I’m a Muslim and a hijabi. I probably shouldn’t speak of sex or use the word “fuck“, but it wouldn’t be me if I said it any other way. Needless to say, I am not a virgin, and I cannot claim that I remained abstinent after my conversion. Not that I didn’t try, but I had to learn about myself – my body, my mind, my soul – and I have always been a tactile and visual person. I learn by doing, touching, feeling, and seeing. And boy! did I have a lot to learn!

As I went from one challenge to the next, I often found a warm body  that healed me: for a night, for a month, for a while. Healed me when I didn’t know I was broken. Filled me with peace when I didn’t know I was empty. It took me longer than it should to learn to fix myself. “Islam” didn’t fix me, “Muslims” didn’t fix me. God and some many years searching Him, and searching love, helped me on my way to getting fixed.

Sex didn’t break me. Sex is not part of the problem. Sex is part of the fucked up solution.

There are men who touched my sheets, touched my heart, and touched my soul. Men whose names I forget, and some whose names are forever engraved in my heart. I am not boasting of my sins. For too many of these men, I dreamed, hoped, and fervently believed that they’d be the last, the right one, The One. But they came and went; well, right and on time.

Many tried to know me. Some figured out I wanted to remain a mystery. I selfishly found out more about myself than I did about any of those men, even the ones whose minds I could basically read – I am a book I love to read.