For me, being Muslim was never a choice. After school every day, without fail, I went to ICFW, the Islamic learning school my parents enrolled me in when I was five. At first, I was excited. My sisters told me there were girls my age and that they had ice cream cake every Friday, which was all the motivation five-year-old me needed. And I’d be lying if I said there weren’t moments I enjoyed—friends outside of school, shared jokes, and conversations about a nervousness we didn’t quite understand yet. There was a heaviness in those rooms, one we didn’t have the language for.
 

         That heaviness became real the day we were supposed to recite Surah Al-Fatiha from memory. We sat in a semi-circle around our teacher, the atmosphere thick with tension. He stood in front of us holding a ruler, his face stern and unyielding. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as fear tightened inside me. I began picking at the skin on my hands, hoping the moment would pass quickly. When it was my turn, I kept my eyes on my trembling hands and rushed through the words, stumbling in my anxiety. He stopped me abruptly and shouted, “Wallahi! If you ever recite like that again, I will hit you!” My eyes filled with tears, my chest tightened until I could barely breathe. He then added that my parents wouldn’t care because “they do the same thing back in Ethiopia.”
 

        By kindergarten, I was already taking off my hijab and hiding it in my Tinkerbell backpack—not out of embarrassment, but because it never felt like mine. My life revolved around Islam, and while I memorized verses, I secretly wished I could be in ballet instead. I wanted the sickening nervousness I felt walking into that classroom to disappear. I hid my hands from my friends, embarrassed by the marks I’d picked into my skin. They felt like proof of how trapped I felt.

When COVID hit, I was twelve, and my classes stopped. But the tension didn’t. My relationship with my parents, especially my dad, grew strained. One night during an argument, he shouted, “A Muslim who only prays during Ramadan is not a real Muslim at all!” I stared at the floor, frustration boiling, thinking, What if I don’t want to be Muslim at all? I felt suffocated by expectations I never chose. “Everyone who isn’t committed to another religion is born Muslim,” they would tell me, but it felt more like a command than a belief.
 

        Everything I loved—acting, music, creativity—seemed haram. Eventually, even happiness felt like a sin. I reached a point where every interest I had felt like a betrayal of the life chosen for me.
 

        So, I made a choice for myself, maybe for the first time. I joined acting programs. I wore the clothes that felt like me. I let myself explore the parts of me I had spent years trying to hide. With each performance and every moment of creative expression, I felt my lungs expand again. I began to breathe in ways that felt new yet deeply familiar, like a version of myself I had been reaching for since childhood. Slowly, I stopped being the terrified little girl scraping at her hands, waiting for permission to exist.
 

        Choosing self-expression taught me that I don’t have to live in fear, and I don’t have to abandon who I am to honor where I come from. My relationship with Islam is complicated, but it no longer controls my identity. Maybe one day I’ll explore my faith on my own terms. But for now, I know that my voice, my identity, and my joy are mine to shape.
 

        I’m no longer trapped.

        I’m free—and I’ve learned that self-expression is not a sin.