Amina x

I’d say I enjoy it

But if you were to ask me on a deeper level

I’d say…

Henna art brings me clarity of mind.

As I hold the cone,

and squeeze the henna paste

as it flows out

whilst steadily controlling it

It unleashes a part of me

I’ve not explored

but it seeps out of my fingertips

I follow the idea onto the edges of my clients hands

and see how it stretches

as far as the patterns go

you see on a valley

The Beauty of nature on her arms.

So effortlessly,

It brings me a sense of joy

as I take a step back

And look at

what my hands have created.

Across his perfectly chiseled face,

Tall, dark and handsome, a beauty

I know now - God makes no mistakes

This guy is filled with so much grace

As he creates and sets the mood

building tension with sadness & hope

His words fills up the space, so good

There’s a void but his words are eloquent & woke

full of passion and love. A rare soul

Love, peace & happiness - Resonates from him

Soft lil curls dangles down

his forehead - a baby face

Smiling so widely at us,

listening to him speaking poetry

Our Walls break between us,

as his words

break us / makes us

I’d let you go someday

even though I loved you with all that I had

and forgot to pour love back into my soul

even though I promised I’ll ask for you in Jannah

even though I built a few years with you

Yet again, my connection with God was fading away,

and I was losing myself, slowly.

I unknowingly put you above God

when you showed me, your humanness

it cut through me,

as the pain and agony, I went through

just by being beside you

made me turn to God, again, & again & again

I begged Him desperately to fill up the emptiness

As I no longer want to be attached

to His creation,

it ruined my peace o

Been caged up like a bird waiting for you

So we could fly together,

I wanted you to stop pulling the strings of my heart

it stretched the distance between us, and

when you pulled me closer it hurt more

for loving you,

and placed you in my heart instead of God

but He knew exactly how to turn that brokenness to whole again

He is enough for me,

in that moment I suppress those tears in shame

But I prayed to Him, to take care of you.

While I go, and get to know the Source of Love,

Al Wadud (The Most Loving)

and put Him above everyone else.

There were things that I never got a chance to tell you when we were talking. But I just want you to know that there are things you don’t know about me that I want you to know now before its too late.

1. I’m a hopeless romantic – I would fall for you for your kindness, honesty, and genuineness. I would fall for you if you make effort to talk to me and see how things are with me, if you check up on me. I would fall for you if you called me a beautiful soul because only you could see my soul through my eyes. Basically, in a nutshell, I give love freely.

2. I love being an artist – well most of the times. I am a henna artist and I love doing what I do. I mean sometimes I just get frustrated with the people and how uncivilised and how cunning they are but that’s people in this harsh world for you. They are inconsiderate but that’s that. I love to meet new people although I hate talking sometimes and telling people about my life because its boring.

3. I understand your pain – because I’m an empathetic soul, what can I say? But it gets to the point where I over-empathize. I have been through a lot of pain myself so I can understand the depth of yours too. When you’ve been through a difficult time in your life, I can sense that pain too and its like we have been on the emotional painful journey together. It hurts me to know what you’ve been through.

4. I’m a dreamer – I tend to dream a lot. About my goals in life, about my dreams in life, about going to travel the world, about the person I’ll want to spend the rest of my life with. I dream and dream and dream. Until reality wakes me up from my beautiful dreams and smacks me in the face and leaves a red mark on my soft cheeks.

5. I’m a poetic – I love to write poetry. About everything and anything. But mostly about love and my life experiences. I turn it into a piece of art. I turn my life into short stories. Stanzas in a line. Or doses of love fed to my soul. I bleed from my fingertips and I bandage the blood on my fingers with cotton wool to dab out the blood and blot out the pain.

6. I trust people too much sometimes. I’m so naïve and gullible. I believe people when they tell me things. I don’t know whether people are being sarcastic or not so I take things very serious sometimes. But then again I’m lighthearted too and I love to laugh a lot. I wish I never trusted as many people with my secrets in life. But I shall soon learn from this.

How long did it take you to realise there was something wrong and come to the

conclusion that you needed to tell someone what happened to you?

Answer:

Well, in 2014, I went to the college councillor and I eventually spilled out everything in the end. Especially my dark secret that I was molested as a child but that came out when it was towards the end of

Maybe …

Maybe what happened to me in my childhood was the cause for my mental breakdown and for my illness to escalate from anxiety to depression to schizophrenia. It was possible. I believe it was post-traumatic stress disorder, since I have studied A-level psychology but that was a few years back. I really didn’t understand what schizophrenia was during my studies all I knew was that you hear and see things that are not there, but it was more complex than that. To be honest, I know what caused it.

I know that it was encountering with people who spoke about childhood sex abuse so openly and so confidently, which made me feel sick. I couldn’t bring myself to speak about the topic because it just made me cringe and remind me of my horrible abuser who happened to be related to me, ugh.   And I told my - who I thought was going to be my future husband, but I thought wrong - distant cousin about the fact that I was abused as a child, and I cried to him for so many hours on the phone. He was emotionally unavailable, so he just put the phone down on me and never spoke to me again. I regret it until this day why the fuck I told him when he didn’t have to know. He didn’t have to know me like this!

Anyway, I woke up from my nightmares and screamed words like ‘I don’t want this’, ‘why did it happen to me?’,’ I hate all men!’, ‘I hate my life!’ and my parents tried to calm me down. Freud came to my mind too and started thinking about the Oedipus complex and the subconscious mind, even though I hated his opinions. I woke up my siblings and they started to cry because they knew something was wrong with me but they didn’t know what was going on in my crazy mind. I brushed them away as they tried to hug me. I went to the toilet and looked at myself in the mirror and thought to myself ‘you’re strong, you’re beautiful, and brave. The storm has only begun’. It was like I was on a roller coaster ride but internally. MY mind was controlling me, it was like I completely lost all control.

I just kept talking and talking and talking. To my parents. To anyone I see.  Nonsense. Gibberish. Spontaneously. And nobody understood me. I know One Being did though, and it was God. He understood the depth and complexity of my mind, soul and heart. He understood the pain I went through of being molested as a child and currently undergoing pain and suffering with this hellish mind too. And I tried not to think negatively about God because it was the help of God that took me out of my situation when I was only 8.   I always romanticised my relationship with God and I didn’t want to ruin the relationship I had with Him.