Hello everyone does anyone knows abouut any anxiety medication I can take that is safe for the fetus during the pregnancy? I am currently taking clonazepam but that has a high risk is there anything as strong and less risky?
Blessings!
Kadyja
i WANT TO THANK TERESITA FOR BEING THERE FOR ME TODAY AND MAKING ME FEEL WELCOME!
CHEERS!
Hello everyone as you know I lost my baby about 3 months ago and I really want to try to have my last baby. This is something that is very important for me. I have tried to lessen all medications, right now I am only taking one pill of clonazepan of 2mg per day. However the doctor said it would be best if I did not take any medication during the first trimester, but my psiquiatrist said that he does not feel I can manage my anxiety with less dosis. However I feel that doctors here do not really research or look for other options of new medications. If there is anyone in the network that knows about a medication I can take for anxiety that has the fewer side effects of risks for the fetus please let me know!!! Thank you all!
Blessings,
Hello everyone I would like to ask if anyone knows about an anxiety medication that has the less risk on the fetus for pregnant women? if you know about any please let me know. I am now taking clonazepan but I need to change it if I want to try to have another baby. I know that pregnant women should not take any medication at all but in case I need to I want to have something that has the less risk possible!
Hello everyone! I pray you are all good! My nephew was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I want to help as much as I can. Can all of you who have this problem tell me what is the best way to go. How can I best help him? he does not want to take meds and I talked to him and said that it is very important but I think it would be so much better if I can really explain why the meds are important. He still is in denial and he says he does not have anything that his changes of mood are normal. Let me know how I can best help him.
Many Blessings!
These are sad days for me. Everyone around seems to continue with their lives as if nothing had happened but in my mind I have all the memories that one year ago these were the last days God allowed me the blessing to have my mother alive in my arms. Today I was thinking that almost all my worse fears have happened and somehow God has given me the strength to be here. I am not sure how well I am after all these sorrows, fears and battles. I know it has being a long and hard road to walk in, but God has being with me because otherwise I would not be able to be here. I learned not to say that things cannot get any worse because things can always get worse! Believe me they can! It has being almost one year and I still miss you as if you had left me yesterday!
Love,
Kady
I can’t find a way to explain my feelings, for many years I cursed my luck for being sent here. Human life is difficult but as life phase comes to an end, I realize and learned that I am lucky and blessed to have lived it. I have being thinking a lot about my mother these days, because one year ago during this week it was the begging of the end. This was the last week she was with me.
Hello friends today I receive a very polite e-mail from the administration and I think they will probably kick me out of this site. It is something sad because here I have found many friends and in a way a window to the world to see things in different ways.
Not like this is just one more of the bad things that happen or restrictions that I have in my life. I already live in a very strict culture and now the site considered that my journal entries are inappropriate.
Well… first I would like to apologize to the network members if they ever felt that I have being trying to evangelize through my entries or sharing about me. I write about how I feel and how things are in my country and culture but I do not expect ANY of you or it was never my intention to invite you to become Jews. Yes I have shared how it is like to live in this side of the world and under rules and traditions but I consider that I have never asked anybody to pray to my God. I have asked repeatedly to you to pray for me. Each of you should pray to the God you believe in and your faith. Having a mental illness is hard enough and some of us have found that the only thing that we can hold on is God. The God you chose to follow or pray is not for me to tell any of you, actually I think that God has many names and faces.
In one of my recent journal entries I wrote that if you had any questions regarding me or my culture to feel free to ask. I was not meaning religion I was meaning lifestyle. The reason why I posted that is because I know I look different and I am different and some may have questions about my culture but might feel it is inappropriate to ask or that it would bother me. Well it does not bother me when people ask me questions about me or my country or culture.
If that is evangelism… then I think none of us should talk about our countries or traditions. Once again I do appreciate all your prayer for me (Whatever your God is, and I don’t care who or how you are praying to)
I have being going through many difficult situations and this site is precisely to help people who are going to difficult situation and have illnesses. If our faith whatever that is helps us during these difficult times I do not see any bad in sharing that. I respect all of the members of the network regardless their religion, their sexual orientation, race, color or nationality.
Unfortunately once again it seems like it is not like that for me. Again please excuse me if any of you have felt like I have being trying to evangelize you. I haven’t!!! Stick to your faith whatever that is, and stay strong with the God you worship.
Why can’t I feel better this time I have really tried to look for help and try to do things the right way. Sometimes I feel like I am doing what everyone else wants but not what I want, but really nobody would care or allow me to do what I want to have anyway. I don’t want to be so angry all the time and so upset! I want to learn how to smile and laugh again. It has being so long since I really laugh and was completely happy! What if I can’t find my way to forgiving and to being happy again? What if no matter how hard I try I am not able to do everything that I am told? What if things do not change between my husband and I and no matter how hard I try to love him the way he deserves I still can’t? I feel bad because I know he loves me and he is trying to be patient but it is not him it is me, it is me and my mind and soul that are in another place. Please pray for me! My daughter is in love and that is a huge problem if the family does not accept this boy! They will blame me for it and I am ready to accept it but she is really looking forward to his visit. What if the family is right and it would be best for them to chose for her and chose wisely and not with the heart? What if he hurts her? What if she ends up being like me unhappy because he disappoints her? Please pray for us!
