When I heard the door click softly behind him, I didn’t cry.
I sat for a long time in the silence, my heart stunned more than shattered. His words still rang in my ears — cruel in their finality, but spoken like a man already gone. I thought when you gave someone so much, they wouldn't leave like that. I thought love, or at the very least nikah, meant patience. But he'd reached some limit I hadn't even seen coming, and just like that, our home became my prison.
Days passed without meaning. I still prayed, though some nights I’d just sit on the prayer mat, whispering nothing but "why" over and over. I kept up appearances at work, answering questions with nervous smiles and always brushing off concern. But when I came home, I unraveled. I drowned in silence, scrolling old messages, replaying memories like masochistic dhikr.
One night, in that heavy stillness, I picked up my phone and opened my Quran app — not to read, just to stare at it. But I must have tapped the ‘verse of the day’ by accident, and there it was:
"Say, ‘O My servants who have wronged themselves, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins…’" (Surah Az-Zumar, 39:53)
I read it aloud. My voice cracked halfway through, and I had to start again.
And then again.
Something about it broke down the cement wall around my heart. I had wronged myself, hadn’t I? Not just by what I let him do to me, but by what I told myself after. That I wasn’t enough. That I must be too much. That somehow my pain didn’t matter to the One who named Himself Ar-Rahman — the Most Merciful.
I pressed my forehead to the ground — sajdah — and for the first time in weeks, I didn’t ask to feel better. I just let the tears fall. No script. Just grief I couldn’t carry alone anymore. My heart didn’t feel better when I got up, but it felt less alone somehow, like I had finally stopped pretending I could fix this with strength alone.
It was weeks later, on a cloudy afternoon, when the emotional shift truly came.
A little girl, no older than six, knocked on the door of my apartment. When I opened it, she handed me a small envelope with no words. She was gone before I could ask. Inside was a hand-drawn card — uneven lines, stick figures under a bright sun, and in shaky letters, it read: “Allah sees you. He loves you.”
My eyelids burned. I leaned against the doorway, looking up at that grey sky, and felt something move inside me — not joy exactly, not yet. But something like permission to believe again.
I still don’t know who sent that child, or why she came to me of all people. But I think about her often. That moment reminded me that Allah sends rain in the most unexpected ways — sometimes through strangers with coloring pens.
Healing hasn’t been a straight road. Some mornings I still wake with the ache thick in my chest. But I'm learning heartbreak isn’t punishment. Sometimes it’s just Allah shifting things into better places. Gently. Silently. With wisdom wrapped in delay.
And I realized, maybe all this time, I wasn’t broken.
Just being rebuilt.
Qur'an and Hadith References:
When I heard the door click softly behind him, I didn’t cry.
I sat for a long time in the silence, my heart stunned more than shattered. His words still rang in my ears — cruel in their finality, but spoken like a man already gone. I thought when you gave someone so much, they wouldn't leave like that. I thought love, or at the very least nikah, meant patience. But he'd reached some limit I hadn't even seen coming, and just like that, our home became my prison.
Days passed without meaning. I still prayed, though some nights I’d just sit on the prayer mat, whispering nothing but "why" over and over. I kept up appearances at work, answering questions with nervous smiles and always brushing off concern. But when I came home, I unraveled. I drowned in silence, scrolling old messages, replaying memories like masochistic dhikr.
One night, in that heavy stillness, I picked up my phone and opened my Quran app — not to read, just to stare at it. But I must have tapped the ‘verse of the day’ by accident, and there it was:
"Say, ‘O My servants who have wronged themselves, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins…’" (Surah Az-Zumar, 39:53)
I read it aloud. My voice cracked halfway through, and I had to start again.
And then again.
Something about it broke down the cement wall around my heart. I had wronged myself, hadn’t I? Not just by what I let him do to me, but by what I told myself after. That I wasn’t enough. That I must be too much. That somehow my pain didn’t matter to the One who named Himself Ar-Rahman — the Most Merciful.
I pressed my forehead to the ground — sajdah — and for the first time in weeks, I didn’t ask to feel better. I just let the tears fall. No script. Just grief I couldn’t carry alone anymore. My heart didn’t feel better when I got up, but it felt less alone somehow, like I had finally stopped pretending I could fix this with strength alone.
It was weeks later, on a cloudy afternoon, when the emotional shift truly came.
A little girl, no older than six, knocked on the door of my apartment. When I opened it, she handed me a small envelope with no words. She was gone before I could ask. Inside was a hand-drawn card — uneven lines, stick figures under a bright sun, and in shaky letters, it read: “Allah sees you. He loves you.”
My eyelids burned. I leaned against the doorway, looking up at that grey sky, and felt something move inside me — not joy exactly, not yet. But something like permission to believe again.
I still don’t know who sent that child, or why she came to me of all people. But I think about her often. That moment reminded me that Allah sends rain in the most unexpected ways — sometimes through strangers with coloring pens.
Healing hasn’t been a straight road. Some mornings I still wake with the ache thick in my chest. But I'm learning heartbreak isn’t punishment. Sometimes it’s just Allah shifting things into better places. Gently. Silently. With wisdom wrapped in delay.
And I realized, maybe all this time, I wasn’t broken.
Just being rebuilt.
Qur'an and Hadith References:
