12/12/2025
So I did the dance. Obeyed my parents. Followed every teaching. Wore the scarf. Didn’t talk to boys. Went to every mosque event, volunteered, did charity. Went to school, got the job…All of it felt like time pass, a way to stay a “good girl,” to stay focused, to not get distracted until God supposedly rewards you with the real end goal: marriage. And I did that. I got married. And then I gSo I did the dance. Obeyed my parents. Followed every teaching. Wore the scarf. Didn’t talk to boys. Went to every mosque event, volunteered, did charity. Went to school, got the job…All of it felt like time pass, a way to stay a “good girl,” to stay focused, to not get distracted until God supposedly rewards you with the real end goal: marriage. And I did that. I got married. And then I got divorced.
Spent a year with a covert narcissist. Thankfully got out with no kids. But now I’m back in my childhood room, under my parents’ roof, surrounded by the same walls I thought I’d only see in old memories.
I did everything I was supposed to. Every box checked. Every rule followed. And yet here I am, feeling like I’ve been reset back to level one with no map and no questline.
I’m at a loss for a path. What happens now? What do I do when the “end goal” I was raised to chase disappears?
Life feels stagnant. Everyone tells you to be patient, trust God’s plan, wait for the “right one.” But I don’t want waiting to be my whole life again. I don’t want to be stuck in this limbo.
If starting a family was supposed to be the ending… what’s the plot now?
I don’t know. I just needed to say it out loud. Maybe someone can relate.
I grew up in a culture that put marriage on a pedestal. When that facade finally cracked and dropped out from under me, it hurt in a way I didn’t expect. This isn’t about longing for what was. It’s just me grieving the version of myself that naively followed what my parents and culture told me was the “right path.”
This post is for me to share my sorrows with those who have been through the same. To connect. I dont need blanket advice or accusations of my peity not being genuine.
What I’m really grieving is the version of myself I never got to become. I’m mourning the years I spent following a script instead of writing my own. The things I’m learning now at 27: about identity, boundaries, desire, and autonomy, are things I could have learned at 17 if I’d been allowed to see myself as a person in my own right. If someone had told me I wasn’t just an extension of my parents or my culture. This isn’t about wanting a husband or happy marriage. Nor do i see myself as a failure for being divorced. It’s about the ache of realizing how much of my life wasn’t truly mine. It’s grief for the paths I didn’t know I was allowed to take.
We have many rishtay available for you. Talk to us with full privacy.