Seeing her and seeing her so excited is like seeing myself when I was her age with that sparkle in her eyes! Her entire life ahead of her! So many dreams and illusions, and it makes me smile but at the same time it makes me nostalgic, because if things do not turn out the way she think this will turn into an obsession and an obsession is more powerful, living a life based on a memory that will not come back because time does not come back.
I know that some of you want to ask me questions about my religion and culture and don't write because you are afraid it might offend me, but it does not. if you want to know anything let me know and I will be more than happy to share with you how my culture and my land is. If only some of you can see the dessert! sometimes I feel that I am lost somewhere in there.
I have read several of the journal entries and sometimes I can feel I know what most of you write and sometimes I feel so far away from being able to understand. Maybe it is because I live in a different world a world that for most of you is very strange and you will never understand or maybe is because I don’t think any mental illness is alike they are all different because God created us all unique. Therefore although another friend who is today reading this has depression it will not be the same depression that I have, and that makes it so much harder for doctors to treat. I agree with a friend that wrote to me of the network and said that psyquiatrists and psychologists just don’t have the time to listen to us and to be honest maybe they are tiered because although I pray someday I will feel completely cured this is something that is slowly treated and to see any results it also takes time. What works in one patient does not necessary work in another patient.
Anyway today I am afraid. I am really trying to be more close to my faith and to what the faith expects of me but mainly I do not believe in religion I believe in a personal relationship with God. Yes religion is important, and for someone like me and the place I live it give you identity it teaches you where you came from and the history of your people, roots are strong and people feel secure when they feel they are part of something much larger. In all that I agree but I also think that my relationship with God is unique and maybe it is not exactly the way my family or David’s family expect. I don’t think that makes it better or worse it is just different. But not many think like this.
I am afraid because I have lost my sense of stability and security and although I know David is trying hard, I believe God is trying to teach me to trust him and that we will not lack of anything not for me or my children, but in my little human mind I keep pushing myself beyond my own strengths because I see how much money he is spending in food and the necessary things and how hard it is. I want to help and I have always helped, so that is why I am so anxious to find a job. Tomorrow I will go to some interviews, please pray for them. My Aunt Soraide says that nothing happens if God does not want it to happen and I completely agree with her, but also we need to ask and take steps of faith. I was reading the bible and I felt afraid that God would not listen to me because I am still angry. It clearly says that I need to forgive others to be forgiven! And yet although I have tried so hard to find in me to forgive some of my family members and David’s family! But to be able to forgive I also need to learn how to forget and some things that have happen have made scars that have heal with time but are still there close but there. I wish there was a magical formula or a step by step guideline on how to forgive a person but there isn’t each case is unique and each heart is unique. What might be very serious and hurtful to me might mean nothing to some of you. Anyway yesterday the clinic (public health care) psychologist was telling me that I needed to change my mentality and learn how to forgive and I just wanted to stand up and say
“ Do you think I want to live like this?” I do not think any of us in our minds want to live a life of depression, anxiety or feeling bad. She is a young woman and I just wanted to say “listen I do not know your life but when you have gone through everything I have gone through then you can come and tell me to forgive others…” and yet I know she is right. Not forgiving only affects me, because being realistic my family and my family in law does not even care what I feel at all. If I am happy, sad, mad, depressed they could care less. They just care that I do as I am told and not to do anything against our traditions that will bring shame to our families. So carrying all these feelings is only affecting me, but how do I get rid of them? How do I forget? Is there any advice any of you want to give to me? have any of you accomplish this? Everyday that goes by I realize that live is short and I feel like my life has being stolen away from me. I cannot do things that other can, and I don’t understand why… now I even have to ask cousins or someone to come with me when I go out so that I am not alone. That does not bother me as much but there are so many things that I resent of these both families and I wish I could erase all that from my mind from my heart but it is not that easy! Please help! Because everyday things are getting worse for me.
Sometimes life is not what you plan it was going to be for you. Most of the times plans don’t turn out the way you think they are. Today I have being home all day long. I don’t feel good and I have being knitting a lot to keep my mind distracted, but I am melancholic thinking of so many memories of so many things that at some point could have changed my life. I started writing my story in the computer it is like an autobiography I am doing it because I think that in some ways when I go to a doctor they always ask me who am I, or the story of my life and they sit there but I feel like they are not really listening, they are worried about their next patient. I saw the movie of Hunter Patch Adams and I felt so connected with him when he sat in front of the doctor and was sharing his most deep and intimated feelings and situations and the doctor could care less what he had to say. He even used some harsh language and the doctor did not even notice it. Why are they like that? I mean I know it must be exhausting to listen to people complain about their life all day long but if that is not what they wanted why did they studied medicine in the first place? It is not a computer; it is people’s life what they are dealing with. Anyway after seeing the movie I was certain of two things
1. I would love to get in touch with that wonderful human being who saw beyond a social status and reach out to help those who really need it. I loved the scene where the cranky man is dying and Patch comes in the room and regardless that was such a sad moment knowing his friend was going to die he had the courage to joke about it. He said “that turquoise color really fits you well…” that must have being so hard. I admire him and I would love to share with him my story, but I know that is very unlikely that it will happen. I thought about sending him a letter or e-mail but he receives so many that why should mine be different and reached him? These type of people have secretaries and assistants that answer all the mail in a template.
