The beginning of that day, obviously, wasn't easy. Not just because i had to lock myself in the bathroom, and later couldnt control the need to mutilate myself yet again, but because i had to spend almost an hour in the car with the two people i hated the most.

My fucking driver was directly in front of me. My mom was right next to me. I didnt want to hear their idle talk when i knew that all they wanted to do was talk about me and how fucked up i am and how stupid wessam is. I was torn between taking my right to scream at him, and giving him the silent treatment to avoid a smothering awkwardness. He'd already decided it was in his better interest to just not say one word to me. I would have told him to fuck himself and stay out of my life when we were getting out of the car, but there was no parking space and no time. I decided my anger could wait.

I was shaking when we were at the door. I was more nervous than i ever would be meeting wessam's mom alone. I'd obsessed over what to wear, finally deciding on dark, fitted jeans with shiny black heels and a dark grey tank top. I tied my white blouse at the front, to conceal my shoulders and my underarms. There was nothing i could do about the cleavage, but his mother and her family had high expectations for beauty, not for modesty, when it came to their son's girlfriends. I obsessed over my make-up too, accidentally making it heavier than i should have. He warned me about that, saying that when it comes to make-up, they believe that the more i put on, the uglier i'll be to wake up to every morning. I don't dye my hair, i don't powder my face, i don't color my lips - i just use mascara as a remedy for the tiny eyelashes i inherited from my mother. I was more worried about the way i looked than i should have been - but i knew that if she believed i was pretty enough for her son, i would be accepted much more easily. When wessam opened the door, the first thing i did was move to hug him, and he stuck out his hand for me to shake.

"Are you serious?" i said, looking at him unsurely.

"I'm sorry," he said regrettably.

We sat down on the couches, me and wessam on one side, and our mothers on the other. I didn't know how to greet her, but she took my hand and kissed both of my cheeks. I had to bend over quite a bit because i was so much taller than her, especially in these heels. It didn't help at all for my tremors. I'm pretty sure that by then everybody knew i was shaking. I felt like i would trip over myself and i was red.

The difference between wessam and i as we sat together was simple: i was a deep red, and i couldnt stop fidgeting. He couldn't even smile - he sat unmoving, staring straight ahead, his face pale. We were both incredibly nervous and we didnt even have the time to speak to each other. I didnt dare put on my glasses, wanting to look as nice as i could. I had put inside my mind that gaining her acceptance was going to be too difficult, and i needed every good quality i could force out of myself.

For the next hour and a half my mother sat there lying her ass off, and i had to sit there and watch.  Damn, it sucked. I was so wound up from hearing her bullshit everybody in the room that sometimes i had to speak up - especially when she made up bullshit about me that even i was hearing for the first time. The arguing that often came up wasn't very pretty - wessam's mom began cursing him in arabic so we wouldn't understand her. Damn, it sucked  while my mom was around.

Wessam and i had discussed countless times the future of our relationship. We know it's permanent because we know we will never find the same perfect balance with anybody else or the same personal bond - we talk about marriage knowing that it'll happen, and wessam's mother doesn't believe in relationships that wont' end in marriage.  So when his mother asked me what we think we'll get out of the relationship, i told her what she'd want to hear, and what we already knew we wanted. "It's permanent," i said, " we intend to make it last until we get married."

And my mom made sly, bitchy eye contact with wessam and laughed. Another one of her smooth moves to fuck me up in the eyes of the one that loves me more than she'll accept.  And she just doesnt get that it just wont work. It infuriates me though, that she thinks she knows wessam and has a personal enough relationship with him to do that. She's failed time after time at making a private thing between them. But she will never, ever learn how to back off.

I asked to stay for a while after my mom left though - the meaning of this visit was more than just deciding rules and conditions for our personal relationship. The second the door closed and my mom was gone, the tension that seemed to be holding everybody at the neck was almost completely relaxed, and i asked his mother if we could talk about something that i couldnt bring up in front of my mom - she led me to the couches with her arm around me, and i tried to avoid turning red. Unfortunately nothing worked.

We had a long conversation - i tried to explain the miscarriage to her, and explain that it was a miscarriage, not an abortion. The language barrier was a problem, since she couldn't speak english too well, but she got the message that if it was alive, i would have kept it, and that the one thing i want out of life is to have a family and give them all that i can and be a good mother.

While my mom was still here, she'd bullshitted me about the feeling of being a mother, only because wessam's mom had brought up that god gave women the ability to love their children like no other. Not every mother in the world is good - and that's a known fact. But i have some half-grasp of what it must feel like. What happened to me when i saw the ultrasounds and found that a living being had been sharing my food, my drink, my blood and my warmth and my energy, and that living being was half of me and half of the man i love... damn, it hurt, because i could see it, they could give me information on the gender and the age and the date it should have been born. The gravity of what lay inside was just overwhelming - and with that overwhelming, radiant feeling there was grief and disappointment and a feeling of loss... especially after the D&C surgery... because i had to remind myself that he was already dead. It still gets to me sometimes. I tried to explain it to her, and i almost didn't have to - she understood just by the look on my face.

She looked stressed out and upset while i was speaking, but more by the difficulty of the situation than the actual mistake we'd made. She'd often told wessam, before she met me face to face, that because i was sixteen, i probably had a crush on him and didn't genuinely love him. I explained the real feelings there, too, and she had a mind open enough to accept it. Not only did she accept it - she seemed to embrace it. "My first grandson would have been a beautiful boy," she said, "you and wessam have faces that will mix well."

