PROSE – FOWC & RDP

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She wore the veil not to disappear, but to survive.

It wasn’t for tradition, or rebellion. It wasn’t a performance. It was protection.
It was her way of saying: I decide what you get to take from me.

They never handed her chains. They handed her mirrors. Bent ones.
Peer pressure didn’t demand. It seduced. Do what we do. Be what we expect. Not because we said so—but because you’ll be alone if you don’t.

Then secular pressure followed, wrapped in freedom’s clothing.
Be who you are—as long as it’s curated, as long as it looks good, as long as it doesn’t disturb.
Express, but don’t confront. Create, but don’t challenge.
Believe in nothing but your brand.

And for a while, she drifted. Trying to belong. Trying to disappear inside approval.

But inside the silence, something broke open.

“Weak as I am…”

She said it like an admission. But it was the beginning of truth.

Weak—not because she failed, but because she felt.
Because she hadn’t let the world harden her into something hollow.
Because even in survival, she still longed for something more than existing.

Because she can’t change the world, but she control how it molds her.
And she refused to be shaped by fear. She chose to be shaped by memory. By presence.
By scars she didn’t hide.

Stay alive. Keep on fighting.

Some days, she did.
Some days, she didn’t.

Like a fugitive on the run—from becoming unrecognizable to herself.
Carrying the weight of all she’s done—and all that’s been done to her.
She was born from regret, yes. But that regret made her conscious. Aware. Awake.

And still, the questions haunt her:

What is she fighting for?
What is she running from?

The answers shift, day to day.

Sometimes she fights for the quiet.
For the small version of herself she abandoned to survive.
For the right to not have to explain.
For the chance to feel something other than fear.

And yes—there are moments. Moments where escape feels like mercy.

What if she wanted to run? Leave it all.
What if she crumbled, and couldn’t fight anymore?

These thoughts don’t scare her anymore.
They keep her honest.
They remind her that strength isn’t the absence of breaking—
it’s the choice to return to yourself after.

Because at the end of all the noise, all the pretending, all the shrinking and reaching and rebuilding—

She is left with one quiet, unshakable truth:

This is who I really am.

No polish. No filter.
Veiled, but not invisible.
Wounded, but not erased.
Tired, but still reaching.

So when the world looks her way, squinting through its own discomfort, trying to place her in a category, or strip her down to something simpler, something safer—

She doesn’t flinch.

She lifts her gaze and speaks with a voice that carries every weight she never dropped:

“With this tainted soul, in this wicked world…
Am I too strong for you?”

And if the answer is yes—so be it.

She never asked for permission.
She only asked to be real.