Letter From Your Ex-Daughter

Driving home and looking at the mountains I stop to take it in with awe. How amazing are they created so perfect and huge. Who would think they could crumble? Who would think water can penetrate them? Subhan Allah I ponder over this amazing creation feeling a sense of anxiety setting in. I wonder how many people are cold up there. The last journey I made into the mountains I couldn’t eat properly for weeks as guilt trickled into my mind at every meal time. My home comforts and pleasures seemed so wasted when others don’t have food, warm clothes or even proper windows.

A sense of shame looms over me as I put my head down get my phone and take a picture so I can finish my journey before getting into the village and around people. A few tears work their way up into my eyes blinking faster I try to flush them out. I look at these happy little kids kicking a small white ball across the path of my car they stop to allow me to pass. As my eyes scale them I see shorts and shirts with flip flop shoes. They know I’m the foreigner and wave happily the little girl gestures her hands for me to keep the horn. Such joy fills their hearts as I look to my hands with my gloves on and 3 layers of clothes I feel defeated.

How much I wish to have been a child again and to feel that joy of play and laughter without a worry or fear. These children may not have warm clothes or many comforts I did when growing up but most of them that I know have loving mothers a luxury I didn’t get to experience.

Little did I know I would come across some material about the impact of abuse on children as they grow. I sent it to my mum, I don’t know why but I did. We haven’t had a normal kind of conversation in months. Her reply, just abusive emotionally and totally lacking in any empathy or normal consideration. She knows her brother molested me yet she abuses me because of it. I never asked for that to happen to me. Every hurtful word and thing she ever said or did to me just flashed through my head so full of anxiety I became sick onto my phone and the floor falling to my hands and knees crying. I was done, I refuse to be blamed or treated like the guilty one here. I also refuse to have someone in my life who is clearing abusing me emotionally and has now brought us such a bad side of myself that I was writing insulting words to them.

To my mother who I blocked from my life tonight never to speak to you again. I’m sorry for being the thorn in your side, for ruining your relationships with your boyfriends and dates. I apologise for not knowing when to remain silent and talk too much. I’m sorry I never finished school and my punctuation is horrible even Google can’t help. I regret all that I did as a child that caused you to feel anger and frustration at me as I didn’t know that would remain a lifetime and turn into the hateful ways you are with me. I’m sorry I was your daughter and that you didn’t want to be my mother for who I was.

But most of all I’m sorry I wasted the last year’s of my life waiting for you to openly love me and listen to what I endured hoping you would be part of my path to closure.

From tonight I won’t speak with you again so that I may begin to heal and stop hating you back.