Breakup – Him Or HIM?

I was done with watching all those horrible sad old movies, done with diet-unconsciously hogging an entire bucket of Häagen-Dazs, sobbing it off in my pillow covers, dramatically wailing (like a Banshee, I admit), implementing advices from the second voice in my head, all the while, pretending everythings great just so my family wouldnt ask worried questions. But those stupid Google.d supposed-to-work breakup tips never worked. Until I struck upon gold in a coal minefield (figuratively): a beautiful soul advised me,

“Turn to Him, not to him.”

I probably should erase that breakup word cause I was never in a so-called relationship with him. Not intentionally, anyway. He hadnt proposed to me with an intention to make me his girlfriend (ew.. even the word grosses me) but to make me his wife. He wanted to keep it alllll Halal until “our marriage”. We began our journey (no I wont use the word relationship) with these hopeful lines..

“Real love means helping each other to attain Jannah, not holding hands walking towards Hell”

Little did we know that with every step together, our thoughts were being read and actions being governed by Satan – the mastermind behind all evils. Oh yes,. It was a trap and we fell right into it. I admit, we are foolish. I mean, how can we possibly be in the face of Fitnah and still be blind to it?! Ya Rabb, indeed we were foolish and among the wrongdoers!

Yet Of all the trials we failed together, what I cherish the most is that tiny flicker of Imaan we still had in us. The despair we felt after sinning, the fear of being exposed on Yaum AlQiyamah, the tears that shook us when we talked of Jahannum, the sorrow we felt at betraying our parents and worst of all, the blatantly ironic way we walked hand-in-hand away from Allah swt and His Love. Inspite of it all, Allahmdulillah ala kulli haal, we held onto this little Imaan left in us, and helped each other hold onto it.

You’d have read of girls falling in love with the right/wrong guy, ending up married/divorced/single. But not this one.. This story has a different ending. All praise and thanks be to Allah, Al-Wadood, Ar-Rahmaan, Al-Hadi, Al-Maula, Al-Wali, we decided to split ways, what you would call a “break-up”.

This might sound cliché to you, or you might think it was lust and not your definition of ‘true love’. But you can say all that because you have no idea how much pride I hold in recalling that one day, that one singular moment when we decided to call it QUITS. Yeah, just like that. Dude, you walk your way and I shall fly mine. If our names are written side by side in a wedding card in the honorable Al Lauh Al Mahfuz, then we WILL end up together. Theres no point in going through all these teenage love/lust dramas that end with destroyed families, happiness and marital lives, we reasoned.

We didnt take this decision in each other’s presence. Nah, we werent that emotionally strong yet. I’d flown back home, vowing to repent and he had joined an intensive Islamic training course. Between his course and the time differences in our countries, we were left with hardly any time to catch up. Yet in those

Little midnight-minutes that we Whatsapp.ed, I persuaded him to take a decision, the only decision I and he knew to be right: leave each other for Allah’s Sake. We read Itikharah every night and with the help of a Mufti who tutored in the course, in the wee evening hours of 21 August 2007, we finally gave up. I’d actually say, we didnt give up but we started fighting, started fighting the Shaytan, started fighting against our desires, started fighting for the Love and Mercy of Allah, SubhanAllah!

That night, After enthusiastically blocking contact with him in every way possible, I Google.d tips on how to cope with a breakup. None of them worked and I believe, will never.

I lay in a trance, exhausted mentally and emotionally. A trance that finally shattered and spilt tears.

I thought of him.. Tears of sorrow, tears of loneliness, tears of pride yet tears of wanting to be loved by him again..

I thought of our wedding dreams.. Tears of heart-wrenching grief, tears of Will-I-Marry-Him??

And then I thought of Him.. tears of fear, tears of despair, tears of guilt, tears of hope, tears of love, tears of wanting to be loved by Him again..