Dear Mom, I’m in Love

Dear mom, I’m in love with a man you will never approve of and it breaks my heart. I guess it’s a blessing and a curse to be born into our culture; our culture is what made our family so unique and special; it’s a big part of who I am, but our culture is also the reason I am terrified of breaking your heart and mine. Mom, he is kind, and sweet; he makes sure every restaurant we go to has Halal food can you believe that? He pushes me to do things I never thought I would experience in my lifetime, and he loves me the way I’ve always wanted to be loved, the way you taught me love is supposed to be like, he loves me unconditionally like you do. But he doesn’t believe in what we believe in, his beautifully cluttered mind doesn’t like the idea of religious rules, yet he tries to understand mine and he makes a great effort at accommodating and respecting my religious boundaries. My love for him doesn’t mean I abandoned my faith mom, is it greedy to want both? And I know what you’ll say, I know there are so many great men that believe like me, with a faith like mine, and a culture like ours, but none of them are him and none of them touched my heart the way he did. I have tried, my god I have tried to not fall for him, I’ve tried so hard but I failed and it’s the first time in my life that I am so utterly proud of myself for failing.

Dear mom, I’m afraid the way I feel about our beliefs will eventually make me resent the man I now consider somewhat of a soulmate and it is so hard to go through alone. There is a voice in the back of my head that tells me this will never work, it tells me that this is my personal version of a real life fairytale that’ll run its course, but never end happily, the voice sounds like yours. Countless days and nights I’ve wanted to reach out and vent about an argument I had with him or the doubts I’m constantly haunted with to hear you tell me the world isn’t falling apart, to hear you say it will be okay like you always do when I’m troubled. And even more times I’ve wanted to tell you about a wonderful date we’ve been to, or send you a beautiful picture we’ve taken where I’m smiling my gummy smile you’ve always loved, yet I backed down every single time.

Remember how I’ve had visiting Iceland on top of my bucket list since I was a teenager? All the scrapbooking we did of all the beautiful places there. Guess what mom? he took me there in March! It was so breathtakingly beautiful, I experienced everything I’ve been dreaming to see for years and everything I’ve told you about so many times, yet sadly it wasn’t as wholesome of an experience as I always imagined it would be; because I couldn’t share any of it with you, not a single picture. He’s a secret after all and so are all the things that come with him, no matter how wonderful.

Dear mom, I will tell you about him someday and all I hope for is for you to understand that I have an internal struggle about going against our beliefs everyday, but he’s worth it mama. My dad visited me in a dream for the first time since his passing just a few months after we met, I guess he knows how much his approval has always meant to me, and he gave me his mom, I cried for hours that morning I felt like one mountain was lifted off my shoulders, but I still have another. Please don’t break my heart and don’t let my love break yours.

Love,

Your daughter