A good friend once told me that our destiny, including our life partner, was written by Allah 50,000 years ago. I’m not sure if this is accurate, but it’s something I’ve pondered. During my housemanship, I worked as a junior doctor at a hospital in Perlis. At that time, I thought that once I completed my housemanship, I might try to win back my ex-boyfriend and take things seriously since the most stressful phase of my career would soon be over.
Even though we had broken up, I hadn’t moved on completely because he was my first love, ever since high school. Despite meeting a few male friends after our breakup, none felt serious enough because, in my heart, I still believed we were meant to be. During my housemanship, I became close with two younger male doctors, but they were actually a couple. Both of them were gay, so there was no romantic connection for me. To be honest, I’ve always had more male friends than female ones.
There were even a couple of colleagues who proposed marriage, but I turned them down. The housemanship years were incredibly exhausting—by 5 a.m., I had to be at the hospital, and I wouldn’t get home until late at night. During the 'tagging' period, I wouldn’t return home until 10 or 11 p.m., and the next day, I had to be back by 5 a.m. It was relentless.
There was one particular day, during my paediatric rotation, when I felt incredibly overwhelmed. I was only a few months away from finishing my housemanship, but the stress was mounting. In a moment of weakness, I called my ex-boyfriend. It was late 2013, and I remember feeling desperate to reconcile. But he rejected me. I cried, begging him to take me back, but it was useless. I realized then that he had moved on, likely finding someone else.
I felt heartbroken—overwhelmed by both work stress and the pain of rejection. I cried all day, not knowing how to surrender to fate or accept it. A few months later, I reached out to him again on Skype. Can you guess what happened? He told me he was getting married and sent me his wedding invitation card. My heart shattered into a million pieces, and I cried like never before. But, being my stubborn, prideful self, I acted as though everything was fine. I responded casually, pretending that I wasn’t hurting inside.
That was Shakirah—stubborn and proud to a fault. But that was my younger self. Eventually, I came to terms with the situation and accepted my fate.
As for how I met my husband, well, it was quite unexpected. He was a university friend of my brother’s, and one day, during Hari Raya, he visited my house with his parents. His mother took a liking to me, and that’s how our relationship began. They proposed soon after. Initially, I accepted the proposal partly out of a sense of vengeance and hurt—still angry that my ex had moved on and married before me. If I recall correctly, they visited during Raya in July 2014, and we got married in October 2014. Things moved quickly. Funny, isn’t it?
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