2. I also realize that in some places dreams do come true. He became a doctor and he practices medicine in a way no other person does. He understands that every day we are closer to our death but he is not afraid of it he is afraid of not giving a quality of life to those around him. He was able to see the 8 fingers instead of the 4 fingers and he figure out a way to make everyone feel useful. That was nice.
After I finished seeing the movie I decided to write about me in a more deep and detail way because next time I am asked by a doctor who am I? I will hand out a package of papers and tell them to read it and that all the information they need to know is there. Maybe then they will pay a little more attention. David my husband was mad at me and said that I did not understand that we live in a country where there are not enough doctors and that at least he who works with cancer patients in the radiotherapy unit has to see more than 60 patients per day. I know that is a lot of people to see every day but someone need to stop and think that quantity is not quality. Anyway the lack of doctors will not be resolved and I think that David does not understand that it is different because all the fields in medicine are different.
So I did, I started writing about me, tears came out of my eyes, and I realize how much I changed during these years. The person I was when I was a teenager got lost in the dessert that I see every day, she is somewhere in that sand lost and alone, her life was not what she thought and she settle to be what she was expected to be. Writing about my life was a good thing because I remember so many things some made me smile and laugh and some brought tears to me again. I am still writing because the story of my life cannot be written in one day, but it was a start. Somehow it was like seeing me in a mirror and maybe that will allow me to analyze what I have done good and bad, all the things that I still need to change what I can and cannot do and so many other things. My daughter worries me a lot. She has being friends and later started a relationship with a nice boy in New York. He saw her in her Hi5 site or something like that. She is not supposed to be using the computer as she wishes but I have written many times that I want my children to know other people and have the right to chose. Anyway they feel in love or at least that is what they think. He is coming to visit her and he will arrive next Friday. I don’t know how things are going to be. She has come to me so many times to help her. I have helped her because I want her to live and have everything I did not have, so I have had to come up with stories and things to help them both. I don’t know if I am doing the right thing or not. The boy will arrive on Friday and stay with my uncle. He is suppose to be a friend of my family in the UK that although I have not talked in more than 15 years they know I exist so in our culture we do not deny hospitality to anybody and he is suppose to be in a tourist visit. I am taking a huge risk with all this because my parents in law are already mad at me because of being the way I am and having a different mentality. If they find out I am helping and supporting my daughter to meet and chose what she wants to do in her life I can be severely in trouble! But I am doing this for her because she is the greatest blessing in my life and although she is spoil and do not appreciate things I do for her, someday she will and while I am alive she will always have my support to help her be happy and find out who she wants to be. Many years ago I had to say good bye to the person I loved I don’t want my daughter to marry without knowing and feeling a first kiss of love. If time has helped me heal many wounds but time can be your best allied to forget or your worse enemy. Please keep praying for my health and for me to find a job and to be able to work soon and help and feel a little more free.
Today has not being the best day for me; I am tired of talking about things that happen over and over again with my family and especially to my husband. I know that in a previous journal entry I wrote that I was going to try to be better and follow traditions and customs, but it is not easy. Every since I came back I have being repeating to myself that this was the right thing to do and that everyone is better here and much happier and that is true except for me. Today my husband and I had a serious argument. When we came back I had to face 3 difficult things inside me that nobody seems to understand because people here do not understand why I am sad about that.
1. I am happy to back in my own house but this is the house where I lived with my mother her last years and every wall every comer of this house has so many memories of her, I remember her smile at the end of her days she never smiled anymore, I pray she is now smiling in heaven with all those that are now part of my past and are with her in heaven. There are people around me and yet I feel so lonely without her I miss her so much and love her so much and I will until the day I die.
2. I miss my baby, I miss what it would have being like to have him running in this house and bringing joy to my life. My children are God´s biggest blessing in my life but they are growing so fast and they are older now and they do not need me as much as they used to.
3. I am so tired of being promised by my husband that things will change that he will give me permission to do things that I want to do such as find a job as soon as things are better with both our families because he knows that they are so angry at me. Everyone sees me like a rebel that has not learned anything for all my failures in previous jobs. Maybe I haven’t and certainly things for a woman who works here and in Palestine were not easy but the money I made allowed me to pay for the studies of my children. Both my uncle and my father in law think that working has encourage in me ideas of being even more “liberal” and “rebel”. Last week there was an opportunity to teach English to children and I wanted to work in this because I think like I am prisoner of my own life here at home, plus I want to make money and although I have never receive a salary because it is given to my husband I know that allows me to pay for my children studies and buy things I want for my house. I am not asking to work so that I can travel and make fancy things just simple things. Today I was told that I was denied that right for now. They will see my behavior and later decide if I shall work or not. I was so sad and mad; I hang up the phone when my husband gave me the news. He came home and wanted to talk to me he was trying to explain that there is a time for everything like the Bible says but I told him that that I was tired of having to live under the rules and conditions of his father and my uncle. Yes, I know that I am a rebel and I should have not answer back to my husband but it is true I am tiered because I want to be able to answer to myself in what point in my life I lost control of it and they took over, how did I allow them to make me be who I am now. I have done things or at least tried to do things the way they want and yet it is not enough because I am not like the rest and to be honest I do not want to be like the rest of the women here. If they are happy good for them but I have other mentality, other goals and dreams, and I pray to God that he will open doors for me to just work and make the money to have what I want. I do not allow going out alone always have to be with someone of the family they say it is for my own good but I feel like a prisoner of my life. They can do so many things and I can’t. When I said this to David today he said I had gone out today and yes it is true I went to the market and to pick up my daughter at school but I had to take Latifa with me. Rules must be obeyed. David said that he loved me so much and I was crying while we were talking because I was saying that I missed the days when my mother was with me and I missed working and having more rights and he said that he loved me. I told him that I did not understand that kind of love where the first thing is obedience and so much fear to traditions and to family and then comes me and his feelings for me. He said that he had always loved me but that I should learn to love him by being with him, and I do but my concept is different. I am so mad that I was denied the right to work for now. We need the money I want to be able to give more things to my children and yet I can´t. David tried to hug me and he said that love never comes early or late it always comes in the perfect time of God. That is true but I feel that for me, love came early and was taken away from me and then imposed on me another love that was not of my choice. I have tried to learn to love David and I believe with time I have learned how to do it but there is something missing. David does not deserve this and I feel so guilty all the time because I know that he loves me and he is in the middle of trying to make me happy within his possibilities but he cannot go over the elderly of the family. However I think he deserves someone that is happy with all this rules and customs and that would love him as much as he loves me. I love him differently. I know I will always be with him until the day I die but I wish there was more to this relationship than what we have now and I know there will not be.
