I hate everyone right now. I feel so isolated and unreal - like nothing really exists right now. I hate being here, existing, feeling. I just do not feel like talking to or having a relationship with anyone right now. I don’t think I can explain how I hate how everyone is, how they are so stupid and how they try to impress each other and get stuff. I am like completely empty right now.

Virginia Woolf said that it is necessary for a woman to have a room of her own in order to write (or something remarkably similar). I completely agree. Women tend to be the clingy ones and husbands tend to leave and want personal space or alone time. But every woman should save a bit of her true, independent self for herself and should have a room (or at least a view) of her own.

I do realize that I am one of the fortunate ones who was granted the blessing of love. But I can honestly say it has been one of the hardest trials in my life. Before love, I had very little material desire. I wasn’t into clothes or looks or anything like that. I believed in having very little attachment to the world and would routinely give away or throw out any connection to the past. After I met my husband, I really surprised myself by getting extremely sentimental about him and holding onto him in whatever way I could.

And I fell so deep in love, I really felt like I lost myself. I became a junkie always looking to get high and caring about nothing else. I felt distant from everyone else, including Allah. And this level of attachment made the times of turmoil and conflict excruciatingly painful. I have always been “suicidal” in the sense that I felt like dying or thought about it, but I had never actually tried it until I experienced love and the extremities of intense emotion that accompany it. In fact, up until I got married, I had gotten to a place where I was self-reliant and was perfectly fine with myself. I mean, I wasn’t much, but I was fine with that and whatever shortcomings I had which made me who I was. After marriage, my flaws seemed magnified to myself and I cared so much what my loved one thought of me. I was shocked to find I could actually be insecure, or even self-conscious! Me, who had always been heedless of the opinions of society!

Anyway, I did not choose to spend a second away from my husband, but life forced us to spend time away, little by little: minutes, hours, days, weeks. And now, I have been away from my husband for about two months, the longest we have been apart, and it turns out that instead of the dread and fear I initially felt at the thought of the separation, I feel grateful. I have started to remember how I was when I was single and independent, and the best thing is I feel that whatever barrier of worldy desire had been between me and Allah has been removed. It’s like, despite my will, my fingers have been pried open and I have been forced to let go of what I was holding onto so tightly.

Often throughout my life I felt sort of cursed, that I could not really get along with people - family, peers, etc. and was alone and friendless. But I also felt (perhaps delusionally so) that maybe I was only meant to be with Allah. After I found love, I marvelled that what seemed so perfect was actually so tainted because not only did it have very painful associations (along with any redeeming bliss), it was the biggest temptation and trial for me spiritually. I basically got what I wanted, and you know what they say about that.

Once in a while, in a fit of spiritual passion, I would say, “Let’s just get divorced, right now and never look back.” We both knew we’d probably be better off apart. But I suppose it’s one of those things where it’s easy to withdraw from the world and be pure but difficult to stay in it and keep struggling.

And now, it’s almost time for me to go back and I am scared - scared of entering the prison of marriage again and being tied up emotionally, scared of having my connection with Allah distracted and distored again. And a part of me wonders, despite the fact that I love my husband more than anything in this world, what would happen if we just didn’t meet up again until the Hereafter?

So I would encourage every woman to leave her husband for a bit if she has the chance (and psychologically, leaving is a completely different experience than being left behind). If you cannot physically leave, at least make a place for yourself. Get a room, or at least a view.

“I love the Salafis and the Sufis, but they do not love one another.”

“When I was growing up, rock and roll was my sex and drugs.”