Dear Fellow Warrior,
If there is anybody in my “previous life” who happens to miss the new “old Elsa,” the Elsa before her recent inward revolution … It is hard to believe there is, considering when things got bad, most people disappeared from my life.
But if you did once love her or care about her, and now find yourself exiting her life because she speaks the “language of her soul”…
A different language now that you don’t understand, approve of, or engage with normally… then maybe you should have reached out. No?
Because what exactly did you expect as a consequence of your abandonment, knowing very well what I was battling these past few years? You knew.
Everybody knew. All my colleagues and friends and family knew.
Did you just expect me to just wither away?
I called for help multiple times. I basically wrote public suicide notes. I wrote and even performed two graphic suicide note poems.
I advocated for mental health and suicide prevention for the past 10 years, just to start the conversation, or at least make you feel a little comfortable, through advocacy instead of direct vulnerability.
You watched… and mostly ignored.
And at the worst time of my life… of which I still am emerging from.. You chose ego and envy over care and moral support for your sister, leaving me further isolated and alienated.
What did you think would happen?
I could have gone in a very, very dark direction. I was in danger… and nobody cared. Nobody answered my cries and my obvious calls for help. But I didn’t go toward the darkness. I was fighting for the light.
Do you know the pain of being stuck between wanting to die and being forced to live? Of having to carry on knowing that no one believed you were suicidal… not a single soul genuinely believed it, because you were actually alive and empowering yourself publicly.
No one believed, especially when it was at its peak… and frankly, not at any point during the thirty years you struggled, the majority of those years in silence?
Why didn’t you reach out Elsa?
Okay, and just keep being shut down every time? Multiple people’s responses were basically “go seek resources.” Others were ghosting. And then others were calling the Police or other authorities.
So no, I learned to wait to see who genuinely cares to learn and understand… and maybe just be willing to “Listen.” To “Communicate.”
To “embrace the transformative power of tough conversations,” as I always say…
Nobody wanted to listen.
And I learned that care is conditional upon your political orientation for a lot of people… and conditional if you “politely” and quietly suffer from wanting to kill yourself…. and only If you meet the comfort levels of others and keep it PG and tone it down…
Because we all know that muzzling and toning down an “angry brown woman” for her trauma is the best way to prevent her from pulling the trigger.
Am I wrong?
All this stuff is so fricken natural for the suicidal person to talk about, but I know most people are mental health bigots, and freak the hell out…
To those people, maybe a Genocide, the brutal annihilation of an indigenous population, may have changed your outlook on Suicide?
I remember in one of my suicide note poems, I wrote… “as Muslims, we believe our bodies belong to God.” To truly understand that… to know that we do not have the right as Muslims, as humans, from the religious standpoint, to take our own lives… perhaps one way of preventing suicide… you have to build your faith. You have to strengthen your Imaan… your Tawakul… your Tawheed.
That takes time and heartbreak, to embrace the fundamental meaning of Islam… which is to Surrender. Am I wrong?
Bottom line, if you didn’t want me to become a more religious and practicing Muslim… if you didn’t want me to seek refuge in Allah… if you didn’t want me to rely on Him when no one else was willing to help… when I have no access to health care… no one willing to stand by the authentic, suicidal me, without conditions… instead further stigmatize me for speaking my truth unapologetically and not wanting to suffer in silence… and when silencing me was more safe than healing…. then maybe you should have shown up.
Why was that so hard?
Maybe you should have been there to offer just an ounce of moral support.
But you weren’t. And maybe that was Allah’s plan too. Maybe it was meant to be this way.
Because even through all this… even while living with trauma and scars that I am still healing… I still extended my hand. I still opened a conversation.
I invited dialogue… and I still engaged you as if I had forgiven you… and I had… even if I relapse in my vicious cycle of trauma at times, because that’s truly the kind of heart I have, that you are unwilling to see and acknowledge… because all you see is that “shortcoming”…. that disorder you chose to misunderstand… that I needed support, I needed a little lift… and everyone else is allowed to have a lift, a little support.
Just not Dr. Elsa. And that to you was a weakness.
But instead of embracing me through the mercy I show you, you resent the peace I found… you punish me for needing to come in the light… because ultimately that peace didn’t come from you. It came from the only place it ever truly could come from….
That’s what you can’t handle… am I wrong?
The hijab is fascinating because it has the power to expose. Islam has that power… similar to Palestine and Gaza. It reveals some interesting things about social and power dynamics.
This piece was originally written on Facebook as a form of my catharsis. But I felt it needed to be in this space too. A space that also allows for that necessary expressive unburdening.
The “Speak Your Truth” concept has stopped trending for years now… but I never stopped.
In Solidarity, Peace, Warmth, and Blessings,
Your Sister, Dr. Elsa, Warrior KQueen
“She Wasn’t Looking for a Knight. She was Looking for a Sword.” – Atticus
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