I cried for a long time and Latifa came to my room to stay with me I hugged her very strong and cried even more, I said that I did not understand this type of love and I miss my mother and my father, somehow everyone I have loved so much are now part of my past. I know that I need to forgive to be able to be forgotten and to let go but it is so hard for me because I have so many painful memories and things have being so hard for me that I feel I have so many resentments for my father in law and my uncle now it is like having constant flashbacks of my life and realizing it was not what I expected it to be. David has many qualities he has a very nice and sweet side but he can also be so cruel and mean if you disobey him or don’t do what he says. Latiffa hugged me and was there for me just a shoulder to cry on and she kept repeating that I need to be smarter and not face or confront them because she said that when I was a teenager I had very little to lose but now I do have a lot to lose, back then I had a lifetime to change my mistakes and correct them but now I don’t and the price that a women here pays for her mistakes is much higher. I just want to try to have a normal life under what we can call normal, have job that allows me to buy and pay things and not live only on what my father in law decides it the right amount for my children and I. My father in law says that I am a spoil woman because my father gave me an education instead of teaching me how to be a good wife, and maybe I am but I want my children to have the same. Is that so bad??? I don’t know but there are so many emotions I want to scream at them, run away, I miss my love ones that are now with God, there are so many people around and yet nobody understands everyone says that I should be crying because of how blessed I am so why don’t I feel that way??? I am so tiered of swimming against current. Some of you have said to me that I am brave but I am not I am just trying to survive and have a better life and fight for the ones I love but it is not easy. Being brave is does not mean the absence of fear it means the capacity to face that fear and I do not know if I have that capacity, I have being trying for so long and have not achieve what I want. God please help me please give me strength to be what YOU want me to be! Give me wisdom to know the way I shall walk in, to give hope to my daughter and myself and to those who have no hope, to bring happiness where there is no happiness but I am not happy inside me. Please help me be happy with my life and accept things the way they are and not try to change fate and destiny the more I run from it the more it runs towards me. I want to have dreams and goals again, why are things so difficult for me now? I thought that maybe just maybe things were going to be better because when my mother died everyone kept saying that I now had an angel watching over me but it is now when things seem harder than ever and when I am more alone and sometimes I don’t know what to do. God please answer me give me a job, or make me feel better in my body and soul.
Today has not being a good day for me. I know that I should rest but I have always worked so hard sometimes more than what my own body can take and that has made me sick. I am sick now but in the name of Jesus I will be heal. However today I was unable to eat or get out of bed. Things that are so simple for many for me are so hard, but everything happens for a reason and I know that things will get better I need to believe this. My husband’s family and my family are so angry at me because I think differently that they have cut the support to us, and that makes things harder for us. However I need to believe that God will find a way and take care of things and bills that need to be paid. I still need to make more tests and that will be more medical bills to pay. I feel so sad that I cannot run and knock on every door to find a job and be healthy and help my husband now. I know that I should not be angry at my family or my husband’s family but I do not understand why they are taking away the support to their own son just because they do not like me. They don’t like me because they say I am a rebel. My aunt had a conversation with me and said that I could not be happy because I was divided in two worlds, he said he is very worried because he sees in my eyes that I want to live everything that I left behind, dreams of having a solid job and be a successful woman who works to give my children a better quality of life. He said that people have the tendency of wanting to live what is in the past and that is not possible because the past is like an illusion in the dessert that the more you ran to find it the more it runs away form you. I have given up so many dreams of my own, I have changed so much, and being at home now makes me realize how much I have change. I am not a teenager anymore who had nothing to loose by confronting my family, back then I had a life time to correct all my mistakes but now I don’t have that and I need to think on my children first. My children are the biggest blessing that God has given to me, the moment they were born and I hold them I memorized every line of their faces and fell in love with them. I pray that soon I will have the health to find a job and help my husband with the economy of our house. Many people in my family are so angry at me because they say I want to live the life of the western world and they have cut any support they were given to me before. I need so much to be healed spiritually, physically and emotionally. Friends please pray for me! Pray for physical and spiritual health. I have being having many troubles to sleep and I write and last night I just sat and looked at my husband sleeping. I realize how hard he is trying to make me happy and all he has faced to defend me and yet although I love him I am also angry at him that he is not able to stand up to our families and defend me the way I want to. He supports me but he fears our traditions and his family so much that he just supports me in a very superficial way. I feel like I am fighting all battles alone, but I know I am not alone God is with me and yet I don’t know if God is also mad at me and everyone here is right and I am wrong. While he was sleeping I realize that he deserves a much better wife than me. I am not what he deserves, he deserves