I am an 18 years old Muslim and I no longer wanna wear hijab; telling my parents. warning : long
Sorry in advance that this is going to be long but I'll devide into sections so you can only read what you are intrested in or real all of it if you want to .
● Why and when I started wearing it :
Hello everyone, I was 9 when I first started wearing hijab, not because I knew what it meant, not because I believed in it, simply because I thought that my ears were too big ( they didn't grow any bigger since then, now they even look extra small lol ) also because we had this super religious teacher in elementary schhool who ended up convincing every girl in my class to start wearing it by saying that girls who do not wear hijab are sl*ts, everybody hates them and that they will eventually rot in hell. When I told my parents, my dad has always been very chill, he believes that everyone should do whatever they wanna do with their lives so he neither said yes nor no, he just told me to do whatever I wanted ( which I think is was kinda wrong considering I was only 9 ) mom was super duper against, but I was eventually able to convince her by telling her " god is helping me get on the right path, why won't you let me ? Are you the devil or something ?" ( ps : mon herself only started wearing it after my little brother was born, she was in her late 40's then ).
● My teenage years :
I was pretty much a normal teenager, I didn't cause much trouble but I wasn't a perfect kid either, I have always been the cheerful funny and loud girl, I was the class clown, the girl who was everybody's friend, you know what I am talking about, but I never felt different to the other kids until boys came into my life at the age of 15 or 16, I started dating ( in secret ofc lol ) and did some stuff like kissing touching etc, and I felt filthy about it, everyone else was doing it but I felt filthy and sl*tty because I was wearing hijab and because I wasn't supposed to be doing these things, I didn't have the right to do it, and I quickly started to realize that wearing hijab means that I should give up on every pleasurable thing in life ( except food lol ), and I started feeling like a hypocrite, but I never thought of taking off my scarf at that point, I was just thinking that I should improve my self as a Muslim, up until high school ended that is.
● What really made me want to stop wearing hijab
In the last year of highschool and my first year of college, ( I am in my second year of college now if you were wondering ) I've been thinking about how I don't wanna wear hijab anymore and thinking of ways to tell my parents. You know just like I just mentionned in the last paragraph, to me, wearing hijab meant one thing : that I should be a perfect classy graceful little lady, which is everything I am not, I am a free spirit, a cheerful loud girl, and even though I am still letting my personality shine through a little bit, I feel super guilty about that little bit of fun I have, I just want to be able to run and feel the breeze on my skin, I want to be able to be in a car, open the window and let my hair dance with the wind, I want to be able to swin in the beach or the pool just like every other girl ( I never swam after starting to wear hijab because swimming in my own clothes or in a burkini never appealed to me and I viewd it as trashy and unlike a hijabi who is supposed to be graceful and classy ) I just want to be able to go grocery shopping or step out of my house door without having to put on layers and layers of clothings, and as desperate and rediculous as that may sound, I want to be able to wear a Tshirt, I want to be able to experiment in life and not be guilty with every step I make, I don't want anything too extreme, I'll still be the same person, I just want to be free.
● I am not ready to tell my parents
Just like I mentionned earlier, my father doesn't give a shit, he is a very easy going guy, but the problem is mom, even though she was against it in the beginning, I feel like now, she is so soooo proud of me for wearing hijab, she is so proud that I am a "good girl" in every family gathering, she tells everyone about the story of how I started wearing hijab and proudly recite what I told her that day (" god is helping me get on the right path, why won't you let me ? Are you the devil or something ?") I feel like by telling her my decision, I would deeply wound her... Now I could easily stop wearing it despite what their opinion on it, but I want to convince them, I want them to be completely happy and satisfied whith my decision, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to live happily.
Please help me if you can.. One thing is sure : as I grew older, hijab took away my cheerfulness, my happiness and my positivity. I am no longer my self.
Important note : In case you were curious, I live in Morocco ( an arab muslim country ) but the mindset is pretty much like Europe, veeeeery few young women wear hijab here, women who wear hijab are usually older.
Another thing : People usually belittle me and/or think that I am stupid or outdated because I wear hijab but I don't care about that, just rhought I'd let you know.
And sorry if there are any typos.
Posted Aug 29, 2016, 11:48 PM UTC · edited