The other day I asked my mom if she had been taught to live without a man. She said no. I was never taught that. I was always assured that if I had any problem, my father would solve it. If not my father, then my brothers. And after I get married, my husband will bear the weight of my problems and then when we get old, my son will take care of me.
Maybe that's why her world fell apart when my dad left her. We humans want a constant support in this world and the only support most women are taught to see are men. What my mom believed was that the one solid, never changing fact was that her husband will always take care of her and her children (she said "This world will turn upside down but he can't leave me) and this idea formed the foundation of all that she was, of all that her life was based on. But that got taken away from her. Her foundations were destroyed.
Yet, she stood.
My mom stood when everything she believed in was destroyed. Her foundations crumpled and the earth was snatched away from underneath her feet. She was falling but still, she stood. Because she is a warrior.
My mom was thrown into a cold dark abyss (excuse the excessive use of figurative expression. I'm not trying to be dramatic, I just don't know how else to describe what she felt.) Have you ever thought that if you're falling down deep into darkness and all you're doing is falling, you can still stand straight? Can you even stand straight when you're falling? My mom did.
She fought so hard. I remember how when my parents got divorced we were going from here to there and there to here, hoping to find the support that is usually provided by the husband and father, but we couldn't find it anywhere. We were just gliding through the world because our home got taken away from us. I don't think many people have felt the feeling of being homeless. It's like this: in this world, you have one place you can always go to. The feeling of having nowhere to go to is homelessness. Can you imagine what my mom went through? A woman whose world had crashed and she had no place to go to and get the comfort she needed?
But my mom didn't curl up and sat still in shock of what just happened with her. Even in her shock she fought so hard. And damn she fought hard! I remember that she was still in disbelief but she just kept running around trying to make things work. Even when she had no clue about what was happening; when the terrible extent of how she had been thrown into the world hadn't fully set in (after living all her life under the supposed shelter of 'male protection'), and she was supposed to just sit and figure things out, she got up and fought. And she kept on doing it over and over again and did it with all her might. She kept on kicking and flinging her hands in the dark hoping that she would finally catch something and because she was trying so hard, Allah ji helped her and she found it. She found herself.
She did what is considered almost impossible: raising two girls all alone in this dirty man-dominated society.
My mom is the perfect combination. She has the courage of twenty men put together. Put fifty men in between her and me and my sister and she will rip every one of them apart to reach us. She is a lion in its truest, purest form. She has the mental strength of twice that of a normal human. What problems a man and a woman face together as husband and wife in this society, she faced alone. She went out and worked like a father would and she raised us right like a dutiful mother would.
Yes, I am proud of what I and my sister have turned out to be. My mom has raised us right. She raised us independent and she has raised us good. In one of my moodier insensible moods I complained to my mom that it's not fair how she taught us never to trust a man. Trusting is a luxury. It's a comfort of which we have been deprived. And she said she did this to make us strong. She did this so we don't have to depend on anyone, much less a man, like she was taught all her life. I couldn't disagree with her even in my insensible unreasonable moods.
So today, here we are.
I consider us the warrior family. My mom, the oldest wisest warrior queen (who still has the strength of fifty young warriors left in her despite her graying hair), taught me and my sister how to stand against the world and I am proud of how we stand. What me and my sister have managed to achieve in our lives, what we have learnt, what we have turned out to be, we have proven that we are the surviving warrior family - we are those who stand when we're not supposed to; when the world expects us to fall. We will protect each other at all cost because all we have is each other. We will stand together and fight because we are survivors of a battle which has bought out the warrior in us and it's not going anywhere.
Mom,
If you're reading this, I want you to know that I love you. And I can assure you that it's no ordinary child-loves-mom kind of love. It's the kind of love; okay I don't know how to describe it. I'm just so glad that my best friend is so amazing. You literally are the "first-one-I-talk-to-about-my-crush" kind of friend. You are the perfect person. You are my entire world worth of relationships in one body. You're my loving mother, you're my father, you're my bestest friend in the whole wide world, you are my soul-mate, you are the love of my life, you're the only one I can ever trust this much in the world.
Whenever I face a problem, I think about what you, with your incredible strength, would have done. And that gives me the courage to overcome anything. I think if my mom could do it, so can I. If my mom can live like a man in this dirty world, so can I.
I'm just so scared that I won't be able to give you your due. I'm not just supposed to fulfill my duties towards you because you're my mom, but because you're also my dad and my brother and my second sister and my homie and my EVERYTHING! I owe you so much that I won't ever be able to fulfill all my responsibilities towards you. They say that what children owe to each of their parents separately, is what they can't repay them back in their lifetime. And you're both my parents in one body so what I owe you can't be returned even in fifty lifetimes. I am a bitch and I wish I wasn't. But mom, what can I do? You're the only one I love and trust so much to be bitchy with. My biggest fear is to hurt you. I pray to Allah ji with all my heart that I never hurt you. Because the day I do, is the day I am no longer a human.
So mom, with all my heart and soul and even more, I love and respect you. Because you're everything to me and even more.
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