someone who loves him with all the heart and soul and that does not bring storms to his life and troubles with his family. I am not that person but yet in the math of the heart one does not decide who we should love or who we fall in love with. I do not deserve him, he loves me so much and I only give him troubles. I have tried to be better since we came back but in me there is a free spirit and I wanting so many things that are not part of him. I wish I can be the wife he deserves. My life is up side down now. I have lectures of my family all the time and regarding my husband’s family they do not even want to talk to me, I really do not care about that but I care about my husband and I know that hurts him. He is in the middle of having to choose to follow our traditions and please his family or supporting me with my way of thinking. I was so weak today and the doctor did not see me he was too busy… I have being trying to see the doctor since last week and no luck yet, but tomorrow will be another day and will go again to the clinic and wait until he can see me. I need to get better and feel healthy to work. My cousin says I am taking life too fast and that I should give myself sometime to rest, because she knows how hard I worked in Palestine. Being here had made me realize how fast time goes by and how much I miss my mother and father. I feel so lonely in this world, in such a short period of time I have lost so many love people. I pray to God that he will give me comfort to go on and move on like they would have whished. I know that everything that is important in my life and in our lives is everything that money cannot buy. I need to feel God’s love in me and I am not feeling it maybe because I am doing something wrong or maybe He is here with me even if I do not see or feel I need to believe that He is there and He is listening and He wants my happiness. I have so much to fix in me, I need to learn how to smile again, how to laugh and be the person they would have like me to be. Sometimes I feel I am trying to please everyone but no matter how hard I try it is never enough. I wish I knew what God wants from me and I wish I knew how to be that person or do what He wants me to do. Please keep praying for me.
I don’t think I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of time, of not having enough time to figure out what I was suppose to be in this world, and not having done what I was suppose to do. I am afraid of not having enough time to see my children grow. Time never walks backwards it always walks forward, and yet for me it seemed like I have frozen time and refuse to move on. I do not understand why I don’t want to move on or can’t move on. Yet I know that all the rest of people that have meant something strong and important in my life did move on and continue with their lives, why can’t I do it. I don’t understand why I am so angry all the time. I thought a lot about it last night. I was unable to sleep and went to the window and looked at the sky and try to talk to God. Maybe I am so angry all the time and I am angry and dislike my husbands’ family so much because I somehow feel I was taken my right to decide what I wanted to do with it. Maybe it is best the way things are now, because if older chose for you they chose wisely and with their minds, while if you chose you chose through your emotions. However, even if things would not have worked out it would have being my choice and I would be blaming myself for any failure. God is good and wise; by being part of this culture He protected me from myself and my impulsive decisions. However now I wish that God would allow me the blessings of being happy of how things are and feel so bless so happy for my family, not see only their defects but focus on their few virtues. Yet I cannot do that, I am so angry at everyone, so angry of not have a saying, this morning I was arguing with my husband and he told me to “shout up”, and I had to stay silent. To be honest I wanted to scream back and say that I was not going to shout up because I was only saying the truth about his family. Then he said that when you do not have anything good to say to stay silent is the best you can do. On our way back here they were showing a movie in the airplane called THE BUCKET LIST. I am sure many of you, have seen it. It is a story about two elderly men who are dying of cancer and make a list of all the things they want to do before they die. One is a very wealthy person so money is no impediment. The other is just a regular family man, somehow I think this second one was happier. Anyway while they are doing all the things in the list they visit Egypt and when they are in the peak of the pyramids the Afro-American man who was very intelligent and well educated tells the other the story about ancient believes of the Egyptians. They say that when someone died the guards of heaven asked two questions and depending on your answer you would enter heaven or not. The two questions where:
Where you happy in your life?
Did you make other happy?
I am sure that regardless of my feelings I have made others happy, now regarding the second question I am not sure what my answer would be and much less in this moment of my life. We believe that on judgment day God will only ask two questions to us:
What did you do with the gifts I gave you?
How many people you brought to my feet?
When I was young I thought I could change the world, I wanted to be a missionary, travel and talk to others about the love of God. I don’t think that was a selfish dream but it did not happen, I never understood why. I am not sure what my answers to our questions would be.
I feel so sick. I am so weak and feel so vulnerable now. I feel so much anger towards my husband’s family. I pray those feelings will go away. I just want to learn how to laugh and smile again and have the opportunity to feel life and give birth to a healthy and beautiful baby. I know I will have to wait for that because now I am weak and sick. I cannot even leave the room without feeling dizzy and having to go back to bed, and yet in my soul I wish I had all the health in the world to knock on every door and ask for a job to help my family and have independence. God please help me! Help me know how to behave and what to do and how to get rid of so much pain, anger and sadness.
Friends please keep me in your prayers!