She offered to let me and wessam get married right now, and use one of their spare apartments until we're both done with our educations, not only because she'd established that we were serious about each other, but because she feared god, and believed the pre-marital sex should be fixed as soon as possible. "I can't imagine you two staying together until you're eighteen without making forbidden mistakes." But she was so gentle about it, and she told me to think of her as a mother, because, especially after the pregnancy, she considers me a daughter. "I always wanted a daughter," she said, laughing, "but i got stuck with three sons instead."

She turned on the laptop and the three of us sat down to talk to wessam's father on skype - he was fluent in english and more liberal, so he broke the tension. He made jokes and he was nice too, despite knowing that i took their son's virginity and added the first soul to their list of dead descendants. He told me that they'll look for improvements in both wessam and me, within the next four months, to see that we can have a positive influence on each other instead of a negative one. He asked me what kind of guy wessam is, and how considerate he is, masking his curiosity by making it all sound like a joke. Both of his parents seemed to naturally take me in after the first few minutes of conversation.

When wessam and i were eating some classic egyptian dish that everybody has told me to try for the past six months, he said "would you ever imagine that we'd be sitting here eating Kushery while my mom's somewhere in the house?"

Probably not. I hadn't expected any of that at all - i couldn't tell what it was that made her immediately accept me, whether it was what i said about all that happened, or the way i look, or the way i spoke, or what happened in the first place. She'd said so much stuff about me when i was still a mystery to her that implied she'd never accept me, but almost as soon as my mom left, it turned out she already had.

The only thing she said to wessam when i wasn't in earshot of them was, "She's a beautiful girl, probably the most beautiful you could have brought home. She has a strange body for a sixteen year old though, if her waist is so small and her hips are so big she should be in her 20s. When she's 30 or 40 her butt's gonna be huge."

I'm not surprised. I knew she'd find something - and she's definitely not wrong XD. I take after my mom in nearly every physical way.

The fun stuff didn't end there - she gave me a beautiful, very feminine chain for my keys, and brought out random treats - including his baby pictures. We laughed at pictures of wessam when he was 12, or 14, or 2, or 6, maybe four days old in some of them. She told me that i have to meet the rest of their family - his aunties and uncles and his brothers. The red color had disappeared from my face but he still looked pale and rigid, unless we were alone. She seemed so enthusiastic by the whole thing that i liked her more every minute. She seemed proud of what she found between me and him, and took pictures to show to the rest of the family until i meet them in person.

It was almost too good to be true - i couldn't get my head around how such a devout muslim could welcome me in, knowing all of the mistakes I made, knowing that i'm out of school and knowing why i'm out of school, as well as my bad habits (smoking, drinking, etc). When we were waiting to go out, she took my email address and told me i can come over to their house anytime, or email her whenever i feel like talking, or call her whenever i need advice. And there is the proof that my parents really do suck - wessam has put them through more shit than i've ever put my own parents through. And when i had a miscarriage, they ostracized wessam, refusing to let him into the house and treating him like shit every time they did see him - and now of course there's this police situation.

But for a woman who really has grown up with those strict rules of moral conduct in place, belonging to a religion where even looking at the woman who isn't your wife is a crime, i'd expect wessam's mom to be much worse than mine was. Instead, i could speak candidly with her about what happened, and the shit i had to go through, she understood more than anybody else.

My parents were only using it to excuse their natural short tempers and selfishness and power assertion because they have nothing else to justify such stupid behavior. So it was more than just a breath of fresh air - it was a gift, that one woman was so enthusiastic about having me as a daughter when my own mother would only ever touch me if she was trying to rip my face apart, and has slapped me up and told me to grow up when i was ten years old and crying to her for advice, and continued until i learned to stop asking.

His youngest brother didn't seem all that happy though - i hadn't noticed when he arrived. I just picked up my bag, turned around, and he was standing there next to wessam, giving me the  stare and completely lost for words. Being nice didn't really do anything for the lack of words, because the first thing he did when he left was start quietly arguing with his mom, as if he'd never even seen a girl before (let alone a girl's hair, arms, neck, collarbones, omg) and his eyes were being wounded and polluted by having one in his house. Lucky for me though, his mom was arguing back.

We left soon after, to go hang out with a friend of his. His mom reminded me to come over and hang out with her any time, which wessam says we'll probably do every thursday, in the early hours.

I've been in a better mood since then. It makes me consider her offer constantly too, though. Wessam is more apathetic about it, not because he doesnt want it but because we'd still be finishing our educations and we'd still have to get financial support. It wouldnt feel like we belonged to each other - it would feel like we still belonged to, if not my parents, his.

My mom still tries to find new things to dramatize while she's out of reasons to fuck with me - but i'll make sure i do nothing wrong in her eyes. Or i do, and i dont get caught. She probably won't ever change and she doesn't want what's best for me and she just doesnt give a shit - but at least for now, the problem in the miscarriage and the problem with wessam's parents is done with. I feel like i can breathe - not bleed - again.

Hi Lynn. Thanks for dropping by and offering your thoughts on my "Evaluation" post. Some of what you shared resonated with me, and I thank you very much for that. Sometimes, it's not easy to analyze one's own dreams, even though I've been doing it for more than 20 years.

As for your post, all I can really do is send you positive healing energies and ask the universe to watch over you and guide you to where you need to be...

Hey Lynn... Just dropping in to wish you a happy and reasonably sane weekend. Remember: Everything in the universe is unfolding exactly the way it's supposed to...