Ask an Alim

Confused, Lost, Not Getting Answers From Allah

Q:

Assalam-o-Alaikum, May Allah be with you. JazakAllah Khair.

I’m a 24 year old girl and I have two more siblings. I belong to a very educated family. Let me start from the beginning now. I have suffered a lot in my life. My sister had epilepsy (it is almost non-existent now) and I remember how my mother used to struggle for her. My father, as I remember was always so busy that he almost never accompanied her or me to the hospital. Also people in our social circle used to judge my sister, pass comments and I would feel this thing immensely. Despite her being the elder sister, people have always thought I was the elder sister because of how I would take care of her in the public places. Moreover, I have always seen my parents fighting since my childhood and the fights were very intense. My mother and grandmother (father’s mother) have never been able to get along with each other and so my father and uncle (father’s brother) would always tell my mother off. I have seen and experienced too much shouting and sometimes beating too. I have almost never seen my mother happy. Often I would lose control and cry in the dark places afterwards asking Allah to forgive me and deciding to not be rude ever again. But then again I would lose my temper in the next fight, be terribly guilty and it was the same cycle all over again. I’d like to add that we are all very educated and we have always lived among very educated people so I could never get used to the idea of getting beat up. Neither could I share it with anyone. My brother used to be in the hostel (cadet college) and my sister could not participate owing to her condition (even though the fights have affected her too). Hence I was the only one who had to sit between them and decide. Allah knows how helpless I felt. But I did try everything. I also tried being polite, being cunning; i would cry and make plans but nothing would work. They always seemed to be on the verge of separation and i would stay in constant state of being afraid. My temper got worse with time. I am not proud of my temper and I am not even justifying it; how I wish I could control it. I know how you should not even say ‘uff’ to your parents. And I wish you could see how much i regret the things I have done or said. Yet I am unable to control myself; i fail to understand why. I think to myself for hours and I still do not get any answers. I do not like to think that Allah may be angry with me because I know He always forgives me but I don’t get any answers either. I always feel confused and lost and nobody is to be blamed for it except me. Anyways when I got into university, I made new friends there. It was like a whole new happy world for me. I am Alhamdulillah good looking so many guys came after me. And even though I’m very weak and a sinful person, Allah mian saved me from committing any mistake in this regard. Anyways I made a best friend there and I would pour my heart out to her. But then she made a new guy friend and we started having fights because I could not share my secrets with anybody else. So finally she left me and I went into severe depression. The conditions in my home were still the same and I got seriously ill. But then Alhamdulillah I came out of it after few months. However i started having problems like racing heart beat and anxiety. I could not make any new friends in the university after this incident. Although there was this guy who would always be willing to listen to me I was never comfortable because ‘it was a guy’. I was very unstable and would cry all the time. She made new friends and I said sorry to her and her new friends many times to get back with her but they did not accept me. It’s been third year now since that incident. Also I have had many proposals during this time but my parents and I weren’t really serious about me; it was my sister’s turn (still is though) but we are facing trouble owing to her medical history. This was the background. Now let me tell you what I’m going through these days. I had a new proposal recently. I fell in love with the guy the moment i saw him and also I saw it (the idea of getting married) as an outlet to my loneliness, i was extremely happy. Our parents allowed us to talk while they investigate about the guy. So we talked for eight months; his family was not really happy with the way our family treated them and our family said they had their own very solid reasons for doing so. His family felt that they were not getting enough attention and our family said that it was my sister’s turn first and that they had already asked for time from them so they shouldn’t be complaining.

Anyways, just when my parents had decided my engagement date, my father found out some disturbing things about the guy (like he is impulsive and not really stable career wise) (please see that the i was already familiar with the career thing as the guy had told me himself but i thought i could adjust). So my whole family turned against him and said no to them. I tried my best to stop them. I could not believe it was happening. I was devastated. I fought with everyone, shouted and abused (I had never done it before and was extremely sorry immediately after it happened); I wasn’t in my right state of mind at all. I regret every single moment of it and I’m very afraid of my own self now. I lash out every time and I cry like crazy; I’m afraid I cannot control my temper. I feel very under-confident. I pray regularly Alhamdolillah even when I feel completely hopeless. Yes it always helps but then I begin to feel really sad, scared and lonely very soon afterwards. Now I miss that guy. I am still getting proposals but my heart is not ready at all. It’s been three months since we last talked but I miss him and cry like crazy. Now when he’s gone, I strongly feel that it happened for a good reason but I still miss him. I blame my parents for it during our fights but in my heart i believe that it all happened because Allah has a better plan. Yet I can’t move on. Why I’ve seen him in my dreams, not just once but many times. One night i was crying so much, i prayed to Allah to let see Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), i wasn’t even thinking about the guy. i did istakhara and slept but even that night i saw him. I saw that I was sitting in my bedroom and he was looking at me and then we were talking about random stuff (it’s just a rough summary). I sometimes feel like it could be Shaitaan because i had never planned on loving an earthly thing so much. I had always thought I was only going to love Allah and his Prophet (PBUH). So now when I see myself like this I feel ashamed. My parents however are more conscious now. They try to listen to me and the fights have also decreased. But not gone completely. Only very recently we had a big fight where I completely lost my temper and my confidence. My parents are tired of me and they always mention how my temper is a disgrace to them and I feel the same. And I just hope they forgive me. I used to say sorry to them after every fight but now I just don’t feel confident enough to face them because I lose my temper again. Also I don’t feel good easily now even if something good happens. I sit alone for hours and talk to Allah. It helps me a lot but when i come back into people I get confused again. I say very inappropriate things which I regret later on. So I’m spending my days alone and it’s been like this for quite a long time now. I want to get very close to Allah mian since I want to feel that true happiness but I keep on committing sins. Also I can’t move on.

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