Cheers!
I found these lyrics of a song that is call It’s no good
bye. It made me think a lot about me and my
personal dreams of when I was just a teenager and
was sent here. I do not know how my life would
have been but it is what it is now and after
everything I have gone through I have made the
promise to the Lord that I was going to try my best to
be a good wife according to what the standards and
traditions of our culture is a “good wife” and that I
was going to forget about anything else and focus
only in my husband and try to make him and my
children happy. Still when I heard this song and
read the lyrics it moved me. I did add some
sentences to the lyrics.
And what if I never kiss your lips again, which I
know most likely will not happen.
Or feel the touch of your sweet embrace I still
remember when you put your hands around my
waist for the first time, I felt like I was going to cry
How would I ever go on Without you I feel that
there there's no place that I belong, somehow if like
my destiny was taken away from me and changed
Well someday love is going to lead you back to me,
or at least that is what I want to believe But 'til it
does I'll have an empty heart, and I feel strange
So I'll just have to believe Somewhere out there you
thinking of me. I know maybe you are not maybe by
now you have move on and I am still thinking of you,
but it is nice to believe that you think of me
Until the day I'll let you go, if I can ever do that, Until
we say our next hello It's not goodbye
'Til I see you again I'll be right here rememberin'
when And if time is on our side, which sometimes
times can be our worse enemy or our best ally
There will be many tears to cry
On down the road There is one thing I can't deny
for me It's not goodbye
You'd think I'd be strong enough to make it through
And rise above when the rain falls down
But it's so hard to be strong When you've been
missin' somebody so long
It's just a matter of time I'm sure But time takes
time and I can't hold on So won't you try as hard as
you can
To put my broken heart together again.
Accepting the will of God is one of the hardest things that one needs to learn in life but yet in my culture and in my world it is the key to survive and not be mad at yourself and the world all the time. Faith is the only thing that keeps one from going crazy. I don’t understand why but just like Job said I said Jehovah gave and He took bless it Jehovah. I have cried a lot during the last weeks and I thought that writing my feelings and somehow putting them in the journals would give me comfort. Receiving all your messages always have given me comfort and for so long I was unable to have access and now I have and this network does not only represent a place to express my feelings, thoughts and fears but also a place to have contact with all of you in another place of the world. A place where they say dreams come true or maybe not but many try. Now I do not even receive messages any more and I don’t know why. This week I went to the hospital to have the last parts of the placenta removed it was very painful, but the most painful thing was not the physical part but my soul. Knowing that my baby was no longer with me. I know he is in a better place now but my heart is even more broken now than it was already. I am sad all the time, it is like I am here in my flesh but I am empty inside and have lost the strengths to fight for everything I have believe all this time, and lost my direction. Why can’t I stop crying? Why have things in my life changed so much so fast if I am not such a horrible person? Or maybe I am just getting what I deserve for trying to be different in a world that is not ready for that. My uncle always said he was very concerned about me because my heart was divided into east and west. I wanted to live like a western person in the middle East and that will never be possible. He said that was his major concern with me and that I was very stubborn and impulsive. Time and failures have thought me to be silent and not fight so hard or express so much as I used to but it does not mean that inside me there are no dreams no illusions. I have dreams and illusions and wish they came true someday. My cousin said that I was so lucky. She has many more things than we do and she has a very wealthy husband and a lot of money, and yet she told me that that she envied me because she had never seen someone loved a woman so much as David loves me. I do not know if it is love or obsession. The first time David saw me I was dancing with some girls in my room and he saw me and he said I bewitched him since that moment. I did not even notice he had seen me and he told me that months after our engagement. There are many different types of love, and I guess all my life I had also being bewitched by a memory a memory of someone that I recently saw again and realized that had become a person that lives a convenient western playboy life. That even though I had dream with him all my life and not allowed myself to fully try to love my husband it was all in my dreams in my memory of a romance that happened 20 years ago. For that reason I promised to make things right this time and follow the rules of our culture and I promised my husband that for now on I was going to try to be the best wife there is. I really do not care anymore about feelings. I want to have a family of my own bigger and I want God to forgive me and allow me to give my husband more children. I want to feel life again, I need to learn how to live, how to breathe, I need to feel that my life has a meaning, because now I feel so empty in me. Maybe my family and David’s family are right and all this time I have being the wrong one. Maybe I do need to learn many things of this culture that although has being my home for almost 20 years is not in me. My family says that they should have never allowed me to visit and be raised in the UK with my father, but for better or worse I am glad I was given the opportunity and blessing to see other cultures and life styles. Should I allow the family to choose the husband of my daughter? Or should I keep fighting for her right to marry someone she loves? I am so grateful to my husband that he kept his promised and after brought me back to my house and we left his father’s apartment! That is something huge for me! I think that if I had spent one more day looking out that window with bars I would have gone crazy! Someone please write back!
Mom I miss you so much! I have no more tears to cry! I
can’t let you go. I submerge myself in work to forget
that you were not there anymore, but now I am back
and I miss you more than ever! I also miss my baby but
I am not going to say good bye to either of you. Time
has stop for both of you but time is not on my side, I
will not say good bye till I will say our next hell and see
you both again and hug you both, with no more tears to
cry, not more sorrows, no more pain, no more battles to
fight. Mom I wish you were with me and I could hug
you, I wish my baby was in my arms and someday that
thought will be true until then I will not say good bye.
