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Over time, I had started to learn how to be less brutal. Especially when people reared back from my words and I saw tears in their eyes.
It hit a strange place in my heart. To know that I had become what I used to fear. To see the look in people's eyes that I myself had always harbored when I spoke to others.
I didn't want to become so permanently icy. I hated the bitterness. It seemed to consume me.
I also didn't want to revert to the kind, selfless doormat I used to be. I couldn't handle any more people wiping their feet on me.
My seesaw was shaking, unbalanced.
It was teetering on one side, then teetering to another. It did not settle. It did not stop moving. It simply continued to shift back and forth, back and forth.
Imama actually started coming over to practice some scenarios with me. She'd hold a paper in her hands and shoot random questions at me such as, "If somebody came to you and made a passive aggressive comment about your appearance, what would you say?"
"Screw you?" I replied, and she placed her head in her hands because that was the seventh "screw you" I had said.
But I was slowly learning to be less fiery. To melt a little. To allow my steel heart to soften a bit, especially after having stumbled across a hadith in which the Prophet Muhammad said, "Shall I not tell you who will be forbidden from the Fire? Every gentle, soft-hearted and kind person."
I had to be very careful, though, with the amount of softening I did. I could not afford to resort to the helpless little Sarah again. The Sarah who allowed people to batter and beat and marionette her. The Sarah who didn't fight back when people toyed with her emotions.
I saw Zunair multiple times throughout this period. He always looked at me with pitiful eyes. And I always responded by being cold as steel around him. Straight-backed, chin up. Like a soldier ready for battle.
And then when he would disappear from my vision, I would exhale and relax my shoulders. Slouch over, bury my head in my hands.
Because even though I was getting there, I still had a hell of a long way to go.
