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I am a christian and I am an Egyptian, I was born an orthodox christian egyptian female. These are the tags attached to me since birth. That was just the start.

I grew up in an eastern society, I never took that into consideration. I was a naive introvert. But after thirty years my mum confessed that she lived her life scared to death, that I d fall in love with one of my Muslim friends. And whenever she saw one getting too close, she would panic. I never saw that. I don't know why I never fell for one of them, but that was what happened. In fact, the only truth is I never thought about it.

Lost your track, made a bad choice, grew up out of your current relationship status, or any other reason why you can't go on in your marriage is entirely a personal matter, in my opinion. In our society and in our world it is not. It is a matter that concerns the state, the law, the church, the family and everyone around and at the very end of the list comes you.

Everyone has an opinion, everyone has a saying. Some sympathises but see you to blame since you went into it in the first place. Why did you ever marry such a guy? And I don't have to answer. I don't have to give reasons why I did that, or even why I can't go on?

Everyone is curious to know the juicy details. Did he cheat on you? Did you catch him in bed with another woman? Is he a sexual pervert? What happened, just tell us. You have to give us details, reasons.

Write all the details down, maybe we will think you are worth a divorce, maybe not.

What is religious about that? Is it religious to take out your marital secrets just to get a divorce and you might need to add some spices or even make up stories just to convince the holy jury.

My life suddenly is exposed and under the mercy of other human beings.

Why can't I live like a civilized human being, why not? Is it because I did the mistake of getting married in an orthodox church??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They ban any civilian marriage between two Christians and the church treat them as outcasts and more!

So what's the solution, how can we spare ourselves, stay civilized and keep our sanity in this society where no one respects the other's rights or privacy.

I can't be part of that, I won't do that.

AND I don't need a man to look good

jwoman has nothing more to say
:(

My Readings: Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway and the good atheist.

“Oddly enough, she was one of the most thoroughgoing sceptics he had ever met, and possibly (this was a theory he used to make up to account for her, so transparent in some ways, so inscrutable in others), possibly she said to herself, As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship (her favourite reading as a girl was Huxley and Tyndall, and they were fond of these nautical metaphors), as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do “our part; mitigate the sufferings of our fellow-prisoners (Huxley again); decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can. Those ruffians, the Gods, shan't have it all their own way,—her notion being that the Gods, who never lost a chance of hurting, thwarting and spoiling human lives were seriously put out if, all the same, you behaved like a lady. That phase came directly after Sylvia's death—that horrible affair. To see your own sister killed by a falling tree (all Justin Parry's fault—all his carelessness) before your very eyes, a girl too on the verge of life, the most gifted of them, Clarissa always said, was enough to turn one bitter. Later she wasn't so positive perhaps; she thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.”

I didn't like Clarissa at all, she represented all that I detested. (I remember this sentence from The Great Gatsby.)  She is a pretentious old woman. She has been pretending all her life. All her choices were made according to the image she wanted to project, not what she really wanted. Something not real and not genuine were my only feelings towards her. 

The quote I pasted above touched me so much. She lost faith in God, but she kept her virtue, he good making. She made up her own atheist's religion. Part of this, I think, is to fulfill the image she wants to reflect. She wants to do what is righteous and good, so that she is known as the good Lady Clarissa. Does she really believe this is good or does it only for the illusion of good. I think, she is all into the illusion, and deep in her restless soul she believes not.

What is LIGHT?

Today I woke up and found myself thinking of the word LIGHT. I felt fascinated by it. We use it often, it multiple different ways. In religion , light always refers to God, immortality, the other life, the good.

"I am the light of the world."   John 8:12

In nature and physics, light is an electromagnetic radiation, a wave and a particle. It has a duality nature. Light is why we see. Without light, our eyes will be useless. To be seen, our surfaces, our bodies need to reflect light. Sarcastically enough, shadows wont be there either, without light. In literature, sometimes light is clarity. It signifies knowledge, wisdom, an enlightened person. 

Then comes light as an adjective, or a word that precedes another to signify an easier, smaller, less version, like light-weight, light-beer, light-lunch.  Light can mean nice, causing happiness or a comic. A light film, is mostly a nice superficial film that make you happy but adds nothing to you, or so goes the stereotype.

Then, I started thinking, what is light to me? Light is what keeps complete darkness out of my life. It is hope, the good inside me. It is the feeling of pure joy, where your body seem weightless and you can be anywhere without really being there. Light gives me peace.

This is what jWoman has to say for today.

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I want to cry and scream till I have no voice and run out of tears. Can I really run out of tears? Can I lose my voice? And what next will the pent up emotions vanish? Will the pain go away?

I want to bang my head against a wall, maybe the pain of my fractured skull will hide the pain in my heart.

Can I one day do it?
Will I one day take it away?
It will end the pain in my chest, it will end the meaningless chain of days.

I will one day, gather my courage, and accelerate my life to its closure.

jWoman is meaningless, purposeless, worthless.

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After a few days, I am re-reading my own words and it scares me. I am afraid of myself, how deep I can go? Nighttime is the worst.

I have my pain, but I still have a life to live. The fight is not over, but I am still alive with all my potentials, my weaknesses and my strengths, my pure beauty.

I have to keep away from nighttime fits, I have to use my loneliness, my boredom, my nights more fruitfully.

I am struggling to keep my faith in humanity, in myself, in GOD. I do that with a smile, and a deep breathe.

jWoman is back

Why?

Why did you knock,

Why did you insist on coming in, 

            When you didn't intend to stay?

Why did you ask me to trust you,

           when you couldn't keep a promise?

Why break my heart,

        Why?

           Why?

You just don't answer or is silence your answer.

Suicidal Thoughts

I want to kill myself.

Yes, I do.

The vaccum, I live in, is wearing my nerves. It is eating me alive. It is so much pain for me to endure. My tolerance is wearing thinner and thinner.

And I am losing my appetite for life.

Will death be better? What do I believe in, concerning death.

‘First of all, it’s important that suicide be difficult,’ Robert said. ‘And then continuing to live isn’t only continuing to breathe. No one ever succeeds in settling down in complete apathy. You like certain things, you hate others, you become indignant, you admire – all of which implies that you recognize the values of life.’ 
From The Mandarins - Simone De Beauvoire

I am settling down in complete apathy. I go on living, just 'cause I have to, because I was built that way.

This was suicidal jWoman, on a day not far away.

My Reading: The Great Gatsy

I have just finished reading Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. It is a smooth going reading that entertained me for a sometime.

I finished it with two thoughts from Gatsby. My fear of loneliness, of dying alone, was triggered again by sad ending of Gatsby. No one was there for him, I am not concerned about the incredulous, meaningless way he died in, but that he was alone, no one there to bury him or say a prayer. No one to visit his grave. Does a dead person care about who visit him anyway? What does death really mean? Where are we after death. I know all the answers different religions have to give but I still haven't found an answer.

The second thought is wasting one's life in illusions. He wasted his life in the illusion of love. He worked hard to get all that money, in all ways but it felt he never really lived a single day. He enjoyed nothing. He lived all his life waiting till the moment of his death. He was just starting to look around, thinking that now I can start enjoying.

“At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing-suit and left word with the butler that if any one phoned word was to be brought to him at the pool. He stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress that had amused his guests during the summer, and the chauffeur helped him pump it up. "

..........................

“If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about … like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.”

And the book was concluded by

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… . And one fine morning..........

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Excerpt From: F. Scott Fitzgerald. “The Great Gatsby.”

This is what jWoman has to say.