THIS MORNING

I woke up this morning angry again. Yesterday I was fine, but today I want to flail out and hurt someone. I tried to move my bed and I couldn't do it alone. I needed help, and the one person I was supposed to be able to call upon has abandoned me. I am on the top floor of a fourth floor walk-up, living next door to my husband's best friend's who, having placed an order of protection against me, I can not even speak to. Right now I feel no pride in my religion. Right now I see Muslims and all I see is red. There, I said it. 

When I converted I expected to be embraced and loved. I expected to be inundated and surrounded by upright, straight people, who would extend their hand when needed. What I got was people who too often interpreted various surahs in the Qu'ran to be reasons they could use another person. How can you argue with a person who truly believes that lying to you is permissible because the Qu'ran told them so? So here I sit, a Muslim, with no one to play with. 

Muslims refer to each other, in greeting, as 'sister' and 'brother'. The notion is that we are Muslim and therefore related and responsible to one another. If only that were true and actually put into practice I would be living in a perfect world. I am angry and I am hurt. 

Last night I wet the bed. I was dreaming that I had to pee, and was unable to. A female figure in the dream kept telling me I could release my bladder if I only used the toilet that the queen used. I went into the queen's bathroom and was able to urinate freely. That is when I awoke to find myself in a full fledged puddle. I woke as though my brain were in a haze. I felt barely able to bring myself to. It was as if something else were mixed in my brain causing it confusion and an inability to navigate. Another dream that I had, after returning to sleep, was being sick in bed. Another person was in the other room tidying, and I was sure it was my husband B. This man came to me in bed and I turned to kiss him affectionately only to see that it was not B but in fact an old friend Patrick. I was shocked. My shock stemmed from the fact that I was sure that it was my husband that was caring for me. It startled me to see that my husband was nowhere and in his place was a friend. It is obvious to me the meaning of this dream, and it is obvious to me why I awoke with rage and hurt. 

Betrayal is a heartbreaking entity. My husband betrayed me. I now know that he never loved me. Of all the men I have known he is the first that I am sure I will never speak to again. I do not say that because I am angry and refuse this but rather because in order to come together again, after a breakup, one needs to come clean and admit one's wrongdoing to self and other. In my heart and bones I know he will never do this. I have not only lost a husband I have lost a friend.

Is it true that I will never have another friend in the future? Is it so that all those that love me deeply and unconditionally are those that I have known since childhood?

I called C up on Sunday after having not spoken to him in 6 years. The last time we saw one another was in a Vermont courtroom and I had been granted a five year order of protection against him. He asked the judge if he could at least write to me, and I refused this small request. I do not regret this as I needed that additional emotional space at that time. When I called C Sunday, the first words he uttered were, 'how are you' and, 'If you need anything, just call'.  As a friend should be, we picked up were we left off. He is now married. He is happy. He verbally placed me where he knows I belong for him: as someone he has known for thirty years, as someone who stretches back to that time when he met his first wife, now deceased, Maud, my childhood friend. I am thankful that I found again an old friend at the same time I loose a husband and what should have been an eternal friend. I am able to at least plug one leak in my heart.

Life is bittersweet.