Identity.

It has been a really long time since I have blogged here and wow, time flies. Well, for updates, I finished my A levels about a month ago and it honestly felt so good to be able to declare that I have conquered (hopefully conquered it well) the A levels. Also, I have started wearing the hijab completely since junior college has ended. Hence, I would like to talk about that a little bit today.

I have always worn the hijab since I was 11 years old but it was pretty much inconsistent because of school, where I have to wear the school uniform. During my seven year journey of wearing the hijab inconsistently, I have experienced many emotions about the hijab. In all honesty, I was scared to show my friends in school that I wore the hijab outside of school. It was not really shame but it was the fear of judgement from my peers in school. I imagined all the comments that the people from school will say such as ‘You look better without it’ (which is the worst comment to say by the way) or some other judgement about my faith and other beliefs. I feel that it also has something to do with islamophobia where I was afraid that my friends would associate me to terrorism and other extremists views, which I wholeheartedly do not support. Hence, due to this irrational fear, I avoided social outings and events and this inevitably affected the friendships I forged in secondary school because it seemed as if I actively avoided them because I disliked them or something along those lines.

When I voluntarily put up my first picture of myself in a hijab on social media, I felt nervous. However, I thankfully got incredibly nice comments from my peers from JC. From then on, I felt that the hijab has become a complete part of my identity and in retrospect, 11 to 17 year old self me was quite foolish to fear the judgement when I have such amazing people to be called friends in my life. If there is one lesson I wish I could have learned earlier was; the people who mind don’t matter, the people who matter don’t mind. This is also what I would like to share with everybody who is struggling with self-acceptance, not exclusive to donning the hijab! Be who you are and you will start to enjoy your company and what you do. Trust me because it took me a good 7 years to learn it myself.