This is a poem from our very own IT trustee, Mo. He wrote this during the pandemic when he was staying with his family during lockdown. He hopes that this will bring an insight into his experience with dealing with being queer and Muslim, talking about what he was feeling during that time.
The life of Me is a very complicated place. Full of dark corners, bright moments and stormy clouds. Throughout it all there is one thing. Hope.
It rises and falls in waves but it never disappears entirely. Hope is the one thing that keeps the life of Me going. Without it, what is left?
Hope that I will be able to live the life that I dream I can lead.
Hope that I can love who I truly want to love.
Hope that I can have the freedoms I so deeply desire.
Who knows? Maybe I can achieve that. Maybe that’s not too much to ask for. But for now, I’m not sure. For now, I stay in my dark corners, hide parts of my life away as to look more palatable. Conform to other people’s ideas of normal. Just to be socially accepted within the circles I was born into.
That’s the price I pay. An invisible toll that I must bear in silence. Perhaps it’s a test? A divine sentence that I must serve till the day I die? A life of abstinence and prayer is definitely not what I or what any would expect for me.
I imagine my new life to be full of high points and low points. Colourful, joyous and happy. Sad, tragic and heartbreaking. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s any life really, not limited to mine. It has it’s ebbs and flows, but ultimately that’s how it is. Maybe this is just one hell of an ebb.
Like I said. The Life of Me is a complicated place, I don’t like to spend my time there, but that is the only place I can stay. It’s the Life of Me after all…
