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The Letter

Dear mom,

I feel sad. Sometimes I think about life and feel sad. Sometimes I think about what I’m doing and feel sad. Sometimes I think about you and feel sad. I want to tell you about it but I don’t know how.

I chose to move out last year because of the I felt discontented with my life. Ever since tegretol… no, maybe even before tegretol … I’m not sure when I began having mood swings. It was as if one second I was happy and felt like I had the ability to achieve whatever I aimed towards, and the next felt worthless. I felt alone. I felt alone. I felt alone.

I don’t blame the medication. I don’t blame you. Growing up, you were perfect, even now, you are perfect but I wasn’t. In high school, I had no passions, no close friends and felt I was headed nowhere. It didn’t help that you guys were raised in a really competitive society and were imposing that on me. I understand you guys wanted the best for me and wanted me to be more successful than you but I am really lost. I understand that you guys want me to get a good job, get paid well and live a life of luxury but what does that mean?

My whole life I’ve never seen anyone in our community happy. Growing up I never knew what fulfillment and happiness meant for adults because the lives of all those who I should have considered role models or people to look up to were crumpled. Your parents, at their old age still can’t stand each other enough to live with each other, my uncle continued to smoke even after his daughter was born and is in terrible health and our father didn’t give a shit about us. He feigned kindness and was a mirage in our lives, fading in and out. I don’t think he ever understood the concept or fatherhood, but could I blame him? The whole concept of marriage for the sake of marriage in our society is really messed up. All these failed marriages around me along with the absence of successful ones made me lose faith in the holy institute of marriage. Lastly, what made the ideals of this community the most painful was you. You, the most beautiful, intelligent, selfless, hardworking woman I have ever seen in my life and you were shackled behind the constraints that society had placed on you just because you were a woman all alone in a patriarchal community with two good for nothing children. You couldn’t even get a divorce.

I moved to escape this unending cycle of depression. I didn’t want to feel the pain you felt. I’m not as strong as you. No one is as strong as you. I just wanted to make my own path and try to find it. Achieve what I had never ever seen a single person achieve, happiness.

Mom I don’t want you to feel like I’ve abandoned you. You are the most important person in my life but mom… I feel alone. I feel alone. I feel alone.

For the first time in my life, I’ve made close friends, I’ve made real connections. I don’t know why, but for some reason they care about me. I remembered your advice mom, I tried being really careful. I tried not to trust anyone, I tried not to tell people too much about myself, not to open up too much. But for some reason they really care about me. I don’t know why I’m this lucky but for some reason, a boring, ordinary, forgettable, replaceable person like me is cared about by these people.

But dear mom, I feel empty. I’m trying really hard to find out what I’m missing, what I need to do to fill this void, this pit of emptiness that consumes me. But I can’t find it. I can’t ask you where it is because you don’t know. I can’t ask my friends where it is because they don’t know. So I do what I can, I cry. There are times when this feeling of dread hits me but I don’t say anything. I go to my room and as soon as I enter my eyes won’t stop running. Why won’t they stop mom? When I used to be younger you used to be able to make them stop. Sometimes I want my head to break open and my brain to be free from these unnecessary, unproductive thoughts. It’s simple like you say right? I just need to study and be a good engineer. But mom, if that’s true then why do I feel like this? I know you guys want to push me but I do study mom. I try hard, I try really hard. But why do I feel like this? There are times where I think I’ll never find out how to end this feeling and that’s when it hits me, I’ll never need to find out if I end it all right here. Why do I feel like this?

I really wish I could convey these feeling to you but I know I never will.

Since I’m getting things off my chest, I’m not Muslim, I know you’re a fantastic human being but I just can’t believe in the faith consciously knowing all that I do, mom I’m a fricken engineering student. I’ve smoked weed and drank alcohol. My biggest fear is that if I disappeared no one will remember me except you.

I know what you’d say. What you always used to say when I used to try and open up to you when I was younger. My problems aren’t real, I’m just a child. Fair enough, my problems were nothing compared to yours but over the years, the bullying, the abuse, the loneliness, the sadness, the insecurities, added up since I had no one to talk about them to.

Thank you for everything.

Good bye.