Villain Arc

Screenshot: Mr. Queen 철인왕후 (2020)

It is Lent again. A strange season in the liturgical calendar where one deepens their relationship with God. For me, however, it has always been a time of the year where strange and out-of-pocket things happen in my spiritual life, most of them also distressing. Presently I am knackered out of my mind but unable to fall asleep, the second or third night in a row. Insh'Allah, I will find out what the problem is by the time these paragraphs are done.

I came out of the engagement six months ago. I had experienced it not as some sort of calamity, as my friends believed, but like a disaster narrowly averted. It became clear in retrospect that I was not happy in the relationship, and that I had let my grievances fester. I did not sound them out because (1) I did not know how to put those feelings in words, and (2) that suffering in life is penance, that penance leads us to sanctifying grace, and one should just put up with them rather than complain. The implications of this realisation is momentous; to move any further, I have to shed these assumptions in the praxis of my own life. Very inconveniently, these have been formed in me by my peers and advisors in the church, who have been good to me and whom I look to as role models.

I want to become better, but not in the direction my ex would have preferred that I take, nor the priests, not even my friends in the Work— nor the sycophantic aunties who orbit the priests' cassock hems in the parish, nor the genteel parents of twelve children, brought up to become poster children of devoutness, nor the trolls of online Catholicism who compete with each other on the extremeness and disagreableness of their views— No, I will become a villain in all of their eyes, following the will of only Allah.

I WILL WAKE UP, I WILL FALL ASLEEP, ON HIS COMMAND ONLY

I have wasted all that time trying to be good in others' eyes. I broke my back for my daily commutes to work and to church together. My colleagues made huge strides in work; as for my extra hours, I wasted them on the road. I took my command from people who lived next to a tabernacle, when my own house is hours away. I wasted my time trying to fulfil my pious duties. I neglected even the birthday of my own mother. I cultivated values which clashed with my upbringing, and aggrieved my parents. I robbed myself of rest, I became cranky and cantankerous. I had become a monster in my family's eyes without knowing. 

I wasted two years wooing the ex-fiancée. I drew close with her who only put up with me without loving me. I wasted two years liking what she liked and being where she lived, and she would not do the same for me. All the meals I ate together with her now tastes to me as like hogswill. I reject the merest thought and memory of them; I'd throw them up if I could, as if I have just eaten a bucket of slugs.

In the wake of this rejection, what comes in its place? My sense of self, my authentic and private pleasures; my family, who have been so loyal to me. The Will of Allah made himself known to me last September. First my sister, who showed up randomly on the street when I was the most distressed, then an old friend and his troupe of dancers, who showed up and dragged me in for a dance.

I DANCE TO HIS WILL

A consolation— People have said to me, a guy ought to learn to dance, or that this dance floor is where you find your mate. I've not said this to anyone but family before now, but the Will of Allah was what got me dancing, and everything else is secondary motivations. 

The ex-fiancée hated frivolity. She hated adventure. She hated expressiveness. She hated that I talked to diverse people different from myself and from her. She hated that I loved all these things. But now, I think, that I have been restraining myself too much, and did not love them nearly enough. I realise to my horror that, by this learned reticence, I risked hacking off my own limbs to be buried in her coffin. 

From this Lent and onwards, instead of posing haughty and smart in the corner of the room, I shall make a fool of myself on the dance floor. Instead of following the lyrics of someone else's jam, I shall belch Turkish Flamenco to an unprepared audience. I will ditch my suit for bell bottoms. I will do difficult things, I will learn skills on a steep curve, I will kill it at work. Time is precious, I am close to Death, and I have already let too much of it pass fruitlessly.