Between The World's I Lived

Chapter 1: The Child of Many Worlds

I was an intelligent but strange child, growing up in a strict single-parent Catholic household. My multi-racial family made me feel out of place, clumsy, and unseen. I didn’t fit, and I spent my childhood trying to make sense of the world through the TV shows I loved, living vicariously through the romance and family dramas on screen. Music and dance were my lifelines — I was a dancer, a drum majorette, a girl in love with movement and rhythm. I dreamed of stages and applause, of a life where I could be seen. But life had other plans.

I became Muslim at the age of 21 after returning from a year in the USA, working abroad after I had given up studying. When I returned to my home, I felt a calling to Islam, a desire to change my life and start anew. But in doing so, I had to give up my passion for dance and music. Some part of me believes I made that choice in the hopes that I would one day be reunited with the man I loved as a young woman.

My early life was marked by traumas I could not name at the time — moments that fractured trust, exposed me to pain, and shaped my restless yearning. I endured abusive relationships, the loss of my mother at 25, and a profound sense of isolation from my extended family. I was always trying to prove that I was enough, that I could be loved and accepted, that my life could be different.

At 19, I fell in love with Omar. The one my soul longed for. The connection I longed for. He was 17, I was 19, and the chemistry between us burned like fire. It felt electric, as if our souls called to each other and could not let go. Strangely, our lives mirrored each other: we both had the same number of children, both had twins, I was a teacher and his wife was a teacher, and we named our firstborns the same name. These coincidences felt like signs that our connection meant something deeper, something more than chance. But I believed I didn’t deserve him — he was Muslim, I was Christian, and I was what I called a ‘bad girl’ in my own eyes. He was good. I was broken. So I let him go. Or at least, I tried.I didn’t know then that some connections do not end. They wait.

And in letting him go, I stepped onto the path that would lead me into a life I thought I wanted — and a love I would spend years trying to escape

Two years later, I reverted to Islam and rushed into marriage with Farhad at 23, chasing a fairytale I thought would save me. Farhad was a drug addict when I married him, and while grieving my mother, I found myself helping him get clean, shaping him into the man he would become. I tried to build the life I imagined: a home, four children, a marriage. But the reality was harsher than I could have predicted. By 25, I had lost my mother, and over the years, I realized I was surviving, not living. I became an empty shell, weighed down by grief, responsibilities, and unhealed wounds, raising neurodivergent children while navigating a marriage that left me unfulfilled.

Through it all, Omar would reappear. He became a quiet lifeline, a spark of desire and hope in the shadows of my life. Our connection existed mostly in messages and conversations, always constrained by distance, faith, shame, and circumstance. He represented desire, possibility, and the self I had buried. At the same time, he kept me suspended between worlds, unable to fully commit to the life I was living or release the one I had imagined.

This is the story of a woman living multiple lives at once: the passionate child, the devoted wife, the secret lover, the mother, the survivor. It is a story of yearning, loss, faith, and resilience — a journey to reclaim one’s identity, to confront desires and disappointments, and to finally choose to live fully, instead of merely surviving.