Mother’s Day

I am back to the land of melancholy again. I was happy for a while and that’s always a good sign for my writing because I’ll be really verbose and silly and funny. I have been meaning to write this few days but the melancholia stopped all the creative juices. I was going to talk about my useless trip to the orthopedic clinic and that didn’t get written. I was thinking also to write about how I love my mum for mother’s day and that didn’t happen either. But here goes.

Friends who know me well know that my mother is not well; she actually suffers from chronic schizophrenia and was diagnosed since she was 18. She had me when she was 26. So basically my whole life I’ve seen mum battling her illness so she could raise my siblings and I, to the best of her abilities. I don’t know how she does it that even in the darkest place she has been she had never forgotten that she’s our mum. She is one of the kindest, most caring of mothers that has ever been, and it saddens me that I can’t be the kindest daughter all the time.

People have judged me and most find me wanting, these are people who sees me scolding my mum like the rudest daughter ever seen. What they don’t understand by the time I could take care of myself, I have been taking care of mum when she is sick, imagined a 9 year old trying to cajole her mom not to go out of the house naked. I had been trying to be a mother to my mum more than half of my life. During my younger years Dad was around more to take the slack, but he has to sleep and work sometimes too. Adik has taken the brunt of looking after her as well, but somehow mum just doesn’t like Adik when she is sick. So how would a young daughter takes control of her sick mother? Yes, you guessed it; she had to be the strict controlling mother who sometimes yells. But people from outside looking in thinks this is wrong, your mom should never be treated that way, in a perfect world I guess. But my world has never been perfect, so I deal with it with all the flaws I have been given.

Mummy, please know that every time I had to yell, scold or be mean, that it hurt me deep inside, but I have had no other choices available to me to keep you and everyone else safe. I love you mum and I know you love me too.

Happy mother’s day!