Column: Finding God At The Skatepark

By: Serenity Anderson, Follow South Jersey Intern

It’s one of those things you just don’t talk about with your mom, your all-consuming, soul-eating, devastating fear of what comes next. It’s the kind of thing you pretend doesn’t exist, your inability to know exactly what you want.

I’m talking about what it means to be twenty-one.

But I know what I want, right? At least I’ve got that. I want to be loved. And I want to be on the other side of the world chasing buildings and skating ledges and pretending like five months from now, five months from adulthood, five months until graduation, won’t actually happen. I want to speak six different languages and grow my hair to my thighs and maybe, like, I don’t know, have a good life? 

I want to be good, I definitely know that. 

I want a lot of things that mean putting myself “out there” and living what will soon be the “good old days.” But for some reason, instead of doing something spectacular, I find myself on a random train in London counting the passing-by stops.

I’m lost. Again. Just one of those things I’ve come to accept about being here. That, and the persistent grey of the sky.

I do my best thinking here, actually, on the way to the skatepark. Never mind the £10, 40 minute trip. Southbound and lonely. I try not to think about being lonely because how can you believe in Allah (God) and feel lonely? ‘Muslim’ and ‘lonely’ don’t even feel right in the same sentence.

We pass Putney, then Clapham, when a seat by the window opens up. I take it, shoving my skateboard between my knees and pretend not to notice the scuff marks and dust on my skirt. 

I didn’t realize until now, but it’s one of those four-way seaters that’s built specifically to make your encounters with strangers awkward (or maybe trips with your friends worth it). Across from me sits a businessman wearing too-tight slacks and a scarf burying shoulders and a neck and maybe even a thick, greying Santa Claus beard. Per London tradition we avoid eye contact.

I follow the grafiti tagged buildings out the window and wonder for a second where Allah is. I’ve spent the past couple of days looking for Him everywhere.

Someone once asked me when I feel the most free. While I was thinking, they answered for me.

“For me, I feel the most free when I pray? It’s the same for you too, isn’t it? Because you’re Muslim, right?” 

I thought about it and agreed, but something about the statement didn’t feel right in my heart. I felt the most free when I was skating. I knew that for sure. Pushing against the wind and trying a trick over and over until it drove me crazy. Skating was the kind of freedom I could escape to.

But talking to Allah. Praying. The only way I can describe that kind of experience is surrender. 

It’s letting go of the worries of this Dunya (temporary world) and letting it fall from my shoulders. I feel Him when I’m in sujood (prostration), my head kissing the ground and my thoughts far away from me. Talking to Allah is easy then; everything quiets down. So how then do I find Him in the clutter of everyday life? How do I feel him when it hurts too much to think?

“That’s just what it’s like in your twenties. You’ll be fine.”

I arrive at Waterloo station and ponder the advice. I push my way through crowds, rubbing my thumb up and down the grip tape of my skateboard as I try to imagine what thirty-year old me is up to on a Sunday morning. Does she ever think back to this semester in London? Has she seen the world and fallen in love and grown out her hair? Does she still ask Allah for forgiveness?

The sound of boards hitting the floor, wheels stretching, board tapping– the chaos of the skatepark welcomes me.

I skate over to my designated seat at the park and throw off my coat and bag, hating myself just a little for forgetting my gloves. I watch for a while, getting a vibe of the place. At Southbank, the guys skate fast and rough and in your face. 

A guy does a shuv-it into crooked grind and boards tap the ground in applause. Two guys go for a trick on the same ledge from opposite directions. They end up crashing into each other at the last second, one pissed, the other laughing it off. The only other girl at the skatepark quietly practices ollieing into a nosegrind over and over.

There’s a kind of rhythm I’ve been trying to figure out here, one I’m not sure I’ll fully understand until I’m back in Los Angeles and away from here. Sometimes it works like that. Sometimes you can only discover something about a place after you’ve left it.

But then other times, like right now times, I feel tethered to this moment.

It’s here I realize that Allah is everywhere. He’s every kind of mercy in the world, every kind of forgiveness and love. In everything that has been rebuilt and restored. He’s in the trees and the sky, keeping it all in a perfect cohesion. He’s in everything I can’t control, the laugh I try holding in when I’m supposed to be quiet.

I think it’s only in being truly alone that you find God, that I’ve found what it means to love Allah. Alone is where I have found the willingness to let go and let Allah handle the rest.

The beginning of winter prickles my face. I sit at the edge of the park probably tearing my skirt and frowning at strangers without realizing, but I can breathe with a newfound awareness. I feel so alive. 

Then I laugh, not caring how strange it looks, because is it possible to feel the closest you’ve ever felt to God in a skatepark?

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