September 28th, 2009
Another day goes by and I am still in the same room
staring at the window with bars. Sometimes I feel so
weak I feel that I am going to forget how breath, there
are no words to express what is in my heart and soul. I
have seen my dreams vanish in front of my eyes so
many times but yet somehow I always manage to find
strength and start again, somehow this time is
different. I have two wonderful, healthy children and
many of you can say I am ungrateful because I am
feeling the way I am, however I lost my mother and my
son in less than a year, I tried to prove to this family
and culture that a woman could take care of her
children if needed and was unable to do so, and in my
journey lost all I had worked for so long. Now I cannot
even ask my husband what he did with the money of all
the household things that he sold because I do not
have that right, it would be rude and disrespectful to
him. In less than one year I have lost so many things,
and to be honest material things are important but not
so much, someday somehow I will be able to buy my
children the things they had again, what is important in
life is what money cannot buy, the life of my mother,
the life of my son, they will live in me forever and there
will not be a day that goes by that I do not remember
them along with my father whom I also loved so much.
When the doctor allows me to go back to my normal life
I plan to go back to painting like my mother who was a
wonderful painter, I always thought about making a
biography of my life for others in the western world to
know what is like to live here even for a middle class
woman, maybe someday some Hollywood producer
would read it and make a movie and raise awareness,
maybe I can also do that… but for now I don’t want to
do anything. I have been in this room for so long that I
am really depressed and if the purpose of my father in
law was to teach me a lesson he did, believe me, he did,
I might be weak now, but somehow I will manage to find
strengths again and even with the economic crisis I
know I will find a job even if it is badly paid and
someday I will go back to having my full strength,
somehow that day seems so far away. He bended me
he finally manage to bend me to do whatever they want
and not question. I am breathing but I am not living,
should I listen to my heart before I try to put all the
cherish memories of my happy moments in a box never
to be open again? In my land there is a saying that says
that you should always take decisions with your mind
and not your heart, because your heart is a traitor to its
own owner, maybe it is right, following my heart has
caused me so much trouble. It is strange sometimes I
feel like I lost all hope and then I find strength to believe
things will get better and find hope again. What is
wrong with me? I need to learn to leave my past behind
me move on and never look back but somehow I cannot
do that, because although there are so many hard
moments and sad times in my past, maybe the
moments of true happiness are also in the box of my
past. I fear that if I put all that behind me I will also lose
the things that make me smile, like how much I loved
dancing with the traditional dresses that we dance here
and the veils, will I ever do that again? Someone please
tell me I will! Things will go back to happy times and
even if I gave up my dream to find love for myself I will
learn to love my husband and be a great wife, but I need
something that makes me happy, I need hope.
Cheers,
I have being crying for hours… I am back home! Finally it was so hard but my husband kept his word and promised. He brought me home today and I see now out the window and there are no more bars! J I still have bed rest because here when a woman has a miscarriage unless it is absolutely necessary she has a natural abortion which means that I have had to have all the pain at home and go through the emotional feeling of seeing parts of my unborn baby coming out of me. There are no words to explain how that breaks my heart. However I thank God and I have asked for forgiveness for my disobedience to all his plans for me and have promised to change and I know and have all the faith that God will give me the opportunity to have another baby soon in some months. Coming back to my house feels so good, it is the place where my mother was born, where I was born although not raised, but came back when I was 17 years old, and where my children where born also. Sad and happy memories are in the walls of this house. I have to admit that when I came in it was not easy. When I left so many months ago I know I was running away not to face my mothers death, and I submerge myself in work not to allow me to think of everything that had happened, but coming here brought it all back in seconds. I felt like running to her room and looking for her. Somehow everything is the same and at the same time it is all different and will never be the same. Economically we are very tight and have a lot of medical bills to pay and still more to come, but I know that somehow although maybe it will not be like it used to, we will make it and will manage and learn to live again. I need to learn to live again because for so long I have not live I have just survive and during the last months and weeks just breathe. I have had so much pain but what made me cry was being able to look out the window and see the park and mountains, the sky and tonight maybe the stars. I talked to my doctor and tomorrow I am going to the hospital to have an ultrasound and check. I have blood test that I need to make and many more tests and a long way to recovery. For the moment the doctor wants me to be in bed and that makes me feel useless, but I am so weak both physically and emotionally that bed rest is the best for me now. Friends please pray for my health, and pray that soon I will be blessed again with the joy of carrying life inside me and that this time things will be fine and good. I also talk to the psyquiatrist and we are going to start a program to take away all medication as much as possible. I know that is not going to be easy for me but to give my husband another son or daughter I am more than happy and willing to do it. Please help me in prayer! I also will look for a part time job when the right time comes and I am stronger. Now that I am not in my father in law’s apartment I want to run instead of walk in life, but I know I need to take this slowly and take one step at a time. I also know I need to learn to be humble and quiet with my husband’s family which maybe because of my personality it will be the hardest thing. I want to scream at them so many things, I want to say how unfair they are, how they say one thing and live another, and what they call love is everything except love, but all those thoughts and feelings will remain just in my mind and with all of you. I have learned in the past days to be quiet and silent. Sometimes I feel like if I am not even there when they are talking, and with time I know that God has given me wisdom to find ways to avoid being with them in the same room for long periods of time. Don’t get me wrong I cannot wish them any harm or bad things but I cannot agree with ideas and traditions that are not how I was raised up by my father, for me love to your children is unconditional and I was in love with my children since the moment I knew they were in me. Please pray!!!!
