The Mother

It's not necessarily my story...But you'll feel it anyway.

I always thought emotions like grief, pain, despair, envy, doubt or either of its counterparts, it all came in intervals. There must not be a thing termed as eternal. Yet, some people are born unfortunate. I have always imagined a helpless woman, sacrificing more than her life, getting eaten up by the society, whenever I’d read a women-centered poem, written by any revolutionary feminist, someone like Nida Fazli, at the times, when words like women empowerment meant nothing more than that. I then wondered, was that the truth? Because I see my mom, a powerful, dynamic, independent woman, who have always lived her life at her own will, who was never shaken up by her spectators, questioning on her rights and wrongs.  I have been seeing my dad and he seem to be the perfect example of how a woman like my mom must be treated, and that she deserves nothing less than a man like my father. I must have gone wrong. It was a close escape though, it’s nearly impossible to spot a fault between the relationships of two ideal lovers, even if their tied knot was result of an arranged marriage. For a long time, I presumed I and my sister were the mistake, of course we still are; but it doesn’t count that much now, when you realize that the ideal world you made up for your self has been pierced a million times already by things like distrust, lies or indifference. Chances were enormous that this imaginary world would have shattered a long time ago, and it didn’t take much time for me to comprehend that probably someone was holding on. As I look back, I know it has been my mother all along, the same liberated, powerful woman, giving up on most part of her freedom, for us. I guess, everything feels much revealed when you can see all the endless sides of a person, or a situation that together form a story, as dispiriting as this.

It looked like problems were always there, between us and parents, or between them, or between the whole of us and anyone outside the so called happy nuclear family. I know it was there and it must have been for quite a long time. But, then it all looked so perfect, so planned. I once asked curiously, “What does midlife crisis mean”? Thinking obviously, it’s so far a disease from our ambiance. Ironically, just after that, this vicious, atrocious, brutal word happened. And unaware of the fatal consequences, I stared right at its face, unable to move, protest as it peacefully destroyed the whole existence of the concept of idealism, devastating them who ever tried to be bold enough to reach it; in other words ‘us’.