The Anxious Writer: Chapter Three

When I am asked about my relationship with my father, I stutter  and struggle to find the right words. What can I say to describe it?

Strong, but it was much more than that. Deep, but it was never a matter of depth. Irreplaceable, but I never needed to point that out because it was needless to say.

But my relationship with my father was definitely beyond explanation; our bond and chemistry was on a level that made everyone and everything beneath us.

He was the one person I would never hesitate to share anything with, be they feeling or thoughts. I was always certain I could go to him with any kind of baggage and he was right there, ready to carry it all.

My middle and high school crushes were my father and my little secrets or my girl friends’ drama were always things we could casually talk about over dinner.

There was never a place warmer and happier than wherever he was.

He was so firm yet so understanding. He was amazingly strong yet very sensitive and he was capable of speaking about anything without making you uncomfortable for even a split second.

When I knew my father was diagnosed with stage four cancer I was so scared, but I refused to believe it would anyway end with him leaving.

The amount of bliss and acceptance he took the news with assured me that it was just a bump in the road and this is a test that we would all pass.

I saw him get weaker and sicker with every day yet I refused to believe that any sort of end was close.

Some days, I was on the verge of breaking down yet I told myself I was overreacting.

My father was there and he was going to be alright and that was how it was meant to be and how it will always be.

Then one day after my father was admitted in a hospital, because the pain he was in was larger than any care we could provide him at home.

I was waiting for my driver to pick me up to go to the hospital. As I was waiting, I checked my Facebook feed and there it was the sentence that changed my life and broke my heart:  انتقل‭ ‬إلى‭ ‬رحمة‭ ‬الله‭ ‬الشيخ‭ ‬محمد‭ ‬أكرم‭ ‬عقيل‭ ‬مظهر‭ ‬ announcing the death of my father.

There it was, right in front of me, and I couldn’t believe it. Reality hit me hard in the face and I just had to learn from that point on how to live without the one person I felt my soul was bound to.

I changed a lot since that day, September 3 2013. I becamse a broken-hearted seventeen year old girl clueless of where she should be going next.

I was extremely lost and shattered to say the least. And at that day, in that particular moment, all I wanted to do was go back in time and sit in my father’s arms for as long as time would allow us to.

But I know today I am a different person. I still miss him and it still breaks my heart and I still struggle to understand that I will always have a void and that there will never be anyone to fill it.

Yet, I feel like today I am someone who could identify with their pain as part of their journey to grow and is no longer a broken-hearted teenaged girl anymore.

Sometimes, I feel sorry for myself for picking up anxiety on this journey. I get angry that missing my father is already hard enough to deal with and that I shouldn’t be worrying about mental illness too.

But then again, this was part of my journey and path and I learned to accept that no matter how many times I whine, it is going to be there and it is going to be real, just like the fact that my father is no longer there is as real as the ink on this paper.

With my father’s death my journey with anxiety started but also my journey to get to know myself also begun.