February 16, 2009
I have no internet and will not have access in some weeks, I feel so sad, lonely and scared that I decided to keep a journal and then publish it as just one entry (which I know will be very long) but God always has a purpose and maybe some of you be reading these entries will realize that your life is full of blessings and somehow I can give you hope. Two days ago we started our journey back to my country. It was very hard for me because the company which I worked for did not honor the contract we had and we had to use our savings to bring our house things back home. My husband travel first to made arrangements, and my cousin Latiffa, my children and I traveled last Saturday. Traveling was very hard because although many things were sent with a moving company we still had to bring many things and it was 8 large almost 100 pounds suite cases. I felt hopeless in many point of our journey back because the doctor asked me to have bed rest for the baby and it was dangerous for me to pull heavy luggage. The days before we left I met the only nice man in Palestine Khan Hamid, he knew I had no money and he was the owner of the moving company. He came to talked to me about moving details and found a woman that was so sad and needed that I think he felt sorry for me and said that he would assume some of the moving costs- When Mr. Kahn said he was going to help me, I started crying. It was one of the first expressions from a total stranger of support and kindness. Thank you Kahn! Traveling was hard and exhausting. We finally got to my country on Sunday at 3am. My husband had made arrangements for us to stay in his father’s apartments which are for rent. It is a very small place, and we are uncomfortable but I know this is just things and God willing we will be in our house between March 1st to 4th. I am so weak of working so hard for the past months that the first thing the family doctor asked me to do was blood tests and I have an important anemia. My family has not said much and has not called to say hello but I understand in many ways they are disappointed of me. I have never fit in any place. I never fit in my father’s family because I was a daughter outside marriage and was allowed to visit him only an for education reason, that is how I got to understand the western way of living and thinking. I never fit in my mother’s family because I was a result of a sin of my mother and my uncle had to assure my future by making me adapt to these traditions and life style which I never entirely accepted or agreed. Therefore for my mother’s family I was always a rebel that wanted to live the life of a person in the western world. I manage to get some concessions (authorizations) from my husband when I got married such as the right to work as long as he administrates the money and it is many to pay for education for my children. My father in law never liked me much he sees me as a rebel woman that is not raising his grandchildren according to the scriptures and I am spoiling them. To be honest I could care less what he thinks of me if he did not had power over me but he does. Now being in his apartment I feel so sad, back to the starting point. Somehow when we moved to Palestine I thought I was never going to have to come back and yes although things were much worse than I thought for women I somehow felt free of my family and my family in law. Now I am back and yes here things are a little better for me but I am under what they want me to do say and think. My family loves my husband and supports him in everything much more than what they have ever supported me. My aunts keep repeating to me how lucky I am that I have a husband like David and that he allows me to do things that many husbands do not allow. That it true, but being alone with Latifa my cousin and my children for almost 7 months made me feel free in some ways. I asked David if he could consider of giving me freedom by divorcing me but he said he would never do that. He explained that since the moment he saw me almost 20 years ago I got in his heart and that although I had done many wrong things to the eyes of his family he did not care because he loved me. I realized that he loves me much more than what I love him. I had always had this concept in my mind of a novel romantic love, but I guess that does not happen in my world and love for me is different. Please do not get me wrong I am honored and grateful to God for giving me healthy children and a husband that loves me to the point that he looks away not to see that I do many things that women here are not allow to do, however I miss that ingredient of romance in my life.
Anyway being here in this small apartment I can only see outside the window and all I see is bars that protect the apartments from thieves. Even the roof has bars, I feel like in jail and this is not even my cell it belongs to my father in law so therefore I now have to stay silent when he talks and says so many untrue and unfair things. I feel like I want to scream back at him and tell him that he is so wrong that the world is not what he thinks and says and that I have the right to choose how I want to live and raise my children but now I have to be silent and that is so hard.
Latifa is helping me to put my children again in schools and we are trying to save as much as we can to be able to buy all the school supplies. I feel so strange and sad; I don’t belong to this eastern or western world. I want things that I will never have. For a moment I thought I was able to survive on my own and now I am back to starting point but even worse because the eyes of both families are on me saying “see you got your lesson for trying to be different”.
I am also so scared for the baby but at the same time I need so much faith, yesterday the doctor made an ultrasound and could not hear his heart beat and said that was no good news, but like Ana prayed to have Samuel I have to have a faith stronger than anything that God is in control!
Today we went to make more blood tests and on the way back David was telling me how much I hurt him by asking him to be free and that while we were apart he always played on the radio the music I dance for him and the music I liked. I felt so bad, I wish I really wish I could love him more and feel that romantic love for him. I made a promise that if the baby is healthy and is born fine I will not try to fight my fate again and be the best wife that David can wish for. Everyone seems so happy to be back except for me, but it seems like my life has always being to make others happy and not think what I want and what makes me happy. Why do I feel this way? Why after so many years of living in this culture I miss what I saw and lived when I was a teenager, time does not move backwards, and now if I am not obedient I have much more to lose than when I was a teenager.
Please pray for my baby and my family.
Michael
