Fashion Mujahid's blog

Schenectady, you're surrounded. Come out with your head down.
Alas, if it were that simple! My marriage taught me, among other things, that I cannot control another human being's choices or actions; the end of my pregnancy is teaching me that God and my child have plans that are better than mine and I have no say. That lesson will be reinforced many, many times in the future, insha'Allah, and it's also giving new dimensions to my patience and my impatience.

My due date is tomorrow. That will probably be blithely ignored by Schenectady, but the significance of how far we've come, and the journey ahead, is worth noting. There is another being, a separate soul, just beneath my rib cage.S/he will be born soon, alive and healthy, insha'Allah, and a fate I cannot begin to imagine has already been decreed for the life currently kicking me. When we began this journey, I was more naive, but sadder than I am now. I am more cautious, but also filled with joy.

With my usual gusto and willingness to swim upstream, I'm seeking to have a birth experience with a minimum of medical intervention. No person, including me, can really control birth, but we can control the choices we make and the professionals whose help we seek, for the most part. Alhamdulillah, I've a midwife whose care philosophy includes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", a precept that I wholeheartedly agree with. However, I had to erase the following from my birth plan, as she thought the nurses (or an OB, if my midwife gets held up) wouldn't like it quite so much.
1. Episiotomy: you cut me, I cut you. Capisce?
2. No, I don't want an epidural. But if you're offering pain meds, my sis would like a vodka and tonic.
3. As you didn't pick the position in which I conceived, you don't get to pick the position in which I will give birth. You try to muscle me into some uncomfortable position, you'll be sporting a foot-shaped bruise.

Promoted to the front page

If I'd been in an actual classroom, I would have walked out in protest. But as this is an online class, I'm trying to distract myself in the hope that I'll be able to listen without wanting to scream at my computer. The insanity being peddled as fiqh sets my teeth on edge sometimes, and it makes me even crazier when it's insanity I paid to hear.

If I weren't living this, I wouldn't believe it.
My ex, at 400 Sunday morning, called demanding that I become a co-wife. Normally, I ignore his late night phone calls, but some half dozen calls in a row can be hard to just ignore. I responded to remind his sorry self what time it was, that I was pregnant, and to generally leave me the frick alone.He suggested this nonsense as a possible solution to the dispute over separation terms.
Never mind that it would put a quick, ugly end to his military career; never mind that it would be incredibly fiscally irresponsible. That chowderhead is ears deep in debt, and he suggested buying not one, but two houses? Whatever he's on, I want a hit during labor.

Two terms that you'll almost never see juxtaposed: latex burqa. But I saw them in a blog by a woman who wears one on a regular basis. Assuming that this isn't a grand hoax, this is a woman who lives in Ireland, is in a sub/dom relationship with her husband, and wears restricting and enveloping garments made of latex 24/7. No mention is made of religious or cultural background, but the author is clearly educated, fluent in English, and has an active social life, although her world is filtered through a layer of latex and any restrictions that her husband (who she calls "Sir") may choose to impose.

When life comes at you funny, you've got to laugh. Between the constant need to pee or eat, a soon to be ex who keeps finding excuses to call, and hunting for baby knitting/crochet patterns that won't nauseate me all over again, occasions for a good belly laugh abound, even though my life, some might say, is a wreck.

Being a single mother-to-be and domestic violence survivor is definitely serious business, but it's not a death sentence, nor will anyone benefit from me treating it like it is one. I have my life, one that is going through lots of changes as I seek to provide someone else with a life. But there are many women with more responsibility, more challenges and fewer resources. Who am I not to pray for them, be grateful for what I have, and yes, even enjoy it?

So, my husband has turned out to be an abusive, manipulative, unfaithful bastard. He's divorcing me, something that I am both grateful for and deeply saddened by. The brilliant dream I had of a God-conscious, loving family has shattered around me, and I contemplate a future of bearing and raising a child alone, a child who will grow up with half a heritage without a father.
Lord knows I wasn't the perfect wife. I could be quite the harridan at times. That said, I did everything I could to edify and preserve my marriage, even while my soon to be former spouse steadily demolished it. He does deserve credit, however, for the originality of his ideas: not content to merely be controlling, abusive, and fool around with heterosexual women on a social basis, pretending to be a lesbian and selling sex online does smack of imagination, if not morality. I wonder what the guys at the mosque that so admire him would think if they knew.

I'm in need of du'a right now; I'm making big moves in my life at a scary time. Me and Schenectady need all the love you can spare right now. And if I can ever find a scanner, I'll post an ultrasound pic.

I'm an iconoclast, a rebel, a square peg refusing to get stuffed in a round hole. Sometimes. In general, I like trends that go against the mainstream, if that makes any sense. I knit, I sew, I refuse to wear synthetics any more than I can get away from it. I whip up my own body products, and shun most conventional jobs. The day that my government-based health coverage accepts herbalists and direct-entry midwives for OB/GYN care into its networks will be a happy day for me, even though on that day, it will also snow in Hell.