Dear Afrin:

I will combine the information from your posts in your three threads July-October this year, so to tell your story best I can. Following that I will give you my input.

You were born, a middle child, into a strict Muslim family in London, your parents having immigrated to London a few years before you were born. In school you were ambitious, studied hard, got best grades, but you were also “an outcast, bullied for being a nerd etc.”

After graduating university, you worked for “a huge corporate company with a comfortable salary for 6 years”. You were still living with your family at 22. At about that age, you rejected Islam, became an atheist, moved out and got your own flat, “started to go out, partying, drinking, living life, meeting people”, and you had “a healthy relationship of almost two years”, at least in August you did.

Having left your family, at 22 or so, “to live alone was forbidden, and doing so made me an outcast of the family and the entire community. I lost all my friends and my parents disowned me. They said I was the child of Satan, that I was a whore, I brought shame to the family and that I am the cause of all the pain and suffering they are going through. My mum threatens to kill herself all the time unless I come back home and live a quiet Muslim girl life”.

“Nevertheless”, you wrote, “I have never felt freer, I feel happy, confident with my choices and I am proud of standing up for my own beliefs”.

Recently you reached out to your younger sister and “got a lecture back.. saying she can’t respect me for what I have put my family through… I think we are strangers to each other now, and they all blame me… I am sad and angry that my parents did this to my innocent younger sister”.

After about six years of work at the big corporation, dissatisfied, you returned to academia as a researcher, but felt dissatisfied there as well. “I have no passion to work hard for my career… I am not ambitious anymore”, you wrote July. You wished you didn’t work at all but having to pay bills, you wish you had an easy job just so to pay the bills.

Most recently, it might have been this very day, after about six months at the new job, you gave your notice in your workplace because “my depression is so bad that I can’t perform at work.

“I don’t think I’ll be fit to work for a long time and I don’t see how I will recover since I no longer will be able to afford my therapist. I am afraid I’ll lose my house and my cat… I am seriously preparing to live on the streets. I don’t understand how my life has come to this…My mental health has deteriorated so much that I don’t know if I will ever recover. Suicide is a real option for me now”.

“I have become so isolated that I can feel my thoughts turning exponentially distorted. I feel like I am quicksand and there is nothing I can do, nobody to talk to and nobody to relate to”.

And now my input: you wrote in your previous thread that your parents indoctrinated your sister, “I am sad and angry that my parents did this to my innocent younger sister”. Your parents indoctrinated you too, the innocent younger you.

When you moved out of your childhood home, courageously as you did, feeling free, happy, confident and proud (“I have never felt freer.. happy, confident.. proud of standing up for my own beliefs”), a big part of your brain still contained that indoctrination. The freedom you felt was interrupted by the great distress involved in acting so opposite to the indoctrination you received and the resulting shunning. That led to depression,  lack of ambition, lack of motivation,  leaving and losing employment.

You were amazingly courageous, had the ambition to not only get best grades in school, get a high paying job, but to move out, get your own flat, endure being an outcast to your family and community, but then the indoctrination kicked in.

It is extremely difficult to be shunned by one’s parents, siblings, community. What your mother told you directly and through your sister was too heavy for you to endure.

I suppose your mother’s/family’s/community’s plan has worked, shunning you as they did, your mother threatening suicide, all of it aimed at making your new life too difficult. You wrote earlier that it is your mother’s way or the highway. Well, if you are homeless, it will  literally be the highway.

I would like to read about your thoughts/ feelings at this point. We can continue to communicate, if you’d like.

anita

Dear Afrin:

You are welcome and thank you for your kind words!

You wrote, “I used to be such a strong person”, but you are still strong. Strong people do feel “so sensitive and weak” sometimes. What you did takes lots of strength, to move out, to live your own life, thing is it is very, very difficult to do what you did and it cannot be done without lots and lots of help and support, I believe.

I will be away from the computer for about sixteen hours. I would like to re-read your recent post and any other you may add when I return. Please take good care of yourself, I would  very much like it if you were very gentle and kind to yourself at this difficult time.

anita

And you are very welcome.

Dear Afrin:

Moving far away can help if you stay away, not visiting her and if you don’t have her visit you.

It is very, very difficult for a daughter to leave her mother. The attachment from early childhood is too intense to make it easy. We keep hoping, keep wanting. The price for this hope, when you deal with a mother/ parent that is unloving and abusive, is a heavy price. And what do you get for that heavy price? More hope, more waiting… waiting forever more. And while you wait, you deteriorate.

So, from very personal experience, I say better save yourself. As difficult as it is, and it is, move away from the people who disrespected you for so long, no matter who they are.

anita