ARRANGED MARRIAGE: A STORY FROM THE INSIDE (Part 2: Deeper Thoughts)

It's almost that time again , sadness is filling deep inside me . Tomorrow July 6, 2017 will mark my one year since I left arrIved in Pakistan. I arrived to Pakistan on July 6, 2016 without having the thought that I was here to marry someone . It was just me and my father who was disappointed in me for falling in love with another person so he dragged me back to Pakistan to change me. That's what he has said... While everyone was celebrating Eid (A national holiday for Muslims) , I was being greeted by family memebers but I had no interest in talking to anyone. I was destroyed from the inside, no cellphone , no contact with anyone, no passport. I thought in my head, if I just stay here two weeks and show him I'm changed then maybe he'd take me back. So I began to talk to my cousins and act like everything was normal, until I broke down because I was so different from them, everything reminded me of New York, I missed him.. I missed my home. My mother then called on my dad's phone to tell me that I'm never coming back, I'd have to marry someone there and live there for a couple of months before I could ever think of coming back. I was broken, this put me through major depression. I tried to use other cousins phones to contact my friends back home but everyone was already told not to let me use their phones .

I begged and begged , until my dad cut off all the internet access in our house and my cousins houses who'd lived next door to us. I began to loose hope, I began to cry all day, I didn't want to eat, I'd starve for hours and hours until being forced to eat by family members. I began to loose who I was, I became weak. I didn't want to give up my way of running away and going back to NY, but I just had to find a way out. The police there don't help people, they just take money and forget anything ever happen so they were not a resort. My father began looking for Guys at a place near by where individuals would leave files of their sons and daughters for others to come look at for marriage . I used to scream at everyone that get me out of here I used to think that I should just die . I wanted to kill myself, I had many many thoughts of it in my head. There was this river outside my house that ran for miles I used to tell my dad I would jump in there and die. So one morning I decided to take a walk near that river without telling anyone, I walked and walked while everyone's eyes were on me, they knew I was not from there. I dazzed into the river hoping I'd jump in and just end it there since there's no way to go back. Until the moment I tried to jump , some people came and stopped me . My uncles ended up roaming the streets and found me and took me back. My dad lost his mind , he thought I was crazy, I'd always tell him if he doesn't take me back I'd kill myself . I began to go crazy , I started seeing figures , people that I could only see, they began to haunt me , I would never sleep at night because these figures would just sit there and stare at me . No one believed what I saw, my dad started to think killing me was the only way . He began to make me see a Preist type person who'd read verses of the Quran on me for days to remove the Evil eyes from me . But it was not working , I began to loose a lot of weight , I lost appetite , I lost hope, I lost my life. I knew I'd never be the same again. I began to pray everyday and ask God to take me back that I'd change my life , I just needed one chance .

But there was no hope, all my doors closed . I figured if I would show my dad nothing's bothering me that I'm normal that he'd take me back. I used to see that priest everyday , he had said someone did black magic on me . And I believed it , because I knew his brothers wife wanted me to marry her son and I hated him , I hated my dad's family . I began to feel a little better , I stopped seeing so many figures and that's when my dad decided to fasten the process of looking for a guy because he felt bad. First family that came to see me , they saw some part of me inside that they said no right away, I was a broken soul. Then another family came and saw the same thing. As time passed , I began to get skinner and skinner, I missed the person I'd loved , we never spoke since I left from there and I missed my friends and family. Until one day I knew since I did not have my passport or phone , there's no way out . I finally gave up hope , this was August . A whole month of suffering I finally gave up. I told him fine , look for who ever you want . I was hard hearted , I didn't care anymore .

Then the final family came , and they said yes to us. The guy was not allowed to come and neither I was allowed to meet him. Then my mom finally came from NY to meet his family and decided the date. I never talked , I never showed emotion, I was like a rock. The date was decided for 2 and half weeks later. 2 and half weeks later I was getting married to a guy I never spoke to, seen or anything . My parents were happy , and I was numb. The day of the wedding passed , the wedding happened and when I spent the first day with my husband , I used to think of my love , my old life , the way I was. We began to fight everyday because he wondered why I didn't give him my all. How could I? I'm an American girl in another world . A world that I was lost in. We fought for months everyday because there was so much difference , I began to loose even more hope and I would talk to my parents on the phone and tell them I'm not happy that I want to leave and they told me I couldn't , that I'd have to stay for a while then I could go back. We had many differences , I always thought how I'd manage to live with someone who was the opposite of me . Until I gave up on this too just like everything else , I began to stop reacting everytime he'd yell at me , argue or say anything else . He realized and would just leave me to go hang up with his friends while I stayed in the room all day and his parents would yell at me for that as well, they never supported me and only supported him. I began to smile to everything he said and just act like I'm not hurt, that I'm over my past, but in reality , I'd never forget anything . I was in a lot of trauma , depression , and everything in my head would race back to me. I decided to just go along with everything he said and just cry when no one was around , until I finally booked my ticket back in February . 5 months after my wedding , I was allowed to go back, I couldn't wait , the land of the free was waiting for me . I finally came back February 2017, pregnant and depressed. At first it was so different for me to manage everything , I was still lost and my family tried to make me feel like they didn't do anything. I accepted it .. I accepted that I lost someone I loved and I can't go back to the past because I have a baby coming .

Even now , I can't forget my past , there's days and nights I sit and cry to myself because of flashbacks I have , I don't see any of my friends or family because I can't ever be the same again . This marriage was a life lesson for me, marrying a Pakistani Guy , he a total opposite . Now waiting to see where life takes me next....