We are leaving for China tomorrow at 9.45am with a layover at Paris for an hour and a half. I'm slightly scared. It's something new, going to such a faraway place (from the UK) with a few friends for such a long period of time (20 days!). I'm not sure if I'll be able to come back a changed person but that's my biggest goal, to come back with greater awareness of the world and how fleeting, how fragile and yet how wonderful it is. I want to look at things with eyes of appreciation and gratitude for my Rabb. It's scary, knowing that I'll go through such a life-changing experience with the possibility of not changing at all.

You remember how I can't express my feelings anymore? It's still ongoing, but at least I feel like there's a desperate effort on my part to actually seek help. The output is small - I've only mentioned how I am briefly and in the vaguest way possible - but it's there. The effort. I hope to expand on it. Really, I hope to fully acquire the need for help from Allah. Like always and for anything. In everything that I do. It's difficult for me now. To always think of my Rabb. It requires considerable consciousness to call out for him each second I'm in worry, pain, annoyance, happiness or discomfort. I know that's a weird mix of feelings that don't really range widely, but I feel like those are the only things I feel now, minimally. It's scary. I feel more when I watch dramas and movies. Scary.

I guess that's how people look at those at the other side of the world, something detached, because they are not moments you experience, but figures you look from afar. There's no emotional connection. And yet, there are also times when things are in front of me but I'm still emotionally disconnected.

Remember how I used to want to like myself at the end of each day? I don't think I've liked myself for a long time.

Through this journey and my record of it, I wish to reflect on myself, and hope that that will soon translate into a manifestation of my own reflection. Amiin ya Rabb al-amiin.