Control freak

I’m back on contraception and ironically it makes me feel empowered. For a sexually inactive woman the idea of preventing pregnancy as an affirmation of control over the body and self holds no currency. However, it regulates my period and clears up acne. By adding more estrogen to my system, it reduces my mood swings considerably and functionality is restored to a more predictable pattern. It is also comforting to think that because my ovaries’ performance is substantially reduced, I’m producing (and wasting) fewer eggs every month. What that means is that I am likely to be able to bear children beyond the average healthy production span of the ovaries. Hitting 30 in eight months, and still single with no chances of sex in sight, all these things need to be weighed out carefully.

Since so many posts have been consistently falling in the meandering and geometry category lately, my struggle for control must be evident. I reflect on my airborne moments and hope to never be buoyant to the point of such madness and transgression again. Being airborne requires relinquishing all control and letting yourself drift with its headiness. As long as the agency of control remains, happiness is possible but not unfettered buoyancy. I felt so complete those days that I was walking on air. I had something which I had patiently and conscientiously denied myself even in all my years of living by myself without any checks. I allowed myself to be led beyond permissible boundaries and I wasn’t ridden with guilt. So overcome was I with the lightness of my being that when the cliche situation came full circle the triteness of it all was exceptionally unbearable. Having been bred on the sole principle of integrity, the loss of face and loss of self was most damaging.

Still reeling from the aftermath, I read:

“Sin has this horrible ability to chase one throughout life.” – Khaled M. Abou el Fadl.

Does el Fadl mean that having sinned once, one is likely to fall into again and again? Or does he mean that it’s repercussions follow a person throughout her/his life.  I was intimate with a man and it was as much out of my love for him as it was out of a desire to let go of all reason and logic, to soar above everything imaginable. I did not sleep with him. For a woman who had only kissed once even until she was 28, morality is sacred in each of its facets. Intercourse then is only the nth stage of intimacy. Preclusion of just that can not uphold the principle in its purity.  I have transcribed the past few months onto my slate and even if Allah forgives them, which I believe he has by bringing me back, they can never be disowned. If asked about my past again, how will I hold my head up high in a besmeared body?