Life is either black or white

You know when you have this need to explain things in extreme terms; it’s either this or that? I don’t understand why life has to be that way. I used to be that way. I used to be the either black or white person in thinking. I saw life that way, and I agreed with it because it was safe. Anything beyond those two spectrums was deemed wrong and unconventional. Was it wrong? Was I wrong? I think I was, and that’s why I changed. I forced my self to change and I became who I am today.

What exactly I am talking about? Life as an Arab Muslim girl. I think I stuck together too many adjectives there. I didn’t add the Palestenian part, well, maybe because in the end, I am just Arab. I tried so much to keep classifying my self to different categories just to be different. In the end, what will people call me? I don’t know. What do I want people to call me? I don’t know. I guess I am not the judge of that.

I think when people see that I am Arab and Muslim they assume two things, I am either conservative or extremely liberal. It depends on where I live, and since I live in the western world and I adjusted to life here, then I must be extremely liberal because I accepted it. I am neither. I removed the neither. However, the past few days I been just trying to remember who I am. I try so hard. I think living in the western world has given me constant questionings of who I am. I came young. Too young that I lived through so many phases. Around age of 14 or 15, I forgot how to speak Arabic. I didn’t speak it at all because I had no one to speak it with. I forgot Arabic completely. I didn’t forget my religion though. Religion is not easy to forget. Religion is mostly actions and the way one is raised. I can speak Arabic now since the age of 20/21, and still read because I keep reading and practicing.

I don’t know. I tell my self that all the time, why did I purposely forget who I am? I was distant from Arabs and Arabic culture and who I was supposed to be. Then I moved to Canada when I was 16 from USA to a city where there were more than 4 or 5 other people who were Arabs, but 100′s. When I first arrived here in high school, Arabs didn’t want to talk to me. They didn’t want to be friends with me, and I didn’t know why. So I ignored it and just went on with life because it wasn’t important to me, and I didn’t question it. However, when I was 18, and the number of Arabs increased in my high school, some wanted to talk to me. I was in the end Arab to them.

I wasn’t like them though. I was neither conservative, or liberal. I didn’t care about anything even though I did like being an Arab. I even had a guy I liked who was Arab at that age that I was constantly talking to and seeing. For me, life was normal and I didn’t care. However, others saw it as a negative thing. Saw me as the Arab girl who didn’t speak Arabic at all and fluent in English like she was born here, and didn’t care about other Arabs.

So I forced my self to change. Maybe I should act like the rest, and be accepted by my people. So I changed to be liked. I changed who I was and I became what others wanted to me to be. I saw life as black and white and that’s it.

Soon, I grew out of that phase, but the hard and painful way. I hated how I became. I hated who I was. I was fake. I was so fake that I couldn’t stand my self. I thought to my self, what was I doing? Who am I?

Then the years after in my early 20′s have changed me. I didn’t know what I wanted or what am I to do? Who was I to satisfy? Who would like me? I didn’t adhere to standards at all. I didn’t like going to all girl gatherings. I didn’t like going to Arabic parties. I didn’t like even watching Arabic TV or listening to Arabic music. I just thought, well, why?

I lost my culture, and I kept it that way. Then I decided to love someone because I thought he was like me. I thought he didn’t like the standards that our culture made us follow. I thought that a liberal Arab was maybe better. I didn’t know what liberal Arabs were or what they did. I never lived to that extreme and I was so unfamiliar with it that it kept shocking me. I didn’t know that liberal Arabs do whatever they want, and portray to the world that they are cultural and religious for the sake of talk. They were fake, and they dragged others with them. They lied to everyone didn’t they? So lying to me was not any different. I was also pressured into being liberal, and that’s when I changed and said I have enough! I didn’t want to be part of anything anymore. I didn’t want to lie and hide my other life and portray to the world I am a good Arab.

I did crazy things I have to admit. It wasn’t for the sake of love. Screw love. I never believed in it. I just believed that it could have been better if there was some understanding and acceptance of differences. Some communication and honesty. I lost trust in people; I really did. I wanted to be alone. I broke up with him 3 times. The third time was the killer. I didn’t just tell him to leave me alone, I told him I couldn’t stand his lying, his fakeness. I couldn’t stand him being a typical ARAB and hated Arabs!

That’s when I died as an Arab, and I proclaimed my self as Rebellious. I wanted to be something different. Something that is neither here or there. Something that is too unbelievable and not part of what I am supposed to be. I was forced fed religion and culture. Islam, I believe in it. I believe its goodness and morals and the way it shapes our lives. If all Muslims follow Islam properly, then life would be better. But they don’t. I don’t. I don’t know how. So I relied on culture as another guide to life, but it made my thinking worse. It made me more angry and hateful of what I have done in my life. What I became. I became lost between cultures. Lost between religions. Lost between worlds.

I don’t know what I am anymore.

However, people are judgmental and think because I don’t follow the standards than I am westernized and I am bad. I would go to the extreme of not only disobeying culture, but also religion. It’s like the two are intertwined. Are they? If you loose your cultural believes than it means you lost your religion as well?

Why am I asking all these questions? Why am I analyzing who I am again? I have been trying for the past week to remember who I am. To actually be happy and proud of being an Arab and there will always be good and bad. I can’t till this day speak it too well, and probably cannot write it much, but I am who I am. I argue with people about it. I made a site about it. I have no shame. I have nothing to hide. I never did anything wrong in my life. I follow my religion because I believe it is right and I was raised this way and I agree with it. I just don’t want people to keep stereotyping me in groups. I am neither this or that. I am not what people typically think I should be because of religion and culture. Thinking is different than actions. I am open minded. I am extremely open minded because I am tolerant. Why can’t the rest of you be tolerant as well?

Random Thoughts