what am I going to say to my family and am I going to do? If they had acted me rudely, I would be strict towards them, but they were always kind to me, and I love them. How will I pull off this?
(Image: Dom Dom)