DAY TWENTY-FIVE

365 writing challenge with pen influence

hiiiiiii. welcome again! it's day twenty-five and i hope your day went well. kindly forgive my errors and learn with me. and... i hope whatever you read here sits with you. thank youuuu 💜

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hi, again. i am hikmah.

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choosing your peace over making someone else comfortable isn’t always as simple as it is said. “say no when you mean no.” “don’t settle for less.” “don’t pretend you’re okay when you’re not.” “you don’t have to accept certain treatment just to avoid looking like the bad person.”

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all of these are easy sentences to throw around. they sound brave and empowering. but living them is a different thing entirely. choosing your peace over someone else’s comfort is advice that rolls easily off the tongue, yet an elephant in the room in real life. it’s like telling a market woman who feeds her family daily from her sales to simply choose peace and risk accepting the unfair terms of the rich madam who cheats her on prices. or she can choose arguing and losing something. both are difficult choices.

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peace is important, yes — but survival is louder. and responsibility is louder.

our circumstances are louder. sometimes choosing peace feels like choosing conflict. other times it feels like choosing loneliness. sometimes it feels like choosing to be misunderstood. i read a comment by bridget under one of my write-ups. she spoke about setting boundaries with her roommates who constantly provoked her. and i admired that courage — because boundaries are not just lines we draw, they are battles we fight within ourselves first.

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choosing yourself comes with guilt.

there’s this ear of being labeled difficult, the worry of losing people. choosing peace often comes with consequences no one talks about. consequences come along with choosing our own peace over the noise of expectations. i also spoke with sister aminah today. she was overwhelmed about exams, about work, about life pulling her in too many directions at once. a student, a social media manager, a woman trying to stay afloat mentally and emotionally — all at the same time; she spoke about not finding the right way to study, about feeling behind, about the pressure to perform well while carrying so much. and i understood her, because i’ve been swimming in that same water for a while now.

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amd that conversation really opened my eyes to some things. that it's perhaps maturity that made me realise that it's hard trying to grow, to survive, to not disappoint anyone. trying not to disappoint yourself is real. we often struggle to choose ourselves not because we don’t value peace, but because choosing ourselves feels selfish in a world that constantly demands our sacrifice. we are taught to endure, adjust, “manage discomfort quietly”… we learn to keep others comfortable even when it costs us our sanity. we find it hard to choose rest over expectations. it's hard to choose honesty over noise. it's hard to choose our wellbeing over being liked by others.

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and the harsh truth is, it’s never really easy.

peace requires courage. it requires disappointing people. it requires standing alone sometimes. it requires unlearning the habit of shrinking. choosing peace is not always soft and calm. sometimes it is loud. sometimes it breaks relationships. sometimes it changes how people see you. but definitely, it teaches you how to exist again without apology.

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this is day twenty-five of my 365 day writing challenge

and i’m learning that peace is not avoidance, and it is not weakness. it is choosing not to bleed just to keep others warm. it is choosing to matter in your own life. and i think that’s the hardest choice of all.

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hi. how was your day? by the way, the video attached today might resonate with you 💜

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