Hello.
I think my story has a dramatic start and a happy ending. At least, I hope it is. I have a family that can be considered conservative in its own right. I veiled at a very young age. This was the whole circle of friends, and my family was trying to impose in various ways that I had to “veil” when it was time since I was little. Everybody around me was like that. My sister, my relatives, almost all my friends with whom I deal. I had no difficulty at first, It was very reasonable that the strange thing would be not to cover my hair. Even my family’s behavior changed after I veiled. I was their only daughter. I liked it very much. I went to the school they wanted.
I stayed for two years in a dormitory where I think they are doing nothing but brainwashing about religion. Everything was perfect. Later, I was born again in my own words.
I started thinking, reading, questioning in an environment where we are forbidden to think. Because the religion they taught me was neither my conscience nor my mind. I read as I read, I questioned as I questioned, I came to the conclusion that this is not the truth. I realized that almost all of the things I did were wrong and wasted. The prayer that I woke up from my sweet sleep in the mornings and practicing the prayers I didn’t even know its meaning was useless. I was sweating in vain with the veil on my head in hot weather, thinking everything I did not do when I was able to do. The religion I believe in is, “Don’t persecute yourself.” Even though it said, I persecuted myself. It took me months to digest them. But I could not escape the facts. My father was not an ignorant man, as he opened up questions about religion to me; he started to come to me on excuses that he did not even believe in himself. He doesn’t believe completely either; I see it, but it took me months even to admit that the 4-5 years I lived was wrong. I understand that he could not accept that he had spent his whole life with lies. My mother is the world’s most “What do the other people say?” When I talk to her, she thinks that my child is not a Muslim anymore. I can’t open those in my head to them. I can’t pretend that I believe something I don’t believe just because someone wants it. This is nothing to me than to betray myself, to humiliate my own ideas.
I can’t tell my family, “This is me; this is my ideas, accept me.”
I have no place to stay I do not earn money, I can’t take care of myself yet. It is cumbersome for me to be compelled to them. The only thing more substantial than this is the idea of living in a way I don’t believe. This sounds terrible to me. To waste a lifetime like this, to be someone I don’t believe in. I meant to everybody I see every time I go out, “It’s actually not me.” Because I wasn’t actually this and I couldn’t go on like this.
I went to university, chose a city far away from myself, that no one I knew and could not come. My mom left me in the dormitory, and I took off the headscarf as soon as they went. I was not able to tolerate it, even for one more day. I am very happy now, I’m thrilled. I will also inform my family but slowly. For a while, I want to live without problems. I feel like myself for the first time in years.
**We were not able to find the owner of the image we shared. If you know, you can comment on its source.