Hello everyone, this is my second time writing here. The first one’s title was ‘ We followed YouTube channels like Sözler Köşkü, Hayalhanem during our veiling period.’ If you have read that, you would know how everything went well, and I didn’t have a problem regarding what people would say anymore. But things didn’t go as planned.  My cousin has passed away after a couple of days I wrote my first letter here. It motivated me to take my hijab off, death is inevitable and I don’t want to waste any time being a hijabi. However, in my family, this situation was completely counterproductive. The accepting people suddenly started to come at me. “They died young, were not praying at all; who is going to save them now?” “They remained with only their own deeds now, our prayers to save them are in vain.” etc. My mother wasn’t satisfied with that, so that she told my imam uncle and our bigoted relatives that I am going to take my hijab off. She did it on an occasion that I wasn’t able to distance myself from them. They told me what I had already heard hundreds of times. When I said what I am feeling, they replied with the same old arguments.

I think this conversation is proof that I am unbelieving and irreligious in their eyes.  My mother, who I told you she was supporting me, now repeats her first reactions over and over again: “You won’t take your veil off!” When I say I am saving money to buy new clothes for when I take my hijab off, she says, “It will never happen.”  In addition to that, she tries to convince me via the importance I place on women’s rights. That I should show the world what a hijabi can do…  Do I need to show that to people in 2020?  My mom, who I thought to be not that big of a bigot, apparently has a potential that can make all of the bigots jealous.

My father?  We are constantly arguing with him. Every day he lectures my brothers and me about the importance of praying at the dinner table. I tell him we are adults now, that we should be able to make our own decisions, but it is in vain. He acts as if he forgot that I want to take my hijab off. I guess he thinks I can’t do such a thing because he used to be an imam, and he cares too much about what people would say. Because of that, he wouldn’t think that I would take that risk. On top of it, he is more intolerant than my mother. Just yesterday, he told me, “You are stepping away from the belief by reading infidel writers.” As if two books can make you an unbeliever or all of the “infidels” are atheists.

I don’t fast; of course, my family doesn’t know about it.  At nights I hoard food in my room. If my family knew about it, they would make me listen to another sermon and force me into fasting. I don’t really know but is this religion?  If there is no compulsion in religion, what is the life of those who write here?   Why they force us to wear hijabs?  Who is to blame? Our family or people who never shut up about our lives?  It is hard enough to be a graduate studying to retake the university entrance exams, but I am fighting with my family on top of it. I don’t know which battle to pick.  The only thing I know is that I will continue my journey as an agnostic. By the time I go to college, I hope I get things settled in my head and smash some walls inside of me.  If not, hard days are waiting for me.

 We will never walk alone ladies, to the tomorrows, which we look like whatever we want to look like!

(Image: Akira Kusaka)