COUNTDOWN TO 40

Welcome to my little corner of the internet—where we’re about to embark on a fabulously therapeutic and life changing adventure together, one that will undoubtedly toss patriarchal standards in the trash where they have always belonged. I’m Faiza, and on September 2nd, 2024, I’ll be turning 40, and the one question everyone seems to have for me is, “How did you allow yourself to get to this point?”

The “point” they’re questioning is, how did I end up a thirty-nine-year-old single woman, about to turn forty, never having been married, with no kids, no eggs frozen in any bank, sitting at home still watching Spanish novellas with my mom? To add to that- as of last December, I decided to end one-on-one dating consulting with clients, something I’ve done for over a decade since becoming the first Muslim/Arab dating expert, which has been a turbulent journey in and of itself. We’ll get to it. The point is that you can add currently jobless and starting from the ground up to the mix which isn’t something I thought I would be experiencing at thirty-nine, mind you.  And while we’re being transparent (something I’ve been dying to be for years but had to withhold for reasons we’ll also get to) let’s add to the mix that I own very little assets, drive no lavish car, and no savings account. I haven’t left the United States of America since I was four years old, and I’ve been outcasted by my own people again– we’ll get to it as well. In short, I have no community and no social life. To most, I’m a social reject. 

In all transparency, I’m not sure how time flew by so quickly. That’s one of the many reasons for this life audit. Because nothing will wake you up more than a birthday. Especially forty.

But despite not understanding where the fuck the time went, why don’t I feel or accept that reality… that I’m a loser or social reject I mean? Why aren’t I curled up in some corner crying? Don’t get me wrong, there are times I feel behind and it gets the better of me. I suppose that’s another reason I’m doing this life audit. To understand and conquer that nagging voice within that tries convincing me that what the community has said about me being a “washed-up old hag who needs to accept she’s done and will never accomplish anything and just go find a guy who’s desperate enough to marry your expired ass,” is true. 

I’ll admit- at times it lingers longer than I’d like it to. There are times it even comes as my dad too; the man who wanted nothing more than to see me married before he died and yet here I am at thirty-nine still giving the idea of marriage a side eye while I stand pouring water over his grave.

Yet even if I haven’t followed any of the paths set for me or checked off any of those milestones, I can’t accept that perspective. I’m not scared... not to the degree, everyone keeps insisting I need to be anyway. Nowhere near it. I don’t feel my time is up. Nor do I believe that I need to be running to get married before my “eggs dry up.”

Does that make me crazy? I mean the community has been saying that since they found out I suffered a nervous
breakdown back in 2015.

Maybe I am crazy?

Or maybe… I’m onto something revolutionary.

Maybe it’s those expectations and those people who are crazy because guess what? I don’t see, “Finding yourself,” as a milestone on any of these lists, and I can tell you confidently – especially after working with people for seventeen years on and off social media- there’s nothing more life-changing than knowing yourself. Give anyone who truly knows themselves a year and see if they don’t alchemize a whole new reality. 

This is exactly the journey I intend to share with all of you who may come to realize that your life isn’t over, but the journey has just begun.

A journey, that for me starts by accepting the one thing I’ve spent so much of my life ashamed of: my age.

xoxo, Faiza