EH

I saw Black Panther and Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri and very much enjoyed both. Life is good. Life is very good. Life is very, very good. Sometimes I worry people think I’m happy because I’ve got some lowkey love story blossoming in my life because I’m always talking about men but I have no man in my life, not a single one, nor one in a relationship, nor any kind of wordplay you could think of, there is no loophole, I have no man and my life and I are very happy.

POURQUOI TU GÂCHES TA VIE?

So today, I had a conversation with my grandma for about one and a half hours, or so. She found out about the incident that happened in LA, and she asked whether it happened voluntarily, even insinuating that perhaps Joey had drugged me (HA HA). That is how much my grandmother wants to believe that I am the pure, innocent girl that I apparently should be - that I cannot possibly be wilfully doing whatever it is I am doing out of my own enjoyment. Like my mother, my grandma also sort of requested that I didn't do the same thing again, except she didn't do it outrightly as my mother had. My grandma also asked what my thoughts on religion are, and I tried to navigate this as well as I could, as tactfully as is within my ability to be. She thinks that I never broached the topic of my miscarriage because I think it is a mistake and I would be too embarrassed to talk about it to her or my aunts, but I didn't talk about it because I don't think it's a mistake, it's a perfectly natural, run-of-the-mill, everyday thing that happens, every day on Earth. I slowly implied that I was indeed not as... Muslim or religious as she would like me to be, and I also said my beliefs are that if there is a God, the higher entity that I believe in would not be as.... ummm, inflexible, to judge me based on whatever criteria she believes in. I told her that I know I am a good person, regardless of whether I pray, or believe in certain things, etc etc. We talked about the Quran and the Bible and she asks where I think the universe came about from, so I told her "energy" but she doesn't understand the word energy the way I do, she thinks tenaga is a thing that only exists in humans when you eat food and it is converted to the strength needed to do things. She said, there is some Science in the Quran, and I told her well, yes, but there is also a lot of science that happens without and beyond the Quran, that the holy books were written back when there was much, much less science happening, that the only reasons why people believed in the supernatural and the.... spiritual ways of why rain falls and why crops grow and all that jazz, was because there weren't any laboratories or experiments, that people didn't have science to believe in, and therefore they believed in stories. I told her that a lot of science didn't happen or wasn't allowed to happen because the religious always persecuted the scientific, that for thousands of years, and even now as we live and breathe, whenever Science doesn't agree with what the holy books say, then the religious would always be scared, that the religious would then say "how can that be, we have never believed that so it can't be true" when the answer to "how can that be?" is that it just is, you can conduct experiments over and over again and certain things will always be true, and you just have to change your beliefs. My grandmother thinks I have been led astray, but I told her I haven't been led astray from anything, I have read everything and I made my own judgment as to what I believe, and I am not a bad person. I told her when I read the Quran or the Bible, the writing is too fear-mongering and I used my own intellectual faculties to decide that the style in which it is written is not something I think a higher entity needs to employ. If you need to scare someone into believing something because the alternative is hell, then they will not be organically good people, they are simply avoiding punishment. I said all this to my grandma, but what I did not say, was that a good 90% of people should not be having kids, if they think the way she does. I think people have kids when they think that their kids will grow up to be people whom they would accept, but chances are, you don't know what your kid will be. You could have grown up a good and obedient Muslim as you were raised, or you could have been rebellious until you got married after which you decided to change, you and your husband or wife could have dated the conventional Halal way, and you could think that your child can naturally and instinctively follow your guidance, but that is just as likely not to be the case. For as long as you think you will not accept your child if they were not Muslim, if they don't wear what you think is appropriate, if they are homosexual, if they turn out to have opposite political views - whether conservative or liberal, if you don't believe in tattoos, if you think a person who doesn't live with or takes care of their parents is irresponsible, if you want them to be a doctor or an engineer or a homemaker, for as long as you don't think you can accept your child for turning out as different a person from you regardless of the effort and how much love you put into your child, if you cannot accept your child the way they are - barring criminal intent - then don't. Don't have children.

I'm gonna watch Black Panther as well as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I'm out, have a great weekend!