I know exactly how you feel. I've been there with both friends and lovers. Not easy to get over even after decades of distance. Your friendship with this person seems like it also borders on romance, and that's an absolute killer. It breaks my heart to know you've faced something like this.
It was perhaps I think, what has stopped me from ever giving my heart to anyone fully ever again. It was friendship, romance, and possibility all in one. It was messy and all the more beautiful for it. But, God is good - and who knows what the future has in store, I think I had to remember this in order to finally put it to rest.
I hope that your heart also finds peace - may we grow stronger for the grief we have lived through.
to be honest, I miss so many things about the intimacy, but thankfully I have never given up forgiveness. I forgive him for hurting me, not because I didn’t deserve better… but I know he was no less able to push out the corruption of the mind as anyone else.
I run a casual storytellers' event called Nite Tales here in Dubai. It showcases anecdotes from people's lives that they feel they can share with an audience: inspirational, silly, thought-provoking...everything that can enchant an audience. I feel you have the sort of stories in your life that would be absolutely captivating, social media be damned.
I promise youve all but convinced me to go to Dubai, but I have nothing else to do while there haha. This feat shouldn’t be overlooked. I’ve never even contemplated that Country. So who knows. I need to save somehow to figure it out.
You’re simply too generous with your words. I promise lol my stories are no different than anyone else’s.
I beg to differ. When I first learned about you, somebody had compiled all your TikTok videos of Quran exploration and reversion into one long video, either on Facebook or YouTube. That journey alone, considering the passion behind it and your background and the honestly tear-jerking progression (both for you and the audience) told me there's a profundity as yet untapped or under-appreciated by the denizens of the internet.
Over the course of my journey in collecting people's stories, I've spoken to the 60 year old lesbian Jew who couldn't sustain a career as a talent agent in NYC during the Recession and ended up selling Barack Obama and Sarah Palin-themed condoms in Times Square, the former dean of my university who left Ohio to administrate a university in Afghanistan, and an infamous London street preacher who told me his views on Christ, the world, and his theories about evolution...just a few months before being served with an Antisocial Behaviour Order (ASBO) that prevented him from speaking in the middle of Oxford Circus.
Everyone has a story. One just has to seek outside of the box...almost literally.
Ooof. There are those broken friendships that come back and remind you of the destruction left in their wake every once in a while, uninvited, just when you think they're no longer of any import.
I had one such experience relatively recently, and actually yesterday (!) I found myself overtaken by anger about being so mistreated for so long. Without any cause. It just popped into my head and embittered me for a good while.
But, I guess, everything is for a reason. And there is always a lesson to be learned. For me it was not letting people walk all over me. Even when they claim to only want the best for me. Especially then.
I still am not entirely sure, after all these years, what the lesson was of him. Trust perhaps given to freely? But I’d hope I would trust a man if known since we were pre-teens. I literally ache to share the world with him, and that makes me so angry. I fully doubt, he has thought of me even once in the last 6 years. Why then am I suddenly so overcome?! But I know why. The Cathedral would’ve rocked his world. The rolling mountains and the way people are here would’ve made him shake with excitement. I’m shocked really, that I haven’t looked for a cemetery yet… one thing he and I used to share was a love of visiting the dead and giving our time to their memories.
I know exactly how you feel. I've been there with both friends and lovers. Not easy to get over even after decades of distance. Your friendship with this person seems like it also borders on romance, and that's an absolute killer. It breaks my heart to know you've faced something like this.
It was perhaps I think, what has stopped me from ever giving my heart to anyone fully ever again. It was friendship, romance, and possibility all in one. It was messy and all the more beautiful for it. But, God is good - and who knows what the future has in store, I think I had to remember this in order to finally put it to rest.
I hope that your heart also finds peace - may we grow stronger for the grief we have lived through.
It's peculiar, my playlist just played "Can You Forgive Her?" by the Pet Shop Boys. The lyrics really resonate and tie the emotions together.
😭 why is heartbreak so prevalent?!
to be honest, I miss so many things about the intimacy, but thankfully I have never given up forgiveness. I forgive him for hurting me, not because I didn’t deserve better… but I know he was no less able to push out the corruption of the mind as anyone else.
I run a casual storytellers' event called Nite Tales here in Dubai. It showcases anecdotes from people's lives that they feel they can share with an audience: inspirational, silly, thought-provoking...everything that can enchant an audience. I feel you have the sort of stories in your life that would be absolutely captivating, social media be damned.
I promise youve all but convinced me to go to Dubai, but I have nothing else to do while there haha. This feat shouldn’t be overlooked. I’ve never even contemplated that Country. So who knows. I need to save somehow to figure it out.
You’re simply too generous with your words. I promise lol my stories are no different than anyone else’s.
I beg to differ. When I first learned about you, somebody had compiled all your TikTok videos of Quran exploration and reversion into one long video, either on Facebook or YouTube. That journey alone, considering the passion behind it and your background and the honestly tear-jerking progression (both for you and the audience) told me there's a profundity as yet untapped or under-appreciated by the denizens of the internet.
Over the course of my journey in collecting people's stories, I've spoken to the 60 year old lesbian Jew who couldn't sustain a career as a talent agent in NYC during the Recession and ended up selling Barack Obama and Sarah Palin-themed condoms in Times Square, the former dean of my university who left Ohio to administrate a university in Afghanistan, and an infamous London street preacher who told me his views on Christ, the world, and his theories about evolution...just a few months before being served with an Antisocial Behaviour Order (ASBO) that prevented him from speaking in the middle of Oxford Circus.
Everyone has a story. One just has to seek outside of the box...almost literally.
Ooof. There are those broken friendships that come back and remind you of the destruction left in their wake every once in a while, uninvited, just when you think they're no longer of any import.
I had one such experience relatively recently, and actually yesterday (!) I found myself overtaken by anger about being so mistreated for so long. Without any cause. It just popped into my head and embittered me for a good while.
But, I guess, everything is for a reason. And there is always a lesson to be learned. For me it was not letting people walk all over me. Even when they claim to only want the best for me. Especially then.
I still am not entirely sure, after all these years, what the lesson was of him. Trust perhaps given to freely? But I’d hope I would trust a man if known since we were pre-teens. I literally ache to share the world with him, and that makes me so angry. I fully doubt, he has thought of me even once in the last 6 years. Why then am I suddenly so overcome?! But I know why. The Cathedral would’ve rocked his world. The rolling mountains and the way people are here would’ve made him shake with excitement. I’m shocked really, that I haven’t looked for a cemetery yet… one thing he and I used to share was a love of visiting the dead and giving our time to their memories.
May your heart find ease. Inshallah mine too.