the recovering undercover over-lover
I’ve lived most of my life as an undercover, over-lover.
The kind of person who lives and loves loudly, deeply, and passionately — but never openly. The kind who feels everything in private and performs composure in public. I learned early on that “too much” of anything made people uncomfortable, and knowing that’s how I saw myself,
I became quiet.
Controlled.
Palatable.
I became an expert at disguising devotion as composure and dressing pain up as grace.
I became the kind of person who gave everything and asked for nothing in return. Bleeding in silence, forgiving without limits, and calling it strength. I mistook self-abandonment for loyalty and suffering for love, convincing myself that enduring more made me worthier of staying.
This is a step in the direction of trying to recover from the version who thought love had to be painful to be real. Unlearning all the ways I made myself smaller in the name of connection and coming out of hiding—not to love less, but to love myself louder.
The other night, my best friend Faiza and I were on the phone chatting about what it really means to be a non-fiction writer sharing our real lives laced with painful memories, where the main character is you. We laughed a little at how unhinged that actually is— to be writing our autobiographies in real time, reliving and retelling harrowing stories from a life that’s still presently unfolding.
When I write, I’m not borrowing anyone else’s narrative. I’m recounting my own. And whenever life is good, it’s easy.
Because who doesn’t want to share the good?
It’s when life isn’t so good that everything shifts. That’s when what used to feel like a love story between you and your pen starts to feel impossible and you begin to second-guess the very thing you once loved.
That’s where I’ve been.
I stepped away from my blog, a place I built out of love, not because I stopped caring, but because things haven’t been exactly… peachy, despite what you may or may not have seen on the ‘Gram. Still, alhumdulilah, always. I know it could be worse, and for many, it is. Duality can be weird sometimes in that way, because how can I feel guilty and grateful at the same time? But such is life, two things can be true at once: I can be thankful and still be deeply hurting.
It’s been about four months since my last post, and in that time, my life has quite literally cracked open. Milestones. Missteps. Wins I don’t know how to celebrate and losses I don’t know how to name. I wish I could trace it all back to a neat beginning, a clean turning point — but the truth is, I’m still trying to understand it myself.
Six months ago, I was a wide-eyed, bushy-tailed ball of certainty. Sure of who I was and where I was going. But I think certainty is one of the most dangerous feelings a human can have, even more so as a Muslim.
Because now I’m here, trying to figure out how to say: I don’t know anymore.
Not about myself.
Not about my choices.
Not about my judgement.
And that version of the truth isn’t glamorous. It isn’t polished. And it certainly doesn’t feel very “Local Hot Girl” of me — or so I thought, until someone had to remind me that I never created this space to be perfect. I actually wanted it to be the exact opposite— I wanted it to feel real.
Messy. Soft. Angry. Joyful. Lost. All of it.
I thought it was totally normal to oscillate between confidence and collapse, and I think a part of me still does. That is, until I meet people who can tell you exactly who they are in under a minute. And suddenly, I felt defective, again.
Was something wrong with me?
And if so, what the fuck was it, and how do I fix it… quickly?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anyone is “perfect”. We’re all flawed, fickle and inconsistent. But I’ve always found myself admiring certainty in people. It’s something I’ve always been drawn to, especially because I haven’t always felt that way about myself. I’m learning that instead of judging myself for it, I get more bang for my buck by remaining more curious than critical.
Life can be cruel in that way—digging up the parts of you that you buried just to survive. It’s forced me to look at versions of myself I froze in time, many moons ago. And being honest about that felt like exposure therapy, so I chose isolation instead. It felt safer. Quieter. Familiar.
But you can’t heal a broken heart alone. I don’t think you’re meant to. And over these last few months, I’ve experienced heartbreaks I didn’t even know were possible. A domino effect of loss. And somehow, I didn’t completely fall apart, like I usually do.
But you wanna know the hardest part?
A lot of it was of my own doing.
My own delusion.
My own disassociation.
My own refusal take shit for what it is.
I built my entire identity around what I could give, and not who I was. I believed love was something you earned by being useful—by overextending and by abandoning yourself quietly and consistently. So I let people hurt me, I forgave them anyway and eliminated my boundaries all together. Over and over again, as if the first five times weren’t painful enough.
I thought by being forgiving, it made me valuable.
I thought by being needed, that made me lovable.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
The truth is, I just didn’t respect myself all that much and people moved accordingly. I learned that lesson in the most brutal way possible. This summer felt like I was on top of the world, like I was flying but we all know that the higher you are, the harder you fall. And I fell, crashed and burned.
A year or two ago, I was having a conversation with a friend who’d moved out of her family’s home but couldn’t outrun herself and I didn’t fully understand what she meant by that. I figured, surely once you’re out.. you’re out. But no, in fact it’s quite the opposite which she also shared but again I couldn’t comprehend until it was my turn. I wanted so badly to be a different version of myself, a happier more confident version of myself but regardless of the zip code, I would meet myself at every turn in big, bold, blaring lights.
I hesitated to share any of this because I wanted to feel good about posting again. I mean, I’m living in an answered prayer, and yet here I was, unhappy and unfulfilled, again. I had no intentions of being a spectacle of sadness and certainly, not after I thought I had made my dreams come true. But I also never intended to perform in this space nor do I ever want it to appear heavily curated.
I built this space to be real.
To be honest.
To be unfiltered.
To be me.
Pretending everything was fine just to appease people who were never my people would be the biggest betrayal of all.
So,
I write for the unkempt.
The unfiltered.
The ones who feel too much, know too little, and are trying anyway.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a pretty ending to give you. I don’t have a lesson wrapped up in a bow or a version of myself that has it all figured out. What I do have is this: I’m still here. Still breathing. Still writing. Still trying to meet myself with more honesty than fear. I’m learning that healing isn’t loud, or linear or even glamorous. Sometimes it just looks like showing up broken and still choosing to exist. It looks like telling the truth even when your voice shakes. I don’t know what version of me comes next. I don’t know what parts of my life will make sense later. But what I do know, is that I don’t want to abandon myself ever again, in this never-ending process of becoming.
So if you’re reading this and you feel like you’re unraveling too—you’re not behind. You’re not failing. You’re not wrong for still needing softness where the world is hardening you beyond your own comprehension. You’re figuring it out, and so am I .
The only thing I can leave you with is that this space will never be perfect. But it will always be honest.
And for now, that’s enough.
ciao for now —
always, in